In memory of my mum, Carmen Alonso Suárez, a Tirahanera by her origins, a Teldense at her heart, a Palmense because of her birth and a Schamannera through rooting.

Not long ago a newspaper article attributed the non-existence of a Chinatown in the Canary Islands to the double fact that the Chinese community resident in the Archipelago is small, and to the integrationist spirits of the Canarian population.

The truth is, unlike what is usually understood as cosmopolitanism in large Western cities, which in its less friendly side results in the progressive formation of neighbourhoods where only people belonging to the same ethnic or social group coexist and interrelate, the cosmopolitan character of the Canary Islands is due to the happy paradox that their very nature as islands, and more specifically as small islands, tends to make it difficult to form closed human groups, and no less decisive in this context has been the lack of a clear-cut division between urban and rural areas, forcing the lack of physical distance, in both cases, to coexistence and social interaction. This is undeniably positive and desirable.

But in order for this social warp and weft model to evolve in a cohesive and constructive way, quietness and conversation are essential. Time and interaction to mesh and mature the integration of the different cultures. And we Canarians have secular experience of the need for this requirement with the various human contingents that, in different ways, for different reasons and under different motivations, have been joining the island population.

Unfortunately, since recent times, the intense flow of immigration to the archipelago, especially of people with higher purchasing power than the average Canarian, and coming from large cities where the worship of the urbanite life prevails, manifested in the form of competitiveness, anonymity and attachment to real estate properties, understood the latter in many cases as personal isolation and absence of neighbourly interrelation, all this in turn immersed in a globalising phenomenon governed by the tyranny of immediacy and the peremptory, makes it almost materially impossible to carry out the aforementioned quietness and conversation in order to achieve real and effective integration, and not give rise to the difficult, but not impossible, formation of ghettos in these islands.

Let us hope that we are wrong and that the next Canarian generations do not grow up in the absence of our traditional values of empathy, solidarity and hospitality, and that the rich Canarian cultural heritage, which the island public authorities are obliged to defend, as stated in the first article of the Statute of Autonomy of the Canary Islands itself, is not be diluted.

That said, since memory is very short, and we Canarians are not free of this defect, it is useful from time to time to turn to documentary sources to find out what the ethnic and social reality of the archipelago was like in not so distant times, if we bear in mind that in more than six hundred years of documented history, the way of life on the islands only underwent significant changes during the process of the European conquest; then, with the introduction of export crops, after the Industrial Revolution, and, from the 1960s onwards, with the arrival of mass tourism.

The Blacks from Tirahana

After the royal conquest, a large part of the population of Gran Canaria was made up of black and mulatto slaves brought from the African continent to work in the sugar mills and the cultivation of sweet cane, among other arduous tasks, but after the death of their masters they were freed or ahorrados, probably by will, as was the Christian custom among members of the wealthy classes.

A significant number of blacks, from the slaves then employed in the towns of Ingenio and Agüimes, moved to the interior of the island, to the Tirahana basin, where they formed several neighbouring communities; one in the parish of the nowadays tourist-oriented municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana -whose rural and administrative centre, despite its official name, and since time immemorial, is still popularly known by its native name: Tunte-. This is what a very young Pedro Agustín del Castillo, the future historian and father of the first Count of Vega Grande de Guadalupe, testified in 1686 when he spoke of the place of Tirahana:

It shall be a place [of] 300 inhabitants, most of whom are black and live in caves . They have a good church that is being finished with its priest, there is a mayor […]^[1]CASTILLO Y LEÓN (1994 [1686]), [Ch. VI, v. Lugar de Tirahana], unnumbered folio). This translation by PROYECTO TARHA..

Since the term neighbour meant a head of household, supposing that each family consisted of an average of four members^[2]See more rigorous demographic coefficients for the 17th century in MACÍAS HERNÁNDEZ (2004), p. 925., it turns out that out of some 1 200 settlers that the Caldera presumably contained, more than 600 were black.

One year later, 1687, physician and historian Tomás Marín de Cubas, a native of the nearby city of Telde, confirms this information on Tirahanan dwellers:

The town council and regiment and the conqueror knights, at their own expense, built three frigates to clean these coasts and make assaults into Africa, and other islands to be conquered, and into Guinea, from where they brought blacks for the mills and these settled in Tirajana, and were freed by the death of their masters, where many now live there as a people, and they are men of valour; they defend those seaports from the Moors and other enemies who enter that place to steal cattle and make a water supply; they have good peculiarities, first of all, they are good Christians; they have a parish of Saint Bartholomew, they are knowledgeable and clever, and are brave of heart and fame;^[3]MARÍN DE CUBAS (2021 [1687]), [Book I, Ch. XI, f. 66r], p. 295.

