Monument to Adargoma

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1989 · Authors: Manolo González

Adargoma was an aboriginal who served as guaire, or in other words, adviser to the guanarteme of Gáldar Tenesor Semidán. His name, meaning "broad shoulders", is linked to some episodes of the conquest. He participated, alongside Doramas, in the Battle of Guiniguada, leading one of the two groups that made up the indigenous forces. Wounded by Juan Rejón and taken prisoner, he was taken to the Peninsula. He returned to the island baptised, in the company of his king, now called Fernando Guanarteme, to whom he remained faithful within his new condition. He therefore took part in the conquests of Tenerife and La Palma.

On 24 June 1989, commemorating the anniversary of the city's founding day, the statue in question was inaugurated.

Adargoma is depicted cut off just below the knees, corresponding to a three-quarter representation. The position of his legs, slightly bent, and the forward placement of one of them give a sense of dynamism, even more accentuated by the twist the body offers in the same direction, pointing with a stick held between his hands. From the waist to the legs, the figure is covered with aboriginal clothing, while the torso is bare, revealing the physical strength that distinguished him and the constitution of his broad shoulders, which earned him his nickname, by interpretation and desire of the artist himself, Manolo González. Besides the stick or pole as a referential symbol of the character's pre-Hispanic nature, on the back of it, over the loincloth, a circular Canarian pintadera with a decoration based on triangles was modelled. The treatment of the face is noteworthy, highly expressive; his oversized eyes reflect anger, as the attitude of a bellicose act, since, after all, Adargoma has been captured at a moment of struggle.

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