Dehesa of Tamaraceite

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: S. XVI

Agriculture was the determining element of the economic development of the city of Las Palmas in its early years of existence. From very early on the municipal administration took special care in the production of foodstuffs to supply a nascent population, so lands on the outskirts of the city were dedicated especially to the cultivation of cereals for internal consumption.

Such was the case of the fields of the dehesa of Tamaraceite, an ancient area of aboriginal settlement whose original toponym Atamarazait meant "pass between palm trees". Here, on these lands after the Conquest wheat, barley and rye were planted, fundamental products for the subsistence of the population of the urban nucleus of Las Palmas. 

Tamaraceite thus became a kind of "bread land" worked by farmers, owners or tenants, who with the participation of agricultural labour (day labourers) and helped by animals and tools, made possible the tasks proper to ploughing, fallowing, sowing and harvesting the cereal crop that was then destined for markets and mills for the consumption of the population.

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