To whom does Lanzarote Belong
"Set apart by Jupiter from the rest of the world, so that they would become a shelter for virtuous men."
(Horace, Ode 16, Book V).
Origins apart, since the early 15th Century the Canaries have been populated by Spaniards.
Despite the efforts of a small independence movement in the islands, Canarians feel Spanish first and foremost. Indeed, the 1,000 kilometres of ocean separating the islands and Spain have proved to be a direct link with Europe rather than a dividing line.
Lanzarote is, in fact, much more accessible than many of the remote parts of mainland Spain. It would take a European holidaymaker much longer to reach the Don Quixote region of La Mancha in central Spain or Extremedura on the Portuguese border than it would to get to Arrecife, Lanzarotes capital.
The Canaries docks and airports provide well established links with La Peninsula and the continent of Europe much better links, in fact, than those with nearby Africa. In terms of outlook and trade, with the possible exception of fishing, the Canaries have always turned to Europe in preference to the Dark Continent.
For centuries, the Canaries have been exporting sugar, wine, cochineal, salt, bananas, onions, tomatoes and tropical and semi-tropical fruits to Europe.
Now much of the traffic comes the other way in the form of European tourists enjoying the fruits of their northern labours with holidays in the sun.
Talk of any such "Canarian identity" has validity only in a Spanish context, its significance comparable to the Galician, Asturian, Andalusian or Castilian "mentality". (In reality, only two of Spains regions have any significant claim to uniqueness namely, Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the two entirely different languages of Catalan and Basque are spoken.
A Canarian, despite his heavy accent would be understood all over Spain a Basque would be understood nowhere but the Basque Country.
As well as the European links of Espana Tropical, the Canary Islands are also part of an even bigger cultural community, the Hispano--American society of Spanish--speaking people on both sides of the Atlantic. Thousands of Canarians emigrated to Latin America, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s, looking for work.
In Venezuela and Uruguay the Canarian influence was already strong towards the end of last century.
But it was 500 years ago when Christopher Columbus discovered that the world was round when his ship failed to fall off the edge after it had passed El Hierro, the most westerly of the Canary Islands. Spains Catholic Kings (Reyes Catolicos) of Ferdinand and Isabella soon realised the fat pickings to be made in the Americas, and the Canaries subsequently became a strategic stop--over in the transatlantic crossings during the Golden Age of Spain in the 16th Century.
The role of the islands as a bridge between the Old and the New Worlds was to carry on down the centuries. Huge numbers of Canarians who emigrated to South America, stayed on, although many later returned to their island homes.
Bananas grown on Tenerife provided the stock for Caribbean plantations. In accent, music and customs, the Canaries fall mid--way between Spain and South America. And practically every Canarian has friends or family with South American connections.
Canarian newspapers cover items of news in Central and South America with great interest acknowledging the links between the two areas.
But it was to mainland Spain and Europe where the Canaries would always turn. The Canarian economic model developed alongside that of Europe, adapting to the continents changing needs and desires.
The Canarian sugar industry failed when the West Indies produced a cheaper product on a much larger scale. Canarian wines, once the delight of European courts and also the favoured quaff of Shakespeares Falstaff were replaced by sherries Malaga and Port wines. Even cochineal, used for dyeing, is being replaced by synthetic products.
But the Canaries have always responded in a positive way to such changes, exemplified best in the flowering of tourism in the islands. Again, here Lanzarote may consider itself to be the most fortunate of the islands due to local authority controls on the pace and style of development. Youll see no billboard advertising, a remarkable and welcomed lack of high rise buildings (apart from Arrecifes Gran Hotel) and a continuity of traditional architecture. Local politicians and public figures on the island have been highly conscious of the mistakes made in the some of the rushed developments of Spains costas and have subsequently kept a watchful eye on construction. Tourism came late to Lanzarote, taking off in the early 1970s, but only experiencing a boom in the mid--1980s. Lessons learned from the mainland could be put into practice with the island now becoming a textbook example of tourism planning.
