The Convent of Santa Clara

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces

The San Bernardino de Siena nuns' monastery was blessed in 1664. Along with the San Agustín monastery, it was the last of the six convents the city had. It occupied a large building, and stood opposite the convent of San Francisco. It had three façades, overlooking the square of the same name as well as the streets of Santa Clara and Los Remedios. Its church had an ornate stone doorway. The long high walls of the monastery ran along calle Santa Clara, as well as part of Los Remedios. It had four large cloisters, with traditional wooden galleries, protected by a tile roof. One of its sections was topped by a split arched window, elevated balcony or viewpoint, all closed off by latticework. It provided accommodation for fifty nuns.

In general, all the convents in Las Palmas followed a traditional architectural pattern, under a genre called popular architecture, featuring a combination of stone, wood and tiles. Its main doors and temple doors reflected artistic elements in their stone carvings. The interior featured beautiful patios surrounded by wood-carved galleries, similar to those we can see today at the Claustro de los Naranjos and at one of the courtyards in the former Colegio de la Compañía. This monastical architectural genre is shared by other towns on the islands, such as La Laguna, Garachico, Santa Cruz de La Palma and many other Latin American cities.

The convent of Santa Clara suffered a fire in 1719, but was quickly rebuilt, with new cloisters, cells, church and vestry, along with an infirmary, grain store and other facilities. A new alterpiece was carved for the church at this time, with religious statues that were made in workshops in Seville: in the central niche there is a statue of Our Lady of La Concepción; on the Evangelist side the statue of San Bernardino de Siena, the subject of the convent's worship, while on the Epistle side was Santa Clara. When it was being rebuilt, along the eastern side an alley opened up as far as calle Malteses (now the new calle del Pilar del Perro), leaving the monastery exempt on its four façades. The only print we know of this convent, apart from the one featured in the Castillo plan, is the one on the side of one of its façade, as appears in the plan by Pereira Pacheco (1833), showing its doorway and mullioned window viewpoint. The Santa Clara convent was expropriated and sadly demolished in 1840, while its land was occupied over the following years by the Alameda and the Cairasco Theatre.

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