Beyond resorts rife filled with ‘Brits behaving badly’, as my guide book affectionately puts it, the Atlantic island of Tenerife hides a history and biodiversity little known to the outside world.
Venture deeper into this island’s ridges and ravines, jungles and vineyards and villages, and you will unearth the tale of the Canary archipelago. Tenerife, before being an island, is actually a gigantic volcano, which sprung up from the depths of the Atlantic around 12 million years ago. And from this pile of cooled magma, a unique ecosystem has evolved, producing a beautiful bounty of flora and fauna, drenched in equatorial sunshine and maritime currents.
It may surprise you to learn that us beer bellied, party-hungry Brits are in fact not the Tenerife natives. Human first settled in the Canary Islands around 200 years before Christ. These fair-skinned, blonde haired indigenous peoples were known as the Guanches, and are believed to be related to the Berber tribes of North Africa. These tribal societies inhabited the islands of La Palma, El Hierro, La Gomera, Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and Tenerife, forming a complex network of cultures, with distinct animist religion and mythology, burial rituals and culinary practices.
Spanish invaders colonized the Canary Islands in the 15th century. Tragically, this wiped out the vast majority of indigenous Guanches, whilst the rest assimilated into the Castilian population. This is considered by many an early case of colonial genocide. Some modern-day citizens of the Canary Islands claim Guanche ancestry, but this has been difficult to verify. Although Spanish culture remains dominant here, the history, struggle and contribution of the Guanche people is increasingly recognized and celebrated. I strongly recommend a visit to Santa Cruz’s Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueologia for a fascinating dive into Canarias history.
Guanche language may have become extinct in the 17th century, but the island stills whispers of its first children, quietly and subtly, through the shade of the palms, the steep volcanic ascents and the longstanding tradition of goat herding and agriculture. It strikes me, gazing up at these vast landscapes which have hardly changed in the past few centuries, that I am not the first human to have looked up in wonder at this island paradise. Tribal Guanche farmers, eager Castilian conquistadors and now, slightly sunburnt tourists such as myself, have all found solace and connection here. I hope that future humans will continue to enjoy the fruits of Tenerife and be inspired by its shores, maybe a bit more peacefully than our ancestors…
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