Execution of Governor Pedro de Algaba

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1480

Pedro de Algaba, or del Algaba, or Fernández de Algaba, by all these names he has been known, was the first governor of the island of Gran Canaria. He arrived at the Real de Las Palmas at the end of 1478, after being appointed in August of that year by the Catholic Monarchs with the objective of mediating the conflict between the two main leaders of the island's conquest at that time: Juan Rejón, captain and founder of the Real de Las Palmas; and Dean Bermúdez, the religious leader with command in the plaza.

Algaba, upon arrival, sided with Bermúdez’s faction, arresting Rejón and sending him to the Peninsula to be tried there for rebellion and disobedience to his authority. But Rejón must have had very good patrons at court, as he was immediately pardoned and reappeared in Las Palmas in August 1479, further intensifying the problems among the Castilians. This "civil war" among the main leaders of the invading troops clearly affected the slow progress of the island’s conquest. 

Faced with this situation, Algaba, as governor, sent Rejón back to Seville; and upon arrival, Rejón accused his rival of ineffective governance, military negligence, and of wanting to sell the island to the Portuguese. At that time, Castile and Portugal were at war and the ownership of the Canary Islands was not entirely clear, so these complaints had effect and he was authorised again to return to the archipelago with men and arms.

Juan Rejón landed stealthily at the beginning of May 1480 in the port of La Isleta, entering the Real de Las Palmas with the help of his supporters. The next day, by a coup de main, he arrested his rivals (Algaba and Bermúdez) as they left a mass held in the hermitage of Santa Ana, today San Antonio Abad, and then initiated proceedings against the two, accusing them of high treason. Bermúdez was sentenced to exile and Algaba condemned to death, being beheaded at the end of May or beginning of June 1480 in the same square where he had been captured.

Upon learning of these events, the monarchs sent a new governor, Pedro de Vera, a person of great determination and broad powers. After his arrival in Las Palmas in August 1480, the new governor arrested and sent Rejón to the Peninsula. From that moment, Pedro de Vera, as the supreme leader, devoted himself fully to the conquest of the island, which had been so delayed by personal quarrels; a challenge he managed to complete, after great efforts, in 1483. 

Rejón, for his part, was surprisingly pardoned again. Not only that, but he was now ordered to return to the Canaries with the mission of undertaking the conquest of the islands of La Palma and Tenerife. When he arrived at the port of Las Isletas intending to resupply for his new mission, Pedro de Vera did not allow him to disembark. Faced with rejection, Rejón set course for La Palma but, after a terrible storm, landed on the coasts of Hermigua, in La Gomera. It was May 1481. Here he was very badly received by the lord of the island, Hernán Peraza the Younger, son of Diego de Herrera, with whom Rejón had already fallen out years before in Lanzarote. Peraza sent a group of men intending to capture him and bring him before him; this provoked a skirmish in which Rejón was killed, pierced by a lance. Thus ended the days of the first conqueror of Gran Canaria and founder of the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

28.10167, -15.413915