The Cairasco Theatre

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces · Year: 1848 · Authors: Santiago Barry, Esteban de la Torre

In 1840, piano teacher and music chapel director at the cathedral of Santa Ana, Benito Lentini, sent out a circular to the joy of the powerful classes and illustrious circles in the city with the news of the building of a show and theatre hall.

The theatre was set in the grounds of the expropriated convent of Santa Clara (today the site of the Gabinete Literario building). Construction starting according to plans by Santiago Barry in 1845, with master Esteban de la Torre supervising the works, which were to finish three years later. It premiered with a comedy show by Zorrilla called 'Cada cual con su razón', starring the drama section of the Gabinete Literario; proceeds of this function went to the founding of San Agustín college.

The building was totally detached, with a small square in front of it, in the middle of which the monument to poet Cairasco de Figueroa was placed, in 1876, symmetrically in line with the theatre façade. The interior was a simple square shape with a capacity for 500 "jostling" spectators... This structure would differ from later theatre designs.

The main façade featured a protruding doorway with columns holding up a ballustrade terrace, the point at which the second section of the building opened up to the exterior via three large hollows. This central section was finished off with two splines, making up a cornice, a windowed gallery in perfect symmetry with the lower hollows and a frontispiece with an oculus in its tympanum as the top for the whole structure. The whole thing was surrounded by two side pavillions joined to the central section by two pilasters. 

28.103029, -15.416538