Calle Mayor de Triana

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

The first documentary reference made to calle Mayor or Real de Triana dates back to 1514, with official mention of the district of Triana being made around that time. It is known that the embryonic buildings that sprang up here were simple and modest, starting out as a kind of nondescript, tiny hamlet. [...]

Yet, along this street and adjacent ones, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, only buildings of a certain quality were erected, turning Triana into a top commercial and trading area. All the chroniclers and historians on the subject coincide in the belief that the name of Triana, given to that humble bunch of properties early on, was done so with the famous medieval district of Triana in Seville in mind. It may even have been down to some modest Andalusian seamen who colonised the area soon after the Spanish Conquest. 

From the moment the horrifying fire attack by Dutch corsair Van der Does in June 1599 swept through the city, rebuilding work on the crippled neighbourhood of Triana, especially along its Calle Mayor, led to great expansion. The street started along the left hand side of the Guiniguada ravine, in rather an irregular fashion due to the widespread anarchical building styles which hardly followed any kind of guidelines at all. For hundreds of years it displayed a kind of pot-belly shape, but was gradually extended as far as the city's northern wall. [...]

As the city spread out, with the construction of the Port of La Luz, Triana became a flourishing trading area, and has traditionally remained as such over the years. 

From 1840, calle de Triana was used as a thoroughfare, initially by animals and private carriages, and then by public transport, firstly horse drawn and then steam traction engines. Finally, from 1910, an electrical line was installed in the 1940s, following a short post war period when the popular Pepa steam tram came into service, which was later replaced by the open topped guagua busses and then petrol and diesel busses.  

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