Religious figures, local leaders and people linked to sustainability help tell the island's recent history.
Biographies linked with El Hierro show how wider Canarian processes take shape through concrete people: leaders, artists, religious figures, politicians, scientists or bearers of tradition.
Among its main reference points are Myth of the edge, Biosphere Reserve, Energy innovation, which connect landscape, memory and everyday life. This section connects local memory with the project's general figures section.
Key points
Armiche (bimbache king)
The last king of El Hierro, baptised in Spain as Fernando de Canaria; his surrender was read as a voluntary capitulation, although it meant the end of bimbache independence.
Local religious figures
The religious history of El Hierro is marked by local devotion to the Virgen de los Reyes and to the patron saints of each district; the priests and hermits of the 18th and 19th centuries live on in community memory.
The promoters of Gorona del Viento
The engineers and political leaders who drove El Hierro's renewable energy project are contemporary reference points for innovation rooted in island identity.
Gadifer de La Salle and the first chroniclers
Gadifer de La Salle took part in the conquest of El Hierro in 1405, and his written accounts form part of Le Canarien, the oldest chronicle of the European Canaries.
Returning emigrants from Venezuela and Cuba
Islanders who emigrated to the Americas in the 19th and 20th centuries and came back with means brought economic and cultural change; their casas de indianos (returnees' mansions) are part of the island's contemporary heritage.
