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A sampling of Canary Islands heritage

The Alamo, San Antonio, Texas. Yinan Chen [Public Domain]

Being able to trace ancestry back to settlers from the Canary Islands is a huge deal in San Antonio. Those settlers, a group of 15 families who travelled from the Canary Islands at the invitation of King Philip V of Spain, founded the small town of "La Villa de San Fernando" - as San Antonio, Texas was then called - on March 9, 1731. Probably the most famous contribution the Canary Islanders made was building the San Antonio de Valero Mission, later known as The Alamo.

This weekend, members of two folk groups - Princesa Dácil and Cabuqueros - are visiting San Antonio, from the Canary Islands to perform a series of demonstrations of traditional music and dance. Then, on Tuesday, they join Domingo Rodríguez Oramas, "El Colorao," one of the Canary Islands' best known timple - the traditional five stringed instrument - players, for a concert.

El folklore canario se escuchará en el Folk Live Festival de San Antonio de Texas

Darwin's frustrated visit to Tenerife

Charles Darwin as a young man
Iberianature weblog tells us that "This month's Quercus [magazine] has an interesting article on Charles Darwin's abortive visit Tenerife." Darwin, apparently, had been inspired to visit Teide after reading Alexander von Humboldt's account of his ascent of El Teide. Naturalist and explorer, Humboldt, had stopped six days at Tenerife for the ascent of the Peak in June 1799.

However, when the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle, under captain Robert FitzRoy, which the student clergyman Charles Darwin had joined as the captain's gentleman companion, arrived at the port of Santa Cruz at Tenerife in early January 1832, they were prevented from going ashore due to a cholera outbreak in England that would have required them to be quarantined for 12 days. Eager that no time would be lost on their primary mission, the captain gave orders for the ship to proceed to the Cape Verde Islands. Darwin was devastated at missing the chance to see the island of his dreams, and watched Tenerife fade off into the horizon.
"This was a great disappointment to Mr. Darwin, who had cherished a hope of visiting the Peak. To see it -- to anchor and be on the point of landing, yet be obliged to turn away without the slightest prospect of beholding Teneriffe again -- was indeed to him a real calamity." - Capt. Robert FitzRoy
One can understand why the Tenerife authorities were being cautionary, although cholera did eventually hit the islands.

A footnote in Richard F. Burton's "To the Gold Coast for Gold" reports, "The list of epidemics at Santa Cruz is rather formidable, e.g. 1621 and 1628, peste (plague); 1810 and 1862, yellow Jack; 1814, whooping cough, scarlatina, and measles; 1816-16, small-pox (2,000 victims); 1826, cough and scarlet fever; 1847, fatal dysentery; and 1861-62, cholera (7,000 to 12,000 deaths)."

In 1851, a cholera epidemic broke out in Gran Canaria which would bring about six thousand deaths and the Medal of Charity, was awarded to Santa Cruz de Tenerife by Queen Regent María Cristina in 1893 during the cholera epidemic, in which the citizens behaved bravely.

This explains why Charles Darwin and the Beagle turned away from the eco-diversity of Tenerife, but Darwin had questions, "Why are there fewer endemic species on islands than on the mainland? Where did these species come from? Why are they so similar to mainland species if their natural surroundings are so different?", that undoubtedly he would have pondered here.

Darwin's frustrated visit to Tenerife

PS: Visitors to Tenerife, who seem to be really interested in the Tenerife weather, may also like to know that the Beagle's Captain, Robert FitzRoy was "a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality." He also pioneered the printing of a daily weather forecast in newspapers.

Public holidays in the Canary Islands

The Canary Islands

Another reader's question: "What holidays are celebrated in the Canary Islands?", the answer is that these are primarily based upon the Public holidays celebrated in Spain, which includes a mix of religious (Roman Catholic), national and regional observances, as well as some hyper-local ones too.

National Holidays
 DateEnglish nameLocal name
January 1New Year's DayAño Nuevo
MoveableGood FridayViernes Santo
May 1Labour DayDía del Trabajador
August 15AssumptionAsunción
October 12Columbus DayDía de la Hispanidad
November 1All SaintsTodos los Santos
December 6Constitution DayDía de la Constitución
December 8Immaculate ConceptionInmaculada Concepción
December 25Christmas DayNavidad del Señor

In addition to those, Canaries Day - Día de Canarias is celebrated here on May 30th and Epiphany - Día de Reyes is a public holiday on January 6th. Although the latter is listed as optional, it is the big day of the Christmas period, so I think there would be civil unrest if it wasn't observed! And each island has it's own holiday, which, in Tenerife is usually Feb 2nd, Candlemas.

Wikipedia additionally says that Holy Thursday - Jueves Santo (the day before Good Friday), is not observed as a holiday in the Canary Islands. However, every year except 2007 (when it was swapped out for something else and many complained bitterly) it has been observed in Tenerife, to my knowledge.

You also have to add local holidays, usually for the patron / fiesta of individual towns. Shops might close in one area, but are open just a few miles away. In Santa Cruz, Shrove Tuesday is always a holiday for Carnival. Each municipality declares two additional days of local holidays, which, once added to the national, regional and island ones, adds up to 14 public holidays, decreed by law.

People often say that Spain has a lot of public holidays and it seems so, but this is a fallacy as you have to remember that Spain has a six-day working week. 

Anyway visitors need not worry about finding things to do and getting fed. With the economy relying on tourism, somewhere will be open 365 days a year, particularly in the resorts. Even in other areas, if the day off is for a fiesta, then there'll be processions to watch and plenty of hot dog and food stalls open.

If you live here, of course, you won't get any important business done on those days and, if you work here in anything to do with the tourist sector, the chances are that you will never have a day off on anyone's public holiday!

