World War II Casemates

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1939-1945

The victors of the civil war built them in the early forties in case Spain entered the global conflict alongside the Axis powers, which would have exposed the Canary Islands to an Allied invasion attempt, primarily targeting Las Palmas due to the capacity of the Port of La Luz to accommodate large ships. Fortunately, none of this, which was close to happening, occurred, and today these fortifications, those not demolished, are scattered throughout the city as markers of the limbo. One of these bunkers, cut through by the construction of a road, is located in La Minilla, on the wasteland above the old Estadio Insular. Another overlooks Avenida Primero de Mayo from the San Nicolás cliff. There are a few more in El Confital, in the La Isleta area controlled by the Army, and in the Mesas de San Juan, to which another hidden on a ledge of the Don Zoilo ravine, beneath the old military pavilions of Cuatro Caños, must be added; it offers an impressive panoramic view of the Bay of La Luz.

Decommissioned by the Army – except for those within the military precinct of La Isleta – the city ignores these monoliths, covered in human waste and sometimes hidden by the city's own growth, just as the monoliths seem to ignore the city, withdrawn into themselves. However, some scholars have drawn attention to their value. Thus, Juan José Díaz Benítez, professor in the Department of Historical Sciences at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and secretary of the Aula Sociedad-Ejército (Society-Army Classroom) of the academic centre, whose website offers maps and other information about these bunkers and other fortifications built in Gran Canaria during the conflict that led the world to the abyss between 1939 and 1945.

But Díaz Benítez is also the author of an essential book, Canarias indefensa: los proyectos aliados de ocupación de las islas durante la II Guerra Mundial (2008), which includes some pages about these bunkers in Las Palmas and other military constructions in the Archipelago. From his work, written after research in various European archives, we know of the extreme concern of the Germans about the Canary Islands' capacity to withstand an Allied offensive and of a directive from Hitler himself, ordering in 1940 an on-site inspection of the defence status in the Islands. The mission, carried out with the consent and collaboration of the Spanish authorities, was entrusted to a frigate captain named Krauss, who spent several days in December 1940 at sites like these, where today, oblivious to their tremendous historical weight, any resident of Las Palmas might be walking their dog or making love with their partner.

Another scholar of these casemates in Las Palmas, Artemi Alejandro-Medina, an archaeologist expert in conflict archaeology who has conducted fieldwork for an English foundation in theatres of operations such as Verdun, the Ardennes and Normandy, explains that, if adapted and well managed, these bunkers could be a source of wealth for the city. "In Picardy," he points out, "a depressed region in northern France, a tourism industry worth millions of euros has been built around spaces like these." The fact that these blockhouses never saw combat does not diminish their historical significance. "There are several defensive line zones around London that never saw combat and yet form part of visitable routes," he notes.

A possible itinerary could start, for example, at the small machine-gun bunker of Punta Salinas, in El Confital – part of the military complex of La Isleta – near the remains of other sites of high ethnographic interest such as the salt flats and the 19th-century fish-drying facility. The day can be completed with the three casemates of La Punta de El Confital – one of the invasion scenarios contemplated by the British was precisely the Bay of El Confital – in a visit that can also include the Guanche site of La Cueva de Los Canarios and the palaeontological site with shells over a million years old, as well as the memory of the mythical filming in these waters of John Huston's 1954 film Moby Dick.

Another stop on this tour of the bunkers of Las Palmas – those that survive, others like the one on San Cristóbal beach, the Muelle Frutero bunker or the Naval Base bunker were demolished – could be two ledges, two of those voids on which the city is structured: La Minilla and the Barranquillo de Don Zoilo. The first, which was a command position of the Arenales battery, controlled Las Canteras and Las Alcaravaneras beaches, which during the Second World War were free of buildings. Currently, cut in two by the road, it is located beneath the La Minilla Secondary School and in the wasteland on the other side of the road. The Barranquillo de Don Zoilo bunker, which was hierarchically subordinate to the former, can be accessed from Cuatro Caños or from Paseo del Capitán López Orduña.

The cliffs of San Nicolás and San Juan, which, like La Isleta, have become major icons of Las Palmas, although little visited, constitute the third stop on this tour. The small San Nicolás bunker can be viewed from Domingo Guerra del Río street or from the rooftops of some buildings on Avenida Primero de Mayo. The one at Mesas de San Juan is located in a fortified area next to the remains of a late 19th-century barracks, at the upper part of the San Juan neighbourhood. This is made up of two levels, an upper command level and a lower one that housed the rangefinder, the optical device used to measure the accuracy of the defending artillery's fire.

(Text by Mariano de Santa Ana)

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