World War II at the Port of La Luz

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

The number of visits by German warships to the Canary Islands was considerable in the 1930s. This coincided, from 1937 onwards, with the idea of the planners of the Kriegsmarine and also the Luftwaffe to have support bases on the north-western coast of Africa and adjacent islands.

On the eve of the start of the Second World War, the port of La Luz was included in the list of Spanish ports, along with El Ferrol, Vigo and Cádiz, that would serve to locate supply ships of fuel and war material for German submarines, within the framework of what was called Operation Morrow. This operation, whose origin and development was strictly German, had the blessings of Franco himself two months after the invasion of Poland began, in the context of that "benevolent neutrality" shown by the Spanish government towards Hitler's Germany.

In total, thirty-one Axis submarines entered Spanish ports between January 1940 and February 1944, ten of which did so in the port of Gran Canaria during the first half of 1941 and in April 1943. [...] The German supply ships that arrived at the port of La Luz were the steamer Corrientes and the tankers Charlotte Schliemann and Gedania . [...] The Spanish authorities not only allowed the resupply of German submarines in the Canaries and the repair of an Italian submarine, but also permitted the monthly supply of fuel oil to Axis ships moored at the outer dock of the port of La Luz, until in 1943 Anglo-American control flatly refused to allow this practice to continue.

The peak of Operation Morrow in the port of Gran Canaria coincided with British plans to occupy some of the Canary Islands, as a possible response to a German occupation of Gibraltar and the consequent harm to British commercial navigation. This hypothetical operation would not have been difficult for the British to carry out, given the disproportion of forces and firepower between the attackers and defenders.

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