Canary Islands - History
The Canaries are regarded as the Fortunatce Insula of the ancients and are supposed to have been known to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, judging from the description by Juba II, King of Mauretania. These islands have generally passed for the Fortunate Islands of the ancients, albeit there have not been wanting those who have affirmed Great Britain and Ireland to be such.
But certainly the description given in Plutarch's Life of Sertorius, applies much better to Madeira and Porto Santo than to any others, for he says, "There are two in number separated only by a narrow channel, and are at the distance of 400 leagues from the African coast." This is an exact description of Porto Santo and Madeira, as far as their relative positions are concerned. The name "Canary" most probably came from "canis," for Lancerota is still celebrated for a fine breed of dogs, something of the Newfoundland breed. It is said that at the time of the conquest, no dogs were found on the island of Gran Canaria; but if this name is considered as a generic name, this difficulty is obviated.
According to the ancient legends "The Fortunate Islands" - "The Islands of the Blessed," "The Hyperborean Islands" - were in the west, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, off the coast of Europe, in the Western Ocean, beneath the setting sun, at the ends of the earth. In early times it appears to have been believed that Elysian and the Happy Islands were reserved less for the virtuous and the good than for certain favorites of the gods.
The "Fortunatae Insular, the Fortunate Islands," were islands lying off the western coast of Africa, and deriving their name from their remarkable beauty, and the abundance of all things desirable which they were supposed to contain. Their climate was one continual spring, their soil was covered with eternal verdure, and bloomed with the richest flowers; while the productions of earth were poured forth spontaneously in the utmost profusion. The legend of the Islands of the Blessed in the Western Ocean may possibly have given rise to the tale of the Fortunate Islands. Many at the present day regard the Fortunate Islands of antiquity as geographical realities.
Pliny mentions the Fortunate Islands, giving Canaria as the name of one of them, and declares them uninhabited, except for "vast multitudes of dogs of very large size". Whatever knowledge the ancients may have had of Southern Africa, it was soon lost to the world, and up to the time of the conquest of Northern Africa by the Saracens, its eastern shores had been unvisited by Europeans beyond the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and that on the west they had never sent a vessel much farther south than the limits of Mauritania.
Before their annexation to Spain they were inhabited by the Guanchos, a Berber tribe, later completely amalgamated with the Spanish settlers. Guanches, ‘guan’ (meaning 'man') and ‘che’ (meaning ‘white mountain’, referring to the snow-crowned Teide on Tenerife) in the native tongue, was the general name given to those inhabitants. One widely accepted theory is that Gran Canaria’s natives, widely known as Guanches although Canarios is actually the correct historical term, originally came from North Africa and that they were descendants of the Berber people. The Guanches lived very primitively – as the unsophisticated tools and weapons found on the island bear witness to – mostly in caves. Guanches are also believed to have used rocks and stones to build small structures for shelter. These make-shift dwellings would be covered with a roof of branches and leaves. Their most civilised achievement was earthenware, modelled without the use of a potter’s wheel.
For six centuries after the occupation of North Africa by the Arabs, maritime enterprise was almost unknown to Europe; but early in the fourteenth century attention was again drawn to the Fortunate Islands. About the year 1330 a French ship was accidently driven by a storm among these islands, and the captain, on his return to France, entered a Spanish port and gave an account of his discovery. Upon this, a Spanish nobleman, named Don Luis, procured a grant of the Fortunate Islands from Pope Clement VI, upon condition that he would cause the gospel to be preached to the natives.
About the year 1370, an adventurous Spaniard, Don Ferdinando, landed on the island of Gomera, and made so favorable an impression, that the King Amalvige and many of his people were baptized, and a priest left behind to instruct the islanders in their new faith. The priest, we read, died shortly after the departure of Don Ferdinando; but not before he had converted a large number of the natives, and prepared the way for a kind reception of any Spaniards who for the future might visit them.
They were subsequently granted by Henry III of Castile to Robert of Bracamonte, and it was only in the beginning of the fifteenth century that an attempt was made to take possession of them. In 1402-05 Jean de Bithencourt, a French adventurer, to whom Robert of Bracamonte had transferred his title, conquered several of the islands. By 1406 the Spaniards were so dominant, that John de Belancourt, commonly but erroneously called the discoverer of the Canary Islands, on leaving for Spain, ordered his nephew to build two churches in Lancerata; and in 1407 so firmly was Christianity fixed in four of the islands, that Pope Benedict XIII appointed Albert, a Franciscan friar, bishop of the Canary Islands, with the title of Bishop of Rubicon.
The Tropic of Cancer is at 23° 30' N. The parallel of Cape Bojador at 26° N, which passes south of the Canaries, and was used by Pope Martin V in the fifteenth century to grant exclusive privileges to the Portuguese southwards down the African coast, and by Pope Nicholas V in Romanus Pontifex (1455) and in all subsequent bulls on the subject of spheres of influence.
The King of Spain sent a large force in 1477 to conquer the Guanches, a brave and intelligent people of large stature, and comparatively fair. Their origin is unknown, but they are assumed by many to have been of Berber or of Libyan stock. Their resistance was so stubborn that It was not until 1495 that the last of the islands was mastered. They have been ever since the property of Spain. The Guanches suffered terribly from their conquerors, and have long ceased to exist as a separate people; but in the local museums may be seen specimens of their mummies, skeletons, weapons, and pottery works.
By the end of the century the entire group was in the possession of Spain. The latitudinal line mentioned in the 1559 Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis and prominently shown on the Gutiérrez map was that of the Tropic of Cancer. Diplomatic documents after the 1559 treaty state simply that Spain's sphere of influence is south of the Tropic of Cancer and west of the prime meridian. But not knowing what prime meridian creates a problem with ascertaining the location of the line of demarcation. Was it to be the line given in the Papal Bull of 1493 or that in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494; and for that matter which island in the Atlantic Ocean was to be used as the eastern terminus from which the distance to the line of demarcation was to be determined? There was no agreement upon which privilege was to be accepted.
Contacts with the New World (because of the high emigration to Latin America due to collapses of local industries), where Cuba had won freedom from Spain in 1898, led to calls for Canarian independence. Most people simply wanted the division of the archipelago into two separate provinces (Las Palmas and Tenerife), which eventually came about in 1927.
Going back in time to the year 1912, the Island Council’s Law was brought into force, which led to a number of infrastructure projects such as the airport, reservoirs and the principal motorway network of the island, laying the foundation stone for the development of the tourism industry. Another key date in the history of the Canary Islands is 1982, when the Autonomous Government Statutes were passed.
On March 27, 1977, a number of aircraft - including KLM Flight 4805, a Boeing 747-206B, Reg. No. PH-BUF; and Pan American (Pan Am) Flight 1736, a Boeing 747-121, Reg. No. N736PA, - were diverted to Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands due to a bombing at the airport at their final destination, the neighboring island of Gran Canaria. Later, when flights to Gran Canaria resumed, the aircraft collided on the runway in Tenerife as the KLM Boeing 747 initiated a takeoff while the Pan Am aircraft was using the runway to taxi. . With a total of 583 fatalities, the crash remains the deadliest accident in aviation history. All 248 passengers and crew aboard the KLM flight were killed. There were also 335 fatalities and 61 survivors on the Pan Am flight.
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