Can we still fly to Tenerife North?

Tenerife North Airport, formerly Los Rodeos. Aisano [CC BY-SA 3.0]

Richard Green, writing in the Times Online, in response to a reader's question about flights to Tenerife North Airport from the UK, said that, "Tenerife North comes with more baggage than most airports" and continued, "Formerly known as Los Rodeos, it was from here that General Franco flew to the mainland in 1936 to ignite the Spanish Civil War." Er, nope. Whilst Franco did start his journey from Tenerife in 1936, because he was stationed there at the time, however, he did not fly from Los Rodeos. On July 17th, 1936, Franco embarked upon the mail steamship, Viera y Clavijo to Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. The famous Dragon Rapide flight that took Franco to Africa, never came to Tenerife and met him in Gran Canaria. The flight didn't go to mainland Spain either.

There was a bit of an airfield at Los Rodeos from 1929, but it did not become an airport until later. Los Rodeos was undergoing improvement works, ordered by the Tenerife Island Corporation, in 1936. It remained closed during the Civil War and was reopened in January 1941. It didn't get a runway until 1945.

The English version, at Wikipedia, just says, "One famous incident involving the use of a DH.89 was in 1936 when Francisco Franco escaped in one from Canarias to the Spanish Morocco, at the start of the Spanish Civil War." 

The translation of the Spanish version, however, gives us the full story, which is rather more spine chilling:
To put Franco at the head of the insurrection in Morocco, without awakening the suspicions of the Spanish Government, Luis Bolín (a correspondent of the ABC in London), with the help of intermediaries, [Marques] Luca de Tena [owner of the monarchist ABC newspaper] and Spanish inventor, Juan de la Cierva, contracted, on July 11th, 1936, a twin-engined De Havilland DH 89 Dragon Rapide with pilot, Captain Begg, a plane which had belonged to the Duque de Gales (Duke of Wales) [1], at Croydon aerodrome; the only plane that could be found in condition to travel immediately. So as to not raise suspicions over the journey, it carried, as passengers an English Major in the Reserve, his daughter and her friend [2], who had been offered free passages to Tenerife as tourists. They got lost over the peaks of Europe [Pyrenees] and had to return to Biarritz to refuel, continuing to fly to Lisbon and then on to the Canary Island airport of Gando in Gran Canaria, after a stop-off in Casablanca. The tourists then continued to Tenerife [3], where they had to give the strange message "Galicia saluda a Francia" (Galicia sends it's regards to France), to a doctor. Franco, meanwhile, waited for the arrival of the Dragon Rapide, in the Hotel Madrid in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where he had gone with his family, to the funeral of soldier (Balmes), having sought permission so as not to raise suspicions. When Franco boarded the Dragon Rapide, he was in civilian clothes, he had shaved off his moustache and torn up his military ID documentation, passing himself off as an English tourist [4].
Franco flew to Agadir, then on to Casablanca and Tetuán in Morocco. He re-entered Spain, via Ceuta, by car.

[1] Do they mean Prince of Wales, or Duke of Elsewhere?

[2] The "fake" tourists were a retired major, Hugh Pollard, his daughter Diana and Dorothy Watson. The two girls, blondes (with the habit of keeping their cigarettes and lighters in their knicker elastic, apparently), were there to divert the authorities' attention. Pollard was presented as just a rich bloke interested in fishing, but declassified M16 documents indicate that Pollard was an agent of said service. The full name of the ABC correspondent, who travelled as the forth "tourist", was Luís Bolín Bidwell, who was half English.

Editor of the English Review, Douglas Jerrold, who was of extreme right persuasion and a sympathizer of Adolf Hitler, and Juan March, Spanish financier and British agent on the side of Francisco Franco's forces and founder of the Fundación Juan March, were also implicated in the arrangements.

Charlie Pottins in British Friends of Franco, reiterates much of the above and more, also including a translation of further details that appear in the Spanish account above, namely, "Franco's flight had been planned over lunch at Simpsons in the Strand where Douglas Jerrold, editor of the right-wing Catholic English Review met Bolín, London correspondent of the ABC newspaper and later Franco's propaganda and censorship chief. They decided to charter a De Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft and a pilot, Captain Cecil Bebb, from Olley Air Services at Croydon."

[3] After landing in Gran Canaria, the tourists continued to Tenerife by boat.

[4] Which certainly wouldn't have worked if anyone had spoken to him!

The story of this significant flight is told - I understand with historical accuracy - in the 1986 film, Dragón Rapide. The actual Dragon Rapide aircraft used for Franco's flight, with registration number G-ACYR, was incorporated into service with the Royal Air Force during WW2. After the war, it was bought and sold a couple of times, before being retired from service after having its airworthiness certificate revoked in 1953. It was then acquired by a Mr. Griffith, who gave it to General Franco as a gift. Franco, in turn donated it to the as yet then non-existent Museo del Aire military aviation museum at Cuatros Vientos airfield in Madrid. That's where it still is, having been restored to the livery it carried in 1936.

If anyone should be carrying baggage and hanging their heads in shame over this incident, which sparked both a bloody civil war and almost 40 years of dictatorship, it should be the British, not Los Rodeos.

All flights to and from Tenerife North airport are inter-island flights and flights to the Spanish mainland, so no, you won't fly to Tenerife North from the UK.

The British pilot whose actions triggered the Spanish Civil War

Tenerife Land of Eternal Christmas

Sunbathing SantaDesert Island ChristmasScuba Diving SantaTropical Santa
Santa's Having a Whale of a TimeSurfing SantaWaterski SantaCamel Rodeo Santa
With a wide range of products in each design, click the pics (above) to see the full selections.