Terrero in the Guiniguada Ravine

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Memory spaces

At the end of Muro Street there is a pedestrian crossing bordered by four statues. The statues represent the seasons of the year and were located at the corners, until the 1970s, of the Verdugo bridge (known as the Stone bridge). The bridge allowed passage from Triana to Vegueta crossing the Guiniguada ravine, which in 1974 disappeared under the asphalt to allow the construction of the road leading to the centre of the island. To the right of the Stone bridge, in the sands of the almost always dry bed of this ravine, was the Terrero. Canarian wrestling is one of the most typical and deeply rooted sports of the Canary Islands. It is believed that this was one of the recreational-sporting activities practised by the Guanches, the aboriginal peoples who inhabited the islands before the arrival of the Spaniards.

The writer, poet and journalist Isaac Viera highlights the popular character of this sport: "In the past we wrestled among ourselves, almost every day; in estates, on paths, anywhere two young men met, they would stick together like molluscs. There half a dozen 'falls' would take place, with no witnesses other than God, and after 'amorosar' the ribs, as they said, they would clasp hands as a sign of good friends, saying goodbye with phrases of extreme affection".

And this was a sport practised wherever there was a “terrero”, the name given to the surface where wrestling takes place. The first and most popular, within the historic centre of the city, was called the Terrero. It was located on the plain on the left bank of the dry bed of the Guiniguada ravine, at the height of the current Terrero Street. About the preparation of the terrero, in the times when conquerors and Canarians entertained themselves together with the practice of this sport, Juan del Río Ayala tells us: "The practice of wrestling in the Real de Las Palmas reached such a point that the conquerors and the Canarians one day cleared stones and levelled a wide plain on the left bank of the Guiniguada, almost opposite the Real itself, near the slopes of the Risco de San Nicolás, adding sand brought from the dunes of Las Alcaravaneras". The Terrero withstood the passage of time, the land distribution and the expansion of the city for centuries until it finally succumbed beneath the tarmac when the waters of the ravine were channelled and it was covered over for the construction of the road that would connect the city with the towns in the centre of the island in the 1970s.

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