La Laguna, the unfortified colonial town: Plaza del Adelantado to the Cristo: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The first unfortified Spanish colonial town
Lugo keeps turning up: he lived on the first square, chose the site of the mother parish, ordered the first Franciscan convent on the island and lies in the cathedral. Around him stand the convents, the hospital church, the palace and the mansion of a planned town, and the house where a future co-founder of São Paulo spent his childhood.
The stops
This square is named for Alonso Fernández de Lugo, the first Adelantado, who conquered La Palma and Tenerife and founded La Laguna in 1496 or 1497; he lived at one end of it, on part of the site the Santa Catalina convent now holds. It was laid out as the town's main square, and until the 20th century it hosted the biggest public occasions: festivals, market days, processions, bullfights and executions. In 1999 UNESCO listed the old town, calling La Laguna the first non-fortified Spanish colonial town, whose layout was the model for many colonial towns in the Americas.
Photo: Almedra — CC BY-SA 3.0 es This was the childhood home of José de Anchieta, who was born in La Laguna in 1534 and lived here for the first 14 years of his life, although he was not born in the house. He went on to be one of the founders of São Paulo, in 1554, and of Rio de Janeiro, in 1565, in Brazil. The site began in the early 16th century as an elementary school, the present building dates from the 17th century, and a restoration to turn it into a museum about him was completed in 2024.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 Dominican friars set up their convent here in 1522 and built the church in 1527. When the Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands, left Candelaria for the first time, on 30 January 1555 and for fear of French raids, she was kept in this convent. The corsair Amaro Pargo was buried in the church in 1747, and a marble slab at the entrance carries his family crest and his pirate symbol, a skull and crossbones.
Photo: Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 From 1500 this plot belonged to Jorge Grimón, a conqueror of Tenerife; building began in 1585, and in 1776 Tomás de Nava y Grimón y Porlier had the palace remade and clad entirely in stone, giving it the look it has today. Over its main staircase is a carved ceiling that combines Mudéjar woodwork with Portuguese colour, which some authors consider the best example of a Portuguese-style roof in the Canary Islands. In 1810, while Napoleon's troops besieged Cádiz, the Junta Suprema de Canarias met in the Nava gardens to govern the territories the French had not yet occupied.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 Juan de Cabrejas, a councillor of La Palma, and his wife María de Salas founded this Dominican convent in 1606 on the houses where the conqueror Alonso Fernández de Lugo had lived, which they had bought in 1600. It opened on 23 April 1611 with four nuns from Seville, and the building shows Mudéjar touches such as carved wooden lattice balconies and a tiled roof. It is best known for the body of María de Jesús de León y Delgado, called La Siervita, whom devotees venerate as incorrupt; her sarcophagus was a gift from her friend, the corsair Amaro Pargo.
Photo: Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife opened here in December 1993, in the mansion known as Casa Lercaro, and tells the island's story from the 15th to the 20th century. The house is also the setting of the legend of Catalina Lercaro, who, the story goes, was made to marry an older, wealthy man and died in the courtyard pit on her wedding day. Visitors have claimed to see her ghost in the halls, and the page calls it the most famous haunted mansion in the Canary Islands.
Photo: Falk2 — CC BY-SA 4.0 A bull of Pope Leo X in 1514 authorised a hospital here dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows and folded two older hospitals into it, making it the town's first permanent one. It was overwhelmed by the bubonic plague epidemic of 1582, so other hospitals had to be opened around the city. The page records the Blessed Sacrament being placed in the new church on 25 May 1704, and the venerated Cristo de La Laguna stayed in it from July 2017 to March 2018 while its sanctuary was restored.
Photo: Daniel García Asensio — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The old Augustinian convent houses the Instituto de Canarias, founded by royal order in 1846 as heir to the University of San Fernando, which was abolished in 1845, and today the oldest secondary school still working in the islands. Historians propose that one of its two cloisters was already built around 1524, and the main cloister is described as an early sign of the Renaissance in the Canaries, with Portuguese influences said to have been noted in it. Among the school's famous former students the page lists the novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, and its assembly hall displays paintings lent by the Prado.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 Alonso Fernández de Lugo chose this site after the feast of Corpus Christi in 1496, and it is the mother parish of Tenerife, since all the island's other parishes came out of it. The page gives 1497 for the parish and 1511 as the year the church was founded. It stands in what was the Villa de Arriba, the upper town where the craft guilds lived, while the Villa de Abajo, around the cathedral and the Plaza del Adelantado, held political and religious power. Its stone tower, 28 metres high and dating from the late 17th century, holds the largest bell in the Canary Islands.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 Antonio Leal ordered this theatre built in 1915 to plans by the architect Antonio Pintor Ocete, and its facade is covered in flowers, animals and figures by Manuel López Ruiz. It hosted the town's first film screenings and, on 6 September 1926, the premiere of El ladrón de los guantes blancos, an action film shot entirely on Tenerife. It closed to the public in 1990 because of problems with its roof, and the inauguration concert after its restoration was held on 18 September 2008.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 The present building went up between 1904 and 1915 to replace an earlier church begun in 1515, and the conqueror and founder of the city, Alonso Fernández de Lugo, is among those who lie in the cathedral. José de Anchieta was baptised in the old church on 7 April 1534. When the dome and vaults had to be rebuilt during a restoration that ran from 2002 to 2014, they were made with polypropylene fibre, which the page says made it the first cathedral in the world to use the material.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 Founded in 1547 as the convent of San Juan Bautista, this was the first convent for women in the Canary Islands. Ten nuns came from Baeza and Sanlúcar de Barrameda under the will of Alonso Fernández de Lugo, a relative of the Adelantado, and lodged at first in the Franciscan friars' convent that is now the Real Santuario del Cristo. It took thirty years to find a permanent home, when a benefactor, Olalla Fonte del Castillo, offered her houses in return for taking three of her daughters as novices.
Photo: Koppchen — CC BY 3.0 This is one of the largest and most important squares in the Canary Islands, and the page counts it among the island's main squares alongside the Plaza de España in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Until recently it marked the edge between the town and farmland, and until the last century it served as a drill ground. Around it stood the Hospital of San Sebastián, which took in patients during the plague epidemic of 1582.
Photo: Mentxuwiki — CC BY-SA 4.0 Alonso Fernández de Lugo ordered the Franciscan convent of San Miguel de las Victorias built, with work starting in 1506 and ending in 1580; it was the first Franciscan convent on Tenerife. A fire on the night of 28 July 1810 spared only the bell gable, the brotherhood's house and the image of Christ, and the simple single-nave church of today went up the following year. That image, the Cristo de La Laguna, is among the most venerated in the Canary Islands, and the sanctuary received the title Real from Alfonso XIII on 19 December 1906.
Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0
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