San Miguel Barracks

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1769

It is little known that in such a central area of present-day Santa Cruz as the corner of X Street with Ángel Guimerá, right in the area of Weyler Square, there was, from at least 1769 until around the mid-19th century, an important infantry military detachment that operated under the name of San Miguel Barracks. It occupied, under a rental agreement, a large building erected there in the mid-18th century by the wealthy owner Amaro González de Mesa.

The building, a typical rural Canarian manor house, was located in what at that time was only the outskirts of the city, on the edge of the dusty road leading towards La Laguna, in the foothills of what was then the La Consolación neighbourhood. 

We know little about the fortunes of this old barracks; only that a few years after being occupied, it could not house all the troops, so numerous renovations and expansions were carried out throughout its existence. 

In 1826 it suffered significant damage due to the famous storm that caused so much harm to the population, to the point that the repair costs amounted to six thousand five hundred and eighty-five reales. In 1834 the building was again in very poor condition, this time due to neglect and indifference. 

Six years later, in 1840, after the troops were moved to the premises of what had been the San Carlos hospice, the town council commissioned the master builder Gregorio Carta to draft a prison project to be located on the site that had until then been occupied by the San Miguel Barracks. The space was almost entirely refurbished and functioned as a "Presidential Detachment" until