View of Teide from La Gomera

Unless you’ve had the misfortune to land on Tenerife on a cloudy day you can usually see a shadowy shape that seems to hang in the sky across the water as you drive down the hill into Los Cristianos. That’s the island of La Gomera.

Tenerife and La Gomera seem to gaze across the water at each other like starstruck lovers. Perhaps the ancient Guanches thought so too for they have a suitably tragic legend that romanticises the relationship between the two islands.

Gara was a beautiful Gomeran princess and Jonay a young prince from Tenerife. Like all girls of her people, Gara looked into a still pool where tradition had it that should the water be murky she would not find her true love. She saw herself clearly but gazed so long at her reflection that she was temporariy struck blind.

An old man told her that this omen meant she should avoid all fire or she would be destroyed by it.

Prince Jonay, son of the Mency of Adeje was visiting La Gomera to participate in the games and competitions of the Beñesmén festival, Jonay saw and fell in love with Gara.

Just as the young couple met, Teide erupted, a dramatic sign which thier parents took as a bad omen and immediately forbid the two to see each other. Jonay was forced to return to Tenerife but he later snuck away and crossed the sea between the islands to be with Gara again.

Outraged the parents and islanders chased the young couple to the top of the highest mountain in La Gomera where they killed themselves rather than be forced apart.

Garajonay is now the name of the National Park in La Gomera and also of its highest peak.

Think of Las Americas in relation to Tenerife and it’s likely you’ll imagine a lively resort town in the South of the island renowned for its nightlife, high-end hotels and tipsy tourists. Well so far, so stereotypical but did you know that Tenerife has very close connections with the Americas?

Settlers from the Canary Islands founded the city of Montevideo, capital and largest port of Uruguay. The US Library of Congress provides this description in a study of the Pre-Columbian Uruguay:

In 1680 the Portuguese, seeking to expand Brazil’s frontier, founded Colonia del Sacramento on the Río de la Plata, across from Buenos Aires. Forty years later, the Spanish monarch ordered the construction of Fuerte de San José, a military fort at present-day Montevideo, to resist this expansion. With the founding of San Felipe de Montevideo at this site in 1726, Montevideo became the port and station of the Spanish fleet in the South Atlantic. The new settlement included families from Buenos Aires and the Canary Islands to whom the Spanish crown distributed plots and farms and subsequently large haciendas in the interior. Authorities were appointed, and a cabildo (town council) was formed.

Canarians were also founding fathers of San Antonio in Texas and San Bernard in Louisiana. In a beautifully precise recording the Texas branch of the Canary Island Descendants Association notes:

On eleven o’clock on the morning of March 9th, 1731, sixteen families (56 people) from the Canary Islands arrived at the Presidio of San Antonio de Bejar in the Province of Texas. By royal decree of the King of Spain, they founded La Villa de San Fernando and established the first civil government in Texas.

In Louisiana the Canarian descendants are no less proud of their roots and celebrate each year with a Canary Islands’ Day in May. They are an active group and maintain a museum and Canarian expos and performances throughout the year.

Looking at the passenger lists of these long ago journeys it is hard to imagine how excited and nervous these brave adventurers were. Leaving the shores of their island homes and taking off into the unknown…

So whether you live in Tenerife or are planning a holiday here, the next time you think of Las Americas, think of a handful of families to whom that phrase meant not a holiday destination but the adventure of a lifetime as they gathered all the possessions they could take with them on the ships across the ocean to the New World.