Clemencia Hardisson

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: 1908-2000

This street located at the junction of Vuelta de los Pájaros and El Ramonal bears the name of a woman with a remarkable life, enterprising, cheerful and with attitudes clearly aimed at helping the less fortunate.

Clemencia Hardisson Wouters de Coppens (San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 1908-2000) was born into a well-off family linked to the mercantile bourgeoisie of the Island. Of refined education, in 1929 she was chosen as the beauty queen of Santa Cruz de Tenerife; although she never settled for being "a pretty face". Clemencia was always in close contact with the intellectual and avant-garde circles of the Island at the time, as well as being a regular at the various literary gatherings and artistic events of the era.

But her intellectual life was intertwined with politics. In 1931 she began a passionate relationship with the anarchist engineer Juan José Luque Argenti, transferred to Tenerife as director of the Juntas de Obras del Puerto of the capital. She then became closely linked to the local left-wing circles of the newly proclaimed Spanish Second Republic, without renouncing her critical freedom of independent and emancipatory conscience.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out Clemencia Hardisson was considered a dangerous element by the rebel forces, being first confined in the women's prison on San Miguel street, and then under house arrest. After the conflict ended, she was exiled, moving first to Belgium and later to France, where she developed on the one hand an intense humanitarian activity with the Red Cross, and on the other, a clandestine one in the French Resistance against the Nazis. 

In the late 1940s Clemencia Hardisson returned to Tenerife and from her home in the Gracia neighbourhood of La Laguna she set out to improve the lives of those most in need. She sold part of her family estate for this cause, and in other cases donated land for the construction of houses for families without resources.

Clemencia Hardisson died in La Laguna on 11 July 2000 at the age of ninety-one. This committed woman left a deep mark on Tenerife society for her values of solidarity and her involvement in solving the problems of the poorest. It is no surprise that both in the municipality of Santa Cruz and that of La Laguna there is a street bearing her name.

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