The Canaries came out well from Spains Adhesion Agreement with the European Economic Community in January 1986. The islands had achieved the "best of both worlds", said leading local politicians, after concessions and special privileges were awarded to the islands.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Canary Islands, as part of Spain, became members of the EEC, but were not included in the communitys controversial Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). They were subject to neither Value Added Tax (VAT) nor incorporated in the communitys customs tariffs. The islands produce may be exported to the community under rules established by the Adhesion Agreement and the exports maintain their tax--exempt status.
Who runs the island
Within Spains constitutional monarchy, there are a number of partially self--governing or "autonomous" provincial governments. The Canary Islands have such an autonomous government with the seat of local power based in both Las Palmas on Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz on Tenerife.
As well as the provincial government, each of the seven major islands in the Canaries has its own island government, known locally as the Cabildo. The Lanzarote Cabildo, for example, is responsible for those areas not covered by either the provincial government nor the local town or district councils, the ayuntamientos.
Lanzarote is divided into seven such district councils, each with its own main town and surrounding villages, and each possessing its own unique charm, worth visiting for different reasons.
Origin of the People
The origins of the initial inhabitants of Lanzarote and the rest of the Canary Islands, the Guanches, remains something of a mystery. Some historians believe the Guanches, a cave-dwelling Cromagnon race, were of Egyptian origin because of the similarity in their methods of mummifying corpses. Others favour the more romantic view that the Guanches were indigenous, the remnant race of the lost continent of Atlantis.
Yet others believe a Scandinavian or Carthaginian origin, due to the seafaring nature of those people. No charter flights existed in those days so the original inhabitants must have come by sea, although there is scant evidence on how they actually arrived at the islands. Theres certainly a striking similarity between the physical characteristics of many modern Canarians and their possible distant cousins of yesteryear, the Vikings.
Many Lanzaroteans are tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed, looking nothing like their short, dark fellow countrymen on mainland Spain (locally known as La Peninsula). But racial mixing since the Spanish Conquest of the islands has provided a rich paella of peoples now living in the all of the seven Canary Islands.
What seems most likely of all the emerging theories is that the Guanches came originally from north Africa, from the Berber people who may well have had Scandinavian ancestry. But more of the Guanches later. At this stage, suffice it to say that well before Spains domination of the Canaries, there was already a strong connection between the Fortunate Islands and Europe. Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome also bear witness to sea voyages from the Mediterranean to these islands...
From the fall of the Roman Empire until the Spanish conquest of the Canaries in the 15th century, little was known about the islands and their people. There were, however, a few early expeditions, some by Arab explorers, others by Europeans. In fact, an Arab enclave had been established on Gran Canaria as early as 1,000 AD. Often the purpose of these voyages was to explore the "Seven Seas" but many expeditions ended up in the Canaries by accident, having lost their way off the coast of western Africa.
One of these early expeditions may well have given rise to the name of Lanzarote. A Genoese sailor called Lancelotto landed on the island in 1312 and many historians believe the islands name originated from this source. Others say the name derived from the conquering Norman knight, Juan Bethencourt who triumphantly broke his lance into pieces on arriving on Lanzarote and declared "Lanza rota" (broken lance). But the story is highly unlikely, since Bethencourt would have spoken old Norman French, and not modern Castilian Spanish.
Perhaps the most likely origin comes from a French nobleman, by the name of Lancelot who came to Lanzarote in one of Bethencourts expeditions. An important pre--conquest expedition was ordered by King Alfonso IV of Portugal in 1341. His sailors led by the Italian mariner Angiolino del Tegghia de Corbizz, sailed to the Canaries and counted up to 13 islands in the archipelago -- the seven major islands and six minor islands of the Canaries Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Palma, Gomera, Hierro, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, representing the former, and Lobos, Roque del Este, Roque del Oeste, La Graciosa, Montana Clara and Alegranza, the latter.
