From that uniform society that gave rise to Santa Cruz de Tenerife only the name remains: chicharrero. Not a trace of the fishermen dedicated to the capture of the mackerel and other species. Yes, there remains a small redoubt of farmers and ranchers who settled in the steep and humid mountains of Anaga. This green barrier, the late irruption of the Port – the Castilian conquistador Alonso Fernández de Lugo landed in Santa Cruz in 1494 but it would not be until the 19th century when port takes over from Garachico– and the construction of the Refinery in 1930 configure a heterogeneous social map in which professional qualification and economic capacity go hand in hand.
The data just released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) about the distribution of professions street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, they paint a Santa Cruz of three basic colors: the center and some islands on the outskirts –Acorán, Los Moriscos, Ifara and Las Mimosas– with an important presence of highly qualified professionals –company and administration directors, technicians and scientific and intellectual professionals, administrative workers–, the working-class neighborhoods that expanded from those created in Somosierra and García Escámez for the workers of the Cepsa oil plant and the world apart in the Anaga mountain range, in which there are many medium or low-skilled employees –services, construction, jobs unskilled– and the last stronghold of Santa Cruz in the primary sector.
big data
There are other particularities of the interpretation of this big data. For example, the large residential areas with low- and medium-skilled inhabitants –and some bags of personnel with higher education– that embrace La Laguna –Vistabella, La Cuesta, Taco, La Salud–, in an evolution that tends to unite more and more the two most populated municipalities of the Island –Santa Cruz , 205,000 inhabitants; La Laguna, 156,000–.
There are also the points where the ends meet. The most characteristic case of this frontier of contrasts is Acorán and Añaza. In Mayántigo and Jardines de Nivaria streets or in the Los Pocitos area, the professionals with the best salaries in the Acorán villa development (more than 6%) share neighborhood with the blocks around the Nelson Mandela de Añaza square, with the highest rates of little or no qualification (more than 32%) of the entire capital municipality.
The relationship between professional qualification and per capita income is very close at the opposite poles. In this way, the point with the best trained workers in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Ifara-Las Mimosas (more than 11%), is in turn the richest (a gross income of more than 41,000 euros per year). The same thing happens at the other extreme: the neighborhood with the most unqualified personnel, Añaza, is the one with the least wealth (a gross income of less than 17,000 euros per year).
Unlike the neighboring municipality of La Laguna, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the residents with the best education prefer the comfort of living close to their workplace, in the most central areas with the greatest economic and administrative activity. Hence, they are concentrated in the center: Avenida de Anaga, the Barrio de los Hoteles, around the Parque García Sanabria, the Heliodoro Rodríguez López stadium and the Port, in the area of La Granja, the new city of Cabo Llanos or to the sides from the Rambla mainly. If they go to the outskirts, it is mostly to points not far from the city or well communicated: the aforementioned urbanizations of Acorán, Ifara and Las Mimosas, Anaga residential area, Los Moriscos – where there are many families related to the Army due to the proximity of the base Hoya Fría– or small redoubts in Vistabella, near the border with La Laguna.
on the cusp
In these areas, not only are there many chicharreros who are at the top of the pyramid –company directors and public administrations, with percentages that range between 5 and 12%–, but also in the next two ranks of the statistics of the INE: technicians and professionals with highly intellectual and scientific training –indices that exceed 40% in Cabo Llanos, the Los Hoteles neighborhood, Anaga or El Chapatal residential– and support technicians and professionals with certain degrees of responsibility –in In this section, the neighborhood of El Toscal is added to the previous points.
The rest of ranks with less training are distributed throughout the neighborhoods that expanded towards the municipalities of El Rosario (southwest) and La Laguna (north), from the first surveys for the employees of the Refinery, and the historic hamlets of Anaga. The highest percentages of unqualified personnel, with rates of over 18%, are found in the expansion areas, in addition to Añaza, in La Salud, Los Gladiolos, Somosierra and Hoya Fría; and as regards Anaga, in valleseco, San Andrés and other small towns scattered throughout the mountains. Meanwhile, machinery operators are concentrated around the Port –San Andrés, Barrio de La Alegría, María Jiménez– and those in construction, in Los Campitos, with 15%.
throughout the municipality
Workers in services, protection and commerce, the largest contingent of professionals in the middle of the pyramid, are distributed throughout the municipality with more weight in the center -in Los Gladiolos they exceed 36%-, the coastal areas de Anaga –in Valleseco and María Jiménez they exceed 30%–, the southwest –in Añaza they are more than 38%– and the border with La Laguna –in Las Moraditas de Taco they are 47%–.
Agriculture and livestock survive in the mountains of Anaga but with increasingly lower percentages which barely exceed 3.5%. The abandonment of the field is more and more significant.
