Bust of General Gutiérrez

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1999 · Authors: Manuel Bethencourt Santana, Francisco Cid Gesti

This bronze bust on a square column represents the figure of Antonio Gutiérrez (1729-1799), general commander of the Canary Islands, a military man capable of defeating, on 25 July 1797, the troops of the British Horatio Nelson when they tried to invade Santa Cruz. The sculpture is the work of the Canarian artist of Cuban origin Manuel Bethencourt Santana, and is a reproduction of another bust existing in the Museo Militar Regional de Canarias (Regional Military Museum of the Canary Islands), work of the Catalan artist Francisco Cid Gestí.

The monument has been located since May 1999 at the lower part of Imeldo Serís street. It was erected on the initiative of the Tertulia Amigos del 25 de Julio on the occasion of the bicentenary of the death of the military man.

Antonio Gutiérrez de Otero was born in Aranda de Duero, Burgos, in 1729. The first stage of his military career took place in Italy, the second in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, where he took part in the capture of the Sacramento colony, and later he commanded the troops in charge of expelling the English from the Falkland Islands. In 1772 he was in Algiers and in 1782 he took part in the recovery of the island of Menorca for Spain. One year later he participated in an unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar. He was appointed general commander of the Canary Islands, arriving in Tenerife in 1791, where international tensions, first with France and then with England, forced him to take fundamental defensive measures for the defence of the Archipelago. Faced with Nelson's attack on Santa Cruz in the summer of 1797, Gutiérrez acted with technical skill and sound decisions, factors that resulted in the failure of the English fleet, the best in the world at that time, to take the city. For this action, he received the command of the Order of Alcántara, one of the most prestigious of the time. Antonio Gutiérrez died in 1799, aged seventy; he was buried in the church of La Concepción in Santa Cruz.

The bust we see is a half-body carving, in whose face the grimace of his lips stands out, faithfully reflecting the paralysis suffered by the military man in the last years of his life. His head is covered by a wig with curls and his body wears a coat with a high collar and buttoned lapels, as well as a rolled neck cover and a ruffled shirt.

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