History Of Tenerife

Tenerife has a long history of being used and abused by its conquerors. Starting with the Phoenicians between 1100 BC and 800 BC, and ending with the island’s present occupiers, the Spanish, Tenerife has experienced enslavement, extermination and strife on the road to its status today as a winter escape for Europeans seeking a retreat from the cold and snow.

The Guanches

Before the Spanish arrived, the Canary Islands were ruled by a number of small kingdoms, whose inhabitants were known as Guanches. Between 1494 and 1496, Alonso de Lugo, a Spanish military governor, launched his attack on the Canary Islands. Although the Guanches emphatically crushed the Spanish during the first battle in 1494, the locals eventually succumbed to the superior technology and diseases of the Spanish.

The Spanish Invasion

Tenerife was the last of the Canary Islands to come under Spanish control, surrendering in December 1495. The future for the Guanches was not pleasant, with the few survivors being enslaved or dying from disease. The Spanish Empire quickly moved in and cleared the native pine forests to grow sugarcane. Due to its favorable geographical location, the island was also used by the Spanish as a final stopover for Spanish ships sailing to America and the New World. Christopher Columbus stopped at the island before his famous voyage to the west in August 1492. Over the next two centuries, Tenerife was used as an agricultural centre to provide ships with food supplies.

The English Attack

The strategic location of Tenerife did not go unnoticed by other countries and the island was the target of many assaults over the years. In 1797, the British, under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson, attacked the capital of Tenerife. After a fierce battle, Nelson was forced to retreat, but not before famously losing his right arm to a cannonball as he tried to take to the shore. A second attempt by the British also ended in failure, as the locals of Santiago Valley hurled boulders off the cliffs of Los Gigantes to repel the invaders. Today, Los Gigantes is one of the island’s premier resorts. 

The Birth of Tourism

In recent centuries, visitors to Tenerife have been less hostile. The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt climbed Mount Teide to study the fascinating alpine environment of this tropical island. Tourists began flocking to Tenerife in the 1890s, as the island began its current life as a major winter tourist destination. One final unpleasant regression happened in 1936, when Francisco Franco was posted to Tenerife by the Spanish Republican government. While on the island, Franco collaborated in the coup that resulted in the Spanish Civil War. The Canary Islands fell to the nationalists and most of the population lost their lives in mass executions by the new regime, accused of being supporters of the opposition. The misery of the years that followed the Civil War caused many islanders to emigrate to Cuba and Latin America. Today, the Canary Islands are peaceful and Tenerife makes its living from tourism.