Teguise, the old capital of Lanzarote: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Pirate raids and colonial grandeur
A corsair raid hit Teguise in 1569 and Algerian galleys struck the island again in 1586, yet the town's lords, friars and clergy also built the palaces, convents and granary that made it a capital. The walk follows both stories through a few lanes.
The stops
Lanzarote's principal church has stood through much of Teguise's long history of looting, arson and violence. Its original statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe is said to have been stolen in the pirate raids and taken to Algiers, so the one in the church today is a copy. The church was set on fire again in 1909 and rebuilt with the townspeople's donations, and when it was blessed in 1914 a section had been added to the tower, making it the tallest structure in Teguise.
Photo: Jorge Franganillo — CC BY 2.0 This lane northeast of the parish church was once a natural channel for water running down the Miraflores ravine towards La Mareta. Its name, Blood Alley, comes from the raid of the North African corsair Calafat in September 1569, which brought looting, fires and kidnappings to Teguise. Such scenes could not be avoided in many places, but here the townspeople repelled the invasion.
Photo: Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Herrera y Rojas family settled in Teguise and, according to the town's tourism office, made it the political and social centre of the Canary Islands. Their house once filled a whole block, as Leonardo Torriani's plan of 1590 shows, and today six houses share that ground. The tourism office holds that only one of them is the true Herrera palace, backed by a stone inside carved with footprint-shaped engravings, but it does not say which, so picture the whole block as the family's seat. In 1586 Algerian galleys landed on Lanzarote and captured the governor, Agustín de Herrera y Rojas, first Marquis of Lanzarote, with his wife and daughter.
Photo: giggel — CC BY 3.0 Gonzalo Argote de Molina ordered this Franciscan convent built in 1588, meant to be the first convent founded on Lanzarote, and only its church of Our Lady of Miraflores survives. The tourism office says the church became a military target and the victim of numerous lootings and arson attacks. It is now a Museum of Sacred Art, still holding its original baroque altarpieces dedicated to Our Lady of Miraflores, Saint Anthony of Padua and the Immaculate Conception.
Photo: Patrice78500 — CC BY-SA 4.0 This was the convent church of the Dominican order, founded at the start of the 18th century on the site of a church already raised in the 17th, and the whole estate was part of a donation by Captain Gaspar Carrasco Rodríguez. The convent's quarters beside it are now Teguise's town hall, which still keeps two arcades of the cloister and the original cisterns. The church itself has become an exhibition hall and still shows the main altarpiece of the original church, dedicated to Our Lady of Grace.
Photo: Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0 Lanzarote was a feudal island until the first half of the 19th century, and besides its feudal dues its people owed the clergy a tithe of a tenth of each year's crops and livestock. The grain went into granaries called cillas, and Teguise held the most important one on the island. This one dates from 1680, the work of the master builder Marcial Sánchez, and in 1986 a bank paid for its restoration under César Manrique and turned it into a branch, keeping its original structure.
Photo: Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0 On the Plaza de la Constitución, this stately house is considered one of the most important of its type in the Canary Islands, with a large stepped entrance and six lintelled windows on its facade. It was the home of the Feo Peraza family from the early 18th century and was earlier known as the house of the inquisitors, because it housed the tribunal of the Holy Office. The Spínola name arrived only in the 20th century, when a Feo descendant married Ángel Spínola Cancio, and in the 1970s the house was restored by the architect Fernando Higueras and decorated by José Domínguez del Río and César Manrique, and today it is a museum run by the town council.
Photo: Dguendel — CC BY 4.0 This small chapel dates from the 17th century and was built under the patronage of Lucas Gutiérrez Melián. It takes its name from its Christ on the cross, a 17th-century image that reached the island from Portugal, with a mane of real hair that falls almost to the waist. The figure used to preside over the Holy Week ceremonies.
Photo: Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0
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