The explorers, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish were greeted graciously by the Guanche inhabitants. And it was this expedition which was to open vast new horizons for further European voyages. We owe the first reasonably accurate account of the location -- and, indeed, the verifiable existence -- of the Canary Islands to this voyage. The demystification of the Fortunate Islands had begun. Also, sadly, had the plundering. The years leading up to the Conquest were marked by a series of piratical raids on the islands. In search of riches and glory, buccaneers from Spain and Portugal sailed to the Canaries, conducting lightning attacks on the islands. The Cueva de los Verdes, a huge undergound volcanic cave in the north of Lanzarote came in very useful as a hiding place for the islanders during these raids.
During the 1390s a group of ship owners from Andalusia in the south of Spain, and Vizcaya and Guipuzcoa in the north, organised a particularly destructive expedition when Lanzarote was plundered. The pirates avoided Tenerife, however, since they had heard hair--raising tales of the savagery of the inhabitants of the larger island. In 1393, the Spanish nobleman Almonaster landed on Lanzarote. He returned to the Spanish court of Henry III of Castile with a number of Guanche natives and agricultural products taken from the island.
One courtier, eager for fame and fortune was particularly impressed by Almonasters expedition. And it didnt take long for the ambitious Norman nobleman, Juan Bethencourt, to resolve to conquer the Canary Islands. Bethencourt immediately started planning the conquest. He persuaded two influential Franciscan monks, Pedro Bontier and Juan Le Verrier to be his chaplains and also to act as the expeditions chroniclers. He would also take along two baptised Canarian natives, Alfonso and Isabel, who would come in useful as his interpreters.
Bethencourts ship with some 80 men set sail from La Rochelle on the west coast of France on May 1, 1402 heading south. After calling at Vivero and La Coruna, the expedition reached Cadiz in the south west corner of Spain and docked there for some weeks, during which time 26 men deserted.Undeterred by the desertions and assisted by his lieutenant, the knight Gadifer de la Salle, Bethencourt set sail for the Fortunate Islands. Within eight days of leaving Cadiz, the desert islands of Alegranza, Montana Clara and La Graciosa to the north of Lanzarote came into his view.And as the ship approached, an even bigger coastline appeared on the horizon It was Lanzarote.Bethencourt swiftly began planning a landing on the north of the island, but his first attempt ended in failure due to stormy weather and the rocky coastline. He decided to use the tiny uninhabited island of Alegranza as a base from which to launch his attack on the bigger neighbour. Bethencourt held a "council of war" with his 53 men and resolved to sail to Lanzarote as soon as possible.But the following day his council of war was to prove superfluous. On landing, Bethencourt and his men were welcomed by the islanders, offered gifts and treated not at all like conquering enemies, but good friends. In the previous years Lanzarote had suffered scores of piratical raids and the inhabitants saw in Bethencourt a great chance of protection. One of the islanders who was quite clearly the local king -- he was wearing a primitive crown made of goat-skin and shells -- pleaded with Bethencourt to protect them from the plunderers. In return, the king promised friendship and his submission to Bethencourt and the King of Spain "as friend, not as subject". During this meeting, the expeditions chroniclers were impressed by the islanders ability to make themselves understood even though they spoke such an entirely different language.
The Norman was delighted with the peaceful reception and the avoidance of bloodshed. And one of his first "security jobs" for the island was the building of the fortress of Rubicon in the south of Lanzarote, between Playa Blanca and Papagayo. Bethencourt appointed Berthin de Berneval as its commander.Everything was going well until Bethencourt decided to set sail for the nearby island of Fuerteventura. His reconnaissance trip proved a disaster. There were food shortages and rumours of mutiny. Bethencourt returned to Lanzarote only to discover that many of his men had already mutinied there. The only thing to be done was to return to Spain and replenish stocks and men as soon as possible. He appointed his second-in-command, Gadifer de la Salle, governor of Lanzarote, in his absence. On his return to Spain, Bethencourt received a heros welcome. King Henry bestowed the government of the islands to Bethencourt, gave him the right to his own coinage, one fifth of the exports and furnished the Norman with 20,000 maravedis to pay for a second expedition. A heavily--armed and well--manned ship was immediately dispatched to Lanzarote to help Gadifer. While Bethencourt was in Spain a power struggle had broken out on the island between his officers, Berthin and Gadifer. Guanche leaders were drawn into the conflict and scores of Spaniards and islanders died in what was to become a bloodbath of the first few months of Bethencourts absence. Treason and treachery were rife among both the conquistadores and the Canarians.It was only with the return of Bethencourt that peace was restored to the troubled island. In order to quell further uprising, Bethencourt captured the local king of Lanzarote, Guardafia, and ten of his followers. And on February 27, 1404, according to Bethencourts chroniclers, the people of Lanzarote surrendered.The Franciscan Le Verrier baptised Guadarfia as Luis, and soon after, all the islanders followed suit and were initiated into the Catholic faith. The island of Lanzarote, the first of the Canary Islands, had now come under the direct control of Spain with Bethencourt as governor. By May 1405 the natives of Lanzarote were greeting Bethencourt as their "king". Returning once again from Spain, the Norman lord was welcomed to a "fanfare of trumpets, bugles and other musical instruments". His next move was to be the conquest of Fuerteventura which Bethencourt had accomplished by January 18, 1408 after some fierce resistance by the war-like natives there. But it was to take almost a century before resistance to the Spanish conquest was quelled on the rest of the islands.
