History of La Palma

Before the arrival of Europeans, the inhabitants of La Palma knew their island as Benahoare, a word in their language meaning "my homeland" or "my land". It was a pastoral society adapted to a rugged, elevated territory, with forests on the summits and pastures on the slopes. The islanders did not grow wheat or barley: their staple foods were fern roots, the grain of the amagante, goat and sheep meat, milk and, occasionally, pork. Each lordship had a place of worship made of a pyramid-shaped pile of stones, except Aceró, whose devotion centred on a high crag between the sources of two waters. The island also produced wine, honey, wax, pitch, dragon's blood and the famous cheeses made from mixed sheep and goat milk, as well as thick hides known as badanas.

The island's political organization was divided into twelve lordships or captaincies, which chroniclers compared to African forms of government. Each territory had its own captain and its pastures were delimited: cattle from one district could not enter another without penalty. From Tazacorte and the Llanos —ancient Adirane— to the impenetrable Caldera de Taburiente, called Aceró, the lordships followed one another across the whole island. Among their leaders, Mayantigo or Aganeye in Adirane, Chedey in Tijuya, Jugiero and Garehagua in Tigalale and Mazo, and Atogmatoma, lord of an extensive western territory, stood out; Atogmatoma even came to blows with his nephew Tanausu, the defender of Aceró. This last lordship, almost impregnable because of its cliffs and cauldron-like form, would be the last to fall.

La Palma soon appeared on European maps, reflecting its role in the Atlantic rediscovery of the Late Middle Ages. In the Majorcan portolan of Angelino Dulcert, dated 1339, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Lobos were represented for the first time, and shortly afterwards the island began to appear in world maps and nautical charts such as the Catalan Atlas of the Cresques family, the globe of Martin Behaim, and the printed works of Martin Waldseemüller and Sebastián Caboto. This cartographic visibility anticipated Castilian interest in completing the conquest of the archipelago. Before Alonso Fernández de Lugo's expedition, other attempts had failed: the most notable was Guillén Peraza's assault on the coast of Tinihuya, where the palmeros under Captain Ehedey repelled the Christians and killed more than two hundred of them, including Peraza himself.

The definitive enterprise fell to Alonso Fernández de Lugo, to whom the Catholic Monarchs granted the rights to annex La Palma. According to the chronicles, he reached the coast of Tazacorte on 29 September, the feast of Saint Michael the Archangel, and there established his Real, building a chapel dedicated to the saint. From that point he travelled through the island, winning over the lordships of Adirane, Tijuya, Tamanca and others with promises and kindness, while in Tigalale and Mazo he had to resort to arms. Resistance culminated in the Caldera de Taburiente, where Tanausu entrenched himself with his warriors. Lugo, seeing that the place could not be taken by force, sent Juan de Palma as an adalid to negotiate with the chieftain. Tanausu agreed to meet at the fountain of El Pino, but the Castilian captain prepared an ambush and took him prisoner on 3 May, the feast of the Holy Cross, after a brief skirmish. With his capture the whole island was conquered, in a campaign that lasted about seven months. Tanausu, humiliated and sent as a captive to Spain, let himself die by refusing food, a gesture that chroniclers considered common among the palmeros.

After the conquest, the island was incorporated into the Crown of Castile and the distribution of lands began, together with the establishment of an export-oriented colonial economy. Sugar was the first major product: sugar mills driven by water from the Caldera were installed in the ravines of La Palma, and Guanche, Black and Morisco enslaved people worked on the new plantations. Chronicles note that Lugo's creditors ended up receiving sugar instead of indigenous captives, since the adelantado used the cane harvest to settle his debts. Alongside sugar, wine acquired notable importance: palmero wines, valued for their dryness and resistance during transport, were shipped to the Indies. The island also exported pitch, wax, honey and hides, articulating a trade that linked the port of Santa Cruz with Atlantic circuits.

The recent history of La Palma cannot be separated from its volcanic vocation. It is the island in the archipelago with the most recorded historical eruptions, all concentrated in the southern half until the twentieth century. In 1585, the Tahuya volcano was preceded by a swelling of the ground that created the Roques de Jedey; later the Martín or Tigalate erupted in 1646, San Antonio in 1677, El Charco in 1712, and the San Juan, Mambroque and Hoyo Negro volcanoes in 1949. The last eruption before the twenty-first century was that of Teneguía in 1971, with six emission vents and a single death from gas intoxication.

The contemporary context was marked by the eruption of Cumbre Vieja in 2021. According to the Instituto Geográfico Nacional, seismic and deformation activity was recorded from 11 September, and the eruption began on 19 September at 14:10 UTC in the Cabeza de Vaca area, in the municipality of El Paso. The Plan de Emergencias Volcánicas de Canarias declared the eruption over on 13 December 2021 at 22:21 UTC, after 85 days and 8 hours of activity. On 31 January 2022 the volcanic traffic light was changed from red to yellow, returning emergency management to the Cabildo. This episode updates a millennial history in which land, sea and human effort have shaped one of the most singular islands in the Atlantic.