Agustín Millares Torres

Agustín Millares Torres was a historian and musician associated with Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and its nineteenth-century cultural institutions. He helped found the Sociedad Filarmónica de Las Palmas; his personal archive preserves its handwritten regulations of 1855. His musical activity developed alongside his dedication to island history.

In 1879 he belonged to the group that promoted El Museo Canario with Gregorio Chil y Naranjo. The institution brought together physicians, historians and other intellectuals interested in studying the archipelago’s past and ancient populations. His documents, including originals and manuscript copies, joined Chil’s holdings to form the initial core of the museum’s archive.

He also took part in disputes over education and science. Drawing on testimony by Baltasar Champsaur Sicilia, Sánchez-Gey records that Millares Torres and the teacher Pablo Padilla were the only members of the Las Palmas municipal council who refused to sign the disciplinary proceedings against Saturnino Milego and Salvador Calderón. The episode documents his defence of the teachers against the measures taken against them.

The same author places him among the supporters of Darwinism in Canarian intellectual controversies, alongside Chil and Champsaur. His support for evolution and his involvement in the museum place his historical work within the scientific and cultural life of the period.