Hermitage of Santa Catalina

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Religious architecture

Chronicles and historians note that the devotion to Saint Catherine of Alexandria was introduced to the island by Majorcan missionary expeditions between 1360 and 1390, therefore more than 100 years before the city of Las Palmas was founded. The Majorcans built two hermitages in Gran Canaria: one in Santa Catalina, half a league from the city of Las Palmas, and another in La Aldea de San Nicolás, at the other end of the island of Gran Canaria, placing roughly carved images of Saint Catherine and of Saint Nicholas and Saint Anthony in them.

This first hermitage of Santa Catalina must have been located near the Church of Santa María del Pino, a few metres from where the Castle of Santa Catalina stood, on the current Presidente Alvear street. It was demolished or abandoned some time after its construction, as when Juan Rejón arrived in 1478 it was in ruins.

Interestingly, the Castilians who arrived with Rejón found "in some Canarian houses near Las Isletas, walled up, certain forms of images, two or three they say: but the one brought to Dean Bermúdez was Saint Anthony Abbot, gilded and somewhat moth-eaten, which is now in the parish of Teror".

In 1599 the Dutch ravaged the hermitage and later, in 1613, the second hermitage of Santa Catalina was built, a little to the west of its initial site, opposite the land point called La Matanza.

In the first quarter of the 18th century the third hermitage of Santa Catalina was erected, replacing the previous one, quite far from the site of the first two. It remained until its restoration in 1957, becoming part of the architectural complex of the Pueblo Canario in Ciudad Jardín.

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