Economy and Society of La Graciosa

For centuries La Graciosa was a territory of seasonal uses rather than a place of residence. The island belonged to the lord of Lanzarote, the marquis Agustín de Herrera, and in 1618 it was ceded in usufruct to the people of Lanzarote, who used it as ground for hunting seabirds and rabbits, as winter pasture for livestock and for gathering barilla. The seventeenth-century tax registers of the Cabildo of Lanzarote record ships collecting or leaving livestock at the port of La Graciosa, a sign of the role of "natural corral" the island played under the Old Regime.

Permanent settlement came with fishing. In 1875 Ramón Silva Ferro published a study in London to justify establishing a fish-processing factory on the island, and around 1880 a salting factory linked to the Sociedad Canario Africana was set up at what is now Caleta de Sebo, intended to process the catches of the African-coast fishing bank. About eleven humble families from inland Lanzarote moved there to work in it. The factory failed within a few years —the press of the time blamed the lack of prior studies and its poor management—, but those families decided to stay despite the isolation, and by the early twentieth century the island's first stable settlement had formed. In the 1930s the hamlet of Pedro Barba was added, founded by families from Arrecife, whose houses would end up sold as summer residences in the late 1960s.

Life for those generations was pure subsistence. In a hostile environment with no drinking-water springs, agriculture barely developed and the most viable source of resources was the sea: fishing and shellfish gathering, complemented by subsistence herding. Water and farm produce had to be brought from Lanzarote, which meant crossing El Río and climbing the steep Famara cliff, some 450 metres high, a task that fell to the island's women. Until the post-war years La Graciosa lacked a school, a church and a cemetery; it was general García Escámez, head of the Economic Command of the Canaries, who promoted these facilities along with cisterns and watering points, and distributed plots of farmland among the settler families. On the jable a minor agriculture with biennial or triennial rotations was practised thereafter, in continuous retreat since the mid-twentieth century.

Artisanal fishing remained the community's economic backbone. Transformation came in the 1970s and 1980s: running water and electricity were installed, a network of middlemen —the "comprantes"— appeared, guaranteeing the sale of fish in Lanzarote and displacing the old barter, and some families, after good years of fishing off Africa, invested in apartments, hospitality and local commerce. The creation of the marine reserve around the Chinijo Archipelago later opened a controversial but cooperative dialogue between administration and fishermen: the fishermen's guild of La Graciosa demanded that fishing in the area be reserved for professional artisanal boats based in La Graciosa, Órzola, Caleta de Famara and La Santa, along with compensatory aid for the possible reduction in catches.

Dependence on Lanzarote has always shaped Graciosa's social life. The island was governed through a subordinate local mayoralty dependent on the town of Teguise, the municipality to which it still belongs, and all services of any substance lie on the other side of El Río. The Lanzarote port of Órzola is the almost exclusive link: the boat crossing takes about twenty minutes and is so structural that many islanders keep their vehicle in Órzola, since on the island they rarely need it. Secondary-school students must travel to schools in Lanzarote in a weekly commuting pattern, and much of the working population is employed in fishing or in the service sector of other municipalities.

Demography reflects that history of effort. From 169 inhabitants in 1910 the population rose to 680 in 1960; the following decades brought population loss, drawn by the fishing and tourism development of Arrecife, down to the 480 de facto residents counted in 1990, although in summer the floating population could triple. Today the island has some 700 inhabitants concentrated in Caleta de Sebo, with a mostly adult structure and a youth exodus linked to schooling. Present-day tourism is deliberately restrained: unpaved sandy streets, journeys on foot or by bicycle, fresh fish and untouched beaches within a natural park, far from the model of the large resorts once unsuccessfully planned for Pedro Barba in the days of minister Fraga Iribarne.

The latest milestone is institutional. In 2018 La Graciosa was officially recognised as the eighth inhabited island of the Canary archipelago, after years of advocacy by its inhabitants seeking greater autonomy and representation. Beyond its symbolic value, the declaration brought administrative and economic benefits allowing better management of public resources and services, and turned the small island into a symbol of identity and pride for a community that went, in little more than a century, from carrying water up the cliff to deciding its own future.