Cross of the Conquest

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1494?

The Cross of the Conquest is a very important symbol of the foundation of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Today, no material remains exist from the time of the arrival of the conquerors on the beaches of Añazo in 1494; but a sentimental and mythical legacy has endured based on the tradition that before this Cross, which gave the city its name, the first mass was celebrated on the very beach. These are memory and tradition, not documents, so we enter a realm dominated by the mythical and the passionate.

The cross preserved today in the Church of the Conception, said to have been carried in the arms of the conqueror Alonso Fernández de Lugo on 3 May 1494, is roughly carved wood. It is believed to have remained for an indefinite time at the place where it was installed after the landing. In the mid-19th century it was moved to the Civil Hospital and later placed in the hermitage of San Telmo, from where it was taken out each year in procession on 3 May. It is currently kept in the Church of the Conception and in 1894, during the four hundredth anniversary of the city's foundation, the City Council commissioned a silver case with a glass front, crafted by the silversmith Rafael Trujillo from La Laguna.

It is truly a relic and should be judged as such. Its value lies not in authenticity, for which we have no proof, but in its symbolic and representational significance.

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