Herrería Street

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: S. XIV

In this old and sloping street of the Vegueta neighbourhood, from the beginning, artisans, cartwrights and iron forgers with their workshops and forges were located, hence the name of the street. Here, too, in the fourth decade of the 16th century, the first goldsmiths of the Canary Islands settled.

Goldsmithing was an activity that owed its boom to the great demand for silverware pieces for Catholic liturgy and, to a lesser extent, to the distinction of the wealthier families. The material, both gold and silver, was always imported, especially from America, arriving through the intense commercial contact that always existed with the Canary Islands. Since 1531, the ordinances of Gran Canaria established specific regulations governing the goldsmiths' trade. In that year, it is known that there were two people in Las Palmas dedicated to silversmithing, jewellery and filigree: one surnamed Carmona, and another whose full name was Damián Lucena. They were the first goldsmiths settled in the Canary Islands of whom we have news.

Perhaps the most outstanding silversmiths of the second half of the 16th century in Las Palmas were the Canarians Francisco de Soto (active roughly between 1557 and 1570) and his son-in-law Gonzalo Hernández Freire (active from 1567 to 1590), both established in Herrería Street. From their workshops came genuine works of art, such as the processional cross made in 1563 for the parish of Realejo Bajo in Tenerife, or the magnificent pieces made in 1571 for the San Francisco convent in Las Palmas. They also produced various commissions for oratories and chapels of private houses of wealthy merchants of the city, as well as for different parishes on the island such as those of Arucas and Gáldar. The models taken to make the pieces were inspired by imported monstrances, chalices and processional crosses, although gradually the Canary Islands' works acquired their own characteristics, always framed within the predominant styles of each period (Gothic, Renaissance, Plateresque, Baroque, etc.)

Herrería Street, also called "Virgen de las Angustias" because an image of this Virgin was found in a hallway of a house on the street, ended next to the Guiniguada ravine in what was known as the La Cruz Verde small square, a site now occupied by the Avellaneda building where the Guiniguada theatre is located.

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