Atlantis: The Lost Continent
The idea that the Canaries are the remnants of the lost continent of Atlantis has been fervently supported and equally fervently attacked over the centuries. The arguments and depth of conviction over the possible existence of the mysterious submerged continent have led to an estimated 25,000 volumes written on the subject.
Plato was convinced that Atlantis was no figment of the imagination. Aristotle, however, reckoned Plato himself had invented it. "Plato alone made Atlantis emerge from the waves," wrote Aristotle, "and then he submerged it again."
But references to Atlantis were made much earlier than the time of the two Greek philosophers. It seems the Ancient Egyptians knew of the existence of a splendid civilisation, inhabiting a continent in the middle of the ocean. One of Plato's disciples, Crantor, went to Egypt in an attempt to verify his master's narratives. Once there, Egyptian priests seemed to prove what Plato had said, showing Crantor ancient inscriptions describing the history of the people of Atlantis. (Plato had always claimed his accounts were based on Egyptian inscriptions and papyri).
In two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias, Plato described both the geography and the people of Atíantis.
"Atlantis stretched beyond the Pillars of Hercules and was larger than Libya and Africa together. The peoples who inhabited it came from the union between Poseidon and the mortal Cuto. The King who lived in a sumptuous palace adorned with golden statues and protected by alternate rings of water and earth, distributed the continent evenly among his ten sons. The central island was for his eldest son, although all were Fortunate Islands, enriched by extraordinary fruits and blessed by the Sun, with úvers and inexhaustible mines of precious metals." (Timaeus).
"Atlantis stretched beyond the Pillars of Hercules and was larger than Libya and Africa together. The peoples who inhabited it came from the union between Poseidon and the mortal Cuto. The King who lived in a sumptuous palace adorned with golden statues and protected by alternate rings of water and earth, distributed the continent evenly among his ten sons. The central island was for his eldest son, although all were Fortunate Islands, enriched by extraordinary fruits and blessed by the Sun, with úvers
and inexhaustible mines of precious metals." (Timaeus).
Plato writes in the same work that Solon was told by an Egyptian priest that travellers could go from the (central) island to the other islands, and from them they could "cross to that continent which stood on the other side of the sea". The priest added that "in just one day and night", the island of Atlantis was destroyed, covered by sea and disappeared. "This is why, even today, that ocean is difficult to sail and remains unexplored; the submerged island is a danger to seamen."
In Critias Plato gives a fuller narrative:
"The on!y survivors were those who dwelt on the mountains who did not know how to write. They, and their descendants for many generations lacked ah the usual comforts and had to devote ah their energies and intelligence to satisfying their physical needs. Thus, it is not surprising that they forgot what had happened in ancient times. This, moreover, explains why only the names of our distant ancestors have reached us, while their deeds have been forgotten."
According to Plato, Atlantis was finally destroyed 12,000 years ago, as a punishment for man's wickedness. The inhabitants of Atlantis had 'fallen prey to the worst vices". Once an immensely prosperous people, they had lost divine inspiration through "practising the grossest indecencies" and had become "utterly vile, filled with boundIess greed and drunk with power." Zeus, said Plato, would teach them a lesson.
