Mountain Artillery Barracks

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: 1901

Due to the war between Spain and the United States of America in 1898, there was genuine concern in the Canary Islands upon learning that the American naval secret services intended to support an invasion of the Archipelago. In 1901, the Spanish authorities, as a protective measure against a possible assault on the Port of La Luz, decided to expropriate from the Bravo de Laguna family a huge estate they owned in La Isleta to allocate it for military purposes.

There, using part of the manor house of the estate itself, a military enclosure was established that began to be called the Mountain Artillery Barracks. It was an extensive construction that came to occupy nearly 2,500 square metres of surface area.

Currently, a large part of the surface of La Isleta remains a military zone. Here are various barracks, powder magazines, machine gun nests, casemates, shooting and manoeuvre ranges, fortifications and artillery batteries, as well as a military prison. 

In recent years, due to the restructuring of the Armed Forces, part of the facilities have been underused or are disused, which is favouring negotiations between the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria City Council and the Ministry of Defence to transfer ownership and use of the land to the city.

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