Santa Isabel Redoubt

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: 1741 · Authors: Antonio Riviere, Francisco de La Pierre

In this same location, closing the city wall to the south, in the sector near the coastline, there was a military installation known as the Cristo battery since the 16th century. It was ordered to be built by Governor Pedro Rodríguez de Herrera with the clear objective of defending the southern flank of Las Palmas. 

By the 18th century, this old construction was already in ruins, so in 1741 the military engineers Antonio Riviere and Francisco de la Pierre designed a new military enclave for the same place, which was called the Santa Isabel Redoubt.  

The new proposed installation based its irregular plan on the rocky coast itself. The building had an esplanade surrounded by a wall just over half a metre high, which sheltered a single-storey building with three openings (door and two windows) and capacity to house four to eight men. On the lower floor, a storeroom guarded the gunpowder intended for the three cannons with which it was equipped. It also had a covered path giving access to the beach, and another short service path that joined the main one leading to the city.

The Santa Isabel fort was disarmed on 12 May 1885. Almost four decades later, in 1921, the rector of the San Ignacio de Loyola school of the Jesuit religious order submitted a request to acquire what remained of the redoubt, with the intention of incorporating it into one of the corners of the educational centre's plot.

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