In 1607, according to the historian and priest Santiago Cazorla León, the couple formed by the blacks Antón Pérez Cabeza and Juana García left Agüimes and settled in the Tirajana ravine, probably in the place later called Barranco de los Negros^[4]PÉREZ HIDALGO (2010), p. 541. 541. –Blacks Ravine–, and their descendants set up the Brotherhood of St. Sebastian, one of the statues that were then kept in the parish of Tunte, as the patriarch had been devoted to this saint during his time living in Agüimes. We know that this tradition continued for more than two centuries, as it is documented that in 1817 the parish priest refused to allow them to take the image in procession, an incident which led the indignant brothers to file a complaint with the cathedral chapter^[5]CAZORLA LEÓN (2000), pp. 30-31.:

For the dark-skinned people of San Bartolomé de Tirajana complain about their priest, because they have always been in possession of the right to take the Saint Sebastian’s Day function in that place, carrying the effigy of the saint, and that this year the priest has prevented them from doing so, insulting the rest of their kind.^[6]This translation by PROYECTO TARHA.

Well into the 18th century, Pedro Agustín del Castillo, already an accomplished chronicler, updated the data reported in his adolescence:

It [Tirahana] is a very rough place, due to the ruggedness of its location, in the mountains of this island, six leagues from this city; its population is 416 inhabitants, many of them black, whose colour is as dull as if they had just come from Guinea, not knowing the time of their arrival; it is only known that they are free from captivity^[7]CASTILLO (1948-1960 [1737]), [Book III, Ch. I], pp. 732-733. This translation by PROYECTO TARHA..

The company of blacks and mulattos

Such was the importance of the black population in Gran Canaria that the Franciscan José de Sosa testified that in 1677 a militia of blacks, mulattos and Creoles had been formed to defend the island, a company placed under the command of Juan Felipe Liria, a free black man:

In the year 1677 the city appointed, in consultation with the king our lord, a captain, ensign, and other officers, instituting a company of blacks and mulattos who are not on the lists because they were slaves, and they made a free black and old Christian (of whom there are many on this island, mostly in the place of Tirajana) captain of them, which since the conquest of the island has preserved free blacks of great truth and fidelity, from which this one comes) called Juan Felipe Liria, a very brave man, and a great master of arms, having given him his title and patent of captain, he brought his insignia and walks with it, in having rebates, or that for another cause the people are in a body; He made his list throughout the island, and found to be a total of 648 blacks, and with the mulatto slaves, Creoles and foreigners 6,478, with all of whom he comes to the parade ground on the day of the occasion, to take the order of his captain to war^[8]SOSA (1848 [1678]), [«Único escripto»], p. 20..

Regardless of the accuracy of these figures, it should be borne in mind that the number of inhabitants of Gran Canaria during the 1580-1599 time frame has been estimated at between 8,734 and 9,734^[9]MACÍAS HERNÁNDEZ (1991), p. 943., and that, in any case, the demographic inclination towards these groups less than favoured by colonial society -blacks, mulattos, Creoles and foreigners, the latter certainly not Europeans- was already echoed in an enquiry ordered by King Carlos I of Castile in September 1536 to address the complaint of the governor Bernardino de Ledesma that on the island ‘there are more Berber and black slaves than neighbors’^[10]LOBO CABRERA (1982), p. 323..

The Mahoreran Moorish

The current and popular distinction between ‘conejeros’ and ‘mahoreros’ for the respective natives of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura is actually relatively modern, the second demonym being the one originally given to those born on either of the two islands, according to sources from the 16th and 17th centuries such as Gaspar Frutuoso, Leonardo Torriani, fray Alonso de Espinosa and fray Juan de Abreu Galindo.

The seignorial rule – first Norman, then Castilian – which was imposed from the beginning of the 15th century on these two islands, soon expanded not only to the rest of the archipelago, but also to neighbouring Barbary, reaching its peak during the rule of the Herrera Peraza family – Doña Inés Peraza; her husband, Diego García de Herrera, and heirs – during which time numerous Barbary slaves were brought to Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, in addition to the mahoreran camels.

As we well know, these cabalgadas or slave raids gave rise to conflicts between the lords of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, and the different tribes settled or passing through the mainland coast bordering the Canary Islands; tribes that, in retaliation, not only besieged the manorial outpost in their own territory – the tower of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña – but also dared to cross the water and counterattack the islands within their reach, also with profitability in human kind.

