Camino de La Costa

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: S. XIX

Curiously, the route of this path was always, despite its name, very far from the sea.

La Costa was a sector of Santa Cruz that in the mid-19th century was undeveloped on the southern outskirts of the city. Its boundary was imprecise, but we can say it was located to the right of the Santos ravine, covering an inland area situated above El Cabo. It was a large sector occupied by extensive agricultural estates initially dedicated to the cultivation of cochineal and later to banana growing. The banana plantations gave way, during the second half of the 20th century, to a construction boom that resulted in the urbanisation of the upper part of the La Salle neighbourhood and the Tomé Cano area. 

A century before this happened, the agricultural owners of these lands began to carry out small hydraulic works on the edge of the Santos ravine to take advantage of the waters running through its bed in the winter months and channel them towards their crops; as well as ensuring access to their estates from the urban centre by extending the Rambla from what was then known as Cuatro Caminos, which later became Plaza de la Paz.

In 1870 a new bridge was built, the current one of the Asuncionistas, and it was used to condition the new stretch from there, already under the name Camino de La Costa. 

Today this path has become, over the years, the section of Rambla known as Avenida Reyes Católicos and is essential for vehicular traffic entering and leaving the capital, although at the time it was nothing more than a path between large estates.

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