House of Domingo Pérez Minik

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Civil architecture

The house where Domingo Pérez Minik, playwright, essayist, scholar, cultural critic and one of the most important Canarian intellectuals of the 20th century, lived most of his life is located at number 7 of the street that began being called Igualdad, then General Goded, later del Perdón, and finally bearing the name of this distinguished intellectual.    

Domingo Pérez Minik (Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1903-1989), whose birth name was Domingo Juan Pérez Hernández, was born on Cruz Verde street in Santa Cruz. He completed his primary studies at the La Salle San Ildefonso school, then pursued his baccalaureate at the Instituto de Canarias in La Laguna. Economic difficulties within his family led him to abandon his intention to study Law. He then began working as a company cashier, although his true passion was always art, literature and, especially, the world of theatre, to which he dedicated his entire life. 

During the 1920s, he began writing in Gaceta de Tenerife as a sports reporter under the pseudonym Minik , a name that from then on became his second surname. In 1926 he published his first essays and literary criticism in the magazine Hespérides , and two years later joined the theatrical collective Pajaritas de Papel . In 1932 he joined Eduardo Westerdahl in the magazine Gaceta de Arte , a key publication of the artistic avant-garde of the time, under whose sponsorship the first surrealist art exhibition held in Spain was organised in 1935, with the presence in Tenerife of the movement's founder, André Breton. 

After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, Pérez Minik was arrested and interned in Fyffes prison for several months due to his socialist and republican ideas. After harsh post-war years, in the 1950s he resumed writing his literary and theatre criticism in the local newspapers La Tarde and El Día as well as in specialised publications from the peninsula and abroad. He always maintained a rich correspondence with prominent figures of art and world literature of the time, as can be seen in the rich bibliographic and epistolary collection preserved in the Public Library of the State of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.  

His career as a critic, connoisseur and lover of theatre led him to become a first-rate intellectual, as demonstrated by the long list of honours he received throughout his life. He was awarded the National Theatre Prize in 1965, the Gold Medal of the Cabildo in 1980, the Canarias Prize for Literature and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 1984, and Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of La Laguna in 1987.

Domingo Pérez Minik always encouraged open debate on intellectual matters through gatherings and meetings, covering both global and local issues. It is no surprise that urban roads, educational and cultural centres bear his name.

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