In this respect, the best known testimony of the mark left by the seignorial captures on the composition of the population of Lanzarote is that of the engineer Leonardo Torriani, who, around 1590, wrote about Lanzarote:

Of the Moors that he [Diego de Herrera] brought, many were baptised and remained with freedom on this island; who, working and cultivating the land as neighbours and inhabitants, have increased so much that three quarters of the islanders [on Lanzarote] are all Moors, or their children or grandchildren^[11]TORRIANI (1959 [c. 1590]), [cap. X], p. 44..

The Cremonese continued, expressing his displeasure at what he considered a relaxation of the Lanzarote Moors in their duties as New Christians:

[…] and so they are in their worst habits and their thoughts that, although they are baptised, they have this way of speaking among themselves that, when one asks the other if he has something to do, he answers ‘if God wills’; and if they ask him if he will go to mass [on] Sunday, he answers ‘by force’. Moreover, having been assaulted three times in the space of 16 years by the Turks and the Moors, and taken prisoner to Africa, they never wanted to fight (as did the Swiss soldiers), which is the cause of so much ruin.

It should be noted that the expression ‘si Dios quiere’ which so shocked Torriani, because it is undoubtedly a translation of the Muslim insh Allah, has been traditionally used frequently in the Canary Islands until very recently; in fact, it is a saying incorporated into the Hispanic lexicon through its condensation in the word ojalá. What is striking in this case is that the Cremonese, although working for the Castilian crown, presents it as an anomaly that he seems not to have heard anywhere else in the Christian world. Torriani continues:

These people are lean, thin and very light. They live on roasted meat and barley flour, which they roast dry in the oven, or mix with water or honey. They fight on foot with the spear, and on horseback with the dart and the adarga, as the Africans and Spanish horsemen are accustomed to. They are not afraid of arquebuses; on the contrary, it often happens that, when corsairs disembark there to provide themselves with water and meat, two of these men assault many and kill them. They often endure such great toil and fatigue; they are very affectionate and take very good care of those whom they shelter. They have a long beard and shave their heads; they have an olive complexion and very good, clean teeth^[12]TORRIANI (1959 [c. 1590], [cap. X], pp. 43-44)..

And in the drawing he makes of the port of Arrecife, he synthesises:

From this island they used to make their entries into Africa, which is about 18 leagues away, to make prey; and the multitude of Moorish slaves that they took from there has grown so much that almost the whole island is inhabited by them. They are baptised, they are fed with barley flour mixed with water, which they call gofio, and with roasted meat; and for this reason they say that they are healthy and willing^[13]TORRIANI (1959 [c. 1590], [drawing, v. Arrecife], p. 288)..

Antonio M. López Alonso

References

• Castillo, P. A. del (1960 [1737]). Descripción histórica y geográfica de las islas Canarias. Acabada en 1737 por D. Pedro Agustín del Castillo Alférez Mayor de Gran Canaria. Edición crítica, estudio bio-bibliográfico y notas de Miguel Santiago. […] Tomo I. Fascículo 3. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ediciones de «El Gabinete Literario» de Las Palmas.
• Castillo y León, P. A. del (1994 [1686]). Descripción de las yslas de Canaria. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ediciones del Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria.
• Cazorla León, S. (2000). Los Tirajanas de Gran Canaria. Notas y documentos para su historia. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Ayuntamiento de San Bartolomé de Tirajana.
• Lobo Cabrera, M. (1982). La esclavitud en las Canarias Orientales en el siglo XVI (negros, moros y moriscos). Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Cabildo Insular de Gran Canaria.
• Macías Hernández, A. M. (2004). «La población de Canarias a finales del siglo XVI. El Vecindario de 1585», Anuario de Estudios Atlánticos, vol. 1, núm. 50, pp. 907-953. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Departamento de Ediciones del Cabildo de Gran Canaria.
• Marín de Cubas, T. (2021 [1687]). Conquista de las Siete Yslas de Canaria (1687) : Tomás Marín de Cubas : Edición crítica de Antonio M. López Alonso. La Orotava – Santa Cruz de Tenerife: LeCanarien ediciones.
• Pérez Hidalgo, H. M. (2010). Origen y noticias de lugares de Gran Canaria. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Fundación Canaria MAPFRE GUANARTEME.
• Torriani, L. (1959 [c. 1590]). Descripción e historia del reino de las islas Canarias antes Afortunadas con el parecer de sus fortificaciones. Traducción del Italiano, con Introducción y Notas, por Alejandro Cioranescu. Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Goya Ediciones.