"The King of the Heavens, Zeus, reo Used how evil this breed of men had become, they who had been so excellent at first. So he desired to punish them and thus force them to reflection and induce them to mend their ways." (Critias).
So had Zeus wrecked Atlantis, in much the same way as God had caused the Great Flood? Mythology apart, how could Atlantis have really been sunk? The priest in Timaeus told Solon: "Sometimes those bodies revolving in space around the earth, divert from their usual course. Thus, at wide intervals in time, everything on earth is destroyed by fire.. .At other times, the gods purify the earth by means of water, flooding it."
This early astronomical assertion was to find validity in the 2Oth century. The Austrian astronomer Horbiger, who died in 1931, used the central idea to explain the sinking of Atiantis. He believed the continent was destroyed by the appearance of the Moon around 12,000 years ago, causing cataclysmic changes, tremendous volcanic activity and a rising of the level of tropical waters which ultimately led to the submergence of Atlantis.
Horbiger believed that when the Moon - there had been other, earlier and smaller satellites -entered the Earth's orbit, it exerted a powerful attractive force on the seas, flooding Atlantis and other lands in the southern hemisphere.
Aristotle, as noted, thought little of Plato's ideas on Atlantis. He believed them to be little more than purely poetic imaginings, although, on close inspection, there are sorne contradictions even in Aristotle's comments on the lost continent. In a passage in the Constitution of the Tegaeians, he wrote that the natives of Arcadia had based an ancient claim to their land on the belief that they came from Atíantis and had inhabited their country "even before there had been a Moon in the heavens".
However, Aristotle's general scoffing at the idea of Atlantis gained ground with later Greek and Roman writers who similarly doubted the theory. During the Middle Ages, Aristotle's influence remained strong and Atlantis was not even considered a serious subject for study. It was not until the Renaissance, with a rediscovery of the works of Plato, that an interest in Atlantis resurfaced.
By the latter half of the 18th century, the French astronomer Sylvin Bailly had fully revived the dormant theory. In 1778 he published his Ietters on Atiantis, written to Voltaire, who seemed to give his tacit support to the theories. Bailly believed a highly civilised nation had once existed which reached maturity and disappeared even before all known history had appeared, and that the inhabitants of Atlantis had exerted an influence on subsequent cultures.
More than a century later, the American writer, Ignatius Donnelly claimed that the Canaries, along with Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde Islands were the remaining peaks of the mountains of Atlantis. He believed the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mexico were colonies established by the earlier peoples of Atlantis, basing his assertion on the similarity between the cultures. Donnelly believed Atlantis had been the point of departure of known civilisation; the people of the lost continent, the fathers of the modern world.
"To them, we owe all that is basic in our ideas about life and the world. They were the first civilising force, the first sailors, the first tradesmen, the first colonisers and colonists on earth. Their civilisation was already oid when that of Egypt was young." (The Antediluvian World, 1882).
Donnelly believed that the gods, goddesses and heroes worshipped by the Greeks, Phoenicians, Hindus and Scandinavians were none other than the kings, queens and heroes of Atlantis. The feats and deeds ascribed to thern by mythology were, according to Donnelly, but vague memories of actual prehistoric events.
Following the terrible catastrophe of the "sinking" of Atlantis, a few men managed to survive, saving thernselves in boats or rafts. They carried news of the disaster to people settled along both eastern and western shores of the ocean, where the catastrophe has been passed down through the millenia as "The Flood".
The possible existence of the lost continent of Atlantis has fired the imagination of writers, historians, geologists and archaeologists down the centuries.
Rent A Luxury Villa or a Charter Luxury Motor Yacht in Puerto Calero Lanzarote Places of Interest
Lanzarote Property For Sale
We also recommend: Lanzarote villas || Premier holidays || Iglu Holidays
© 2005 Part of Classic Enterprises UK ltd.
Personally Yours car registrations and private number plates, over 35 million available from only £199, all on certificate issued by Swansea.
