The poplar hill near the lagoon was the place chosen by the barefoot Franciscans of the province of San Diego in the Canary Islands, for the foundation of their convent, by the will of Don Juan de Ayala Dávila y Zúñiga (1577), who ordered in his testament (Garachico 1615), before Gaspar Delgadiño, that half of his assets and rights be allocated so that the monastery would be founded within four years, adding the condition that if it was not done in that time, he would leave his assets under the same conditions to the Dominicans of Candelaria.
When the Franciscans did not receive the promised will, they filed a lawsuit in 1619 against Don Luis de Interián, brother-in-law and administrator of the founder, where they claimed their inheritance. The judicial process was suspended arguing the executor that, since the testator had not died, the inheritance could not be disposed of. On January 29, 1641, the ruling favorable to the Franciscans was appealed and five years later the Order received part of what was promised. The convent began to be built that same year.
Other lawsuits were raised between the parties and a new one was added by the Dominicans of Candelaria, who argued that the four years that the founder had set as a condition had been exceeded, resolved by the bishop. The Dominicans won by sentence of the Royal Court of the Canary Islands the August 20, 1664, expelling the administrator Miguel Interián de Ayala. The Dominicans began to build the convent so as not to make the same mistake as the other religious order. The Congregation of Cardinals met on April 2, 1667, finally decreed that the assets of Don Juan de Ayala should be returned to the Franciscan recoletos. The works were completed in 1672. Subsequently, the Franciscans began a radical reform of the temple, opening a main door and two side doors, and building a belfry and a presbytery, which was completed in 1695.
On the occasion of the attempted assault on Santa Cruz by Admiral Blake on April 30, 1657. In the area known as the Huerta de los Melones (Almeida Barracks) three English boats approached, two of which fled, before the action of the troops of Captain Don Tomás de Nava, who, being ill in La Orotava, was commanded by Ensign Cristóbal Lordelo. One of the boats was rescued and delivered to the Lord of La Laguna (Santísimo Cristo), being received by Fray Sebastián de Sanabria, so that this boat would be used by the Franciscans from the San Diego Convent to the San Miguel de Las Victorias Convent. (Convent of San Francisco).
THE SERVANT OF GOD
Fray Juan de Jesús, known in La Laguna as the Servant of God, was a former cooper’s apprentice who was born in Icod de los Vinos. He was baptized on December 20, 1615. He entered the lagoon convent of San Diego, after having passed through that of Puerto de la Cruz. He lived humbly in a hut that he made himself. As a lay friar he took care of the farm, carried water from the fountain, helped at mass, begged in the streets and woke up his fellow friars every morning.
On the tomb of the Servant of God, who died on February 6, 1687, it says on a tombstone: “He was a religious of very rare humility and poverty, of astonishing penance and of the highest contemplation. With the sweet charm of his word and his example, he put fire of God’s love in the most lukewarm hearts and with his fervent cries about judgment, healthy terror in the most obstinate.
In 1805 the convent had five friars and two laymen, and due to the suppression of religious orders in October 1820, it had to close its doors on July 3, 1821, although it reopened four years later. With the Confiscation Decree (02-21-1836), and despite the attempt of the Laguna city council to transform it into a hospice, it was not possible because the convent house had already been put up for auction, and in 1839 the monastery, its church and the lands around were sold to Don Juan P. Meares, according to Alejandro Cioranescu.
On March 27, 1906, on the occasion of the visit to La Laguna del Rey, Don Alfonso XIII, accompanied by the Infanta María Teresa de Borbón and Fernando de Baviera, after seeing the Sanctuary of Christ, the General and Technical Institute of the Canary Islands and the Episcopal Palace, the royal procession moved to the old San Diego convent along the boulevard that the Magistrate Agustín Gabriel del Castillo Ruiz de Vergara had planted in his day, which led through a landscape surrounded by gardens and trees, today Camino de San Diego, to the entrance portico that leads to the hermitage. The reason for the visit was that the director of the then Assumptionist College, which at that time occupied the premises of the old convent, had been the educator of the Infanta María Teresa.
The hermitage, with a single nave, is 21 meters long by 9 meters wide, the floor is made of old ceramic tile and its coffered ceiling is made of Arab four-sided tiles. After a long period of neglect, it was restored and inaugurated for worship on November 13, 2009, the feast of San Diego de Alcalá.
THE ESCAPE FROM SAN DIEGO
The one known as Fuga de San Diego has its origin in the Instituto de Enseñanzas Medias de Canarias founded in 1846, heir to the disappeared Literary University of San Fernando in 1845.
Although the beginning of the leak is related to the arrival of Professor Diego Jiménez de Cisneros y Hervás, placing it for the first time in the year 1919, this date could not be correct given that in that year and in the previous one, the pandemic was sadly suffered. known as the “Spanish flu”. Professor Jiménez Cisneros, archaeologist and professor of Physics and Chemistry, obtained a position at the Laguna Institute in 1915, becoming vice-director of it. In 1919 he held the chair of Chemistry, until 1922 when he returned to the peninsula.
High school students were already running away to attend the San Diego pilgrimage and spend the day in the mountains that surrounded the hermitage, before the arrival of Professor Cisneros. The teacher’s claim to give an exam that day did not work, turning the fugue, which until then was somewhat testimonial, into a tradition that has been maintained until now.
Starting in the 50s, the students in their last year of high school were in charge of organizing the party on the occasion of the escape, not only to attend the pilgrimage, but also to the dances that were organized in the surroundings of the hermitage. Later, the dances moved to different venues in the city center, such as the Hotel Aguere, the Anchieta court, the Viana Theater and later to Club A Go Go.
What is understood by the flight of San Diego in our days has nothing to do with the tradition that consisted of going to the hermitage, counting the buttons of the founder of the Juan de Ayala convent, and spending a pleasant day in that beautiful corner of the lagoon. . Today the escape is widespread in almost all educational centers and the hermitage is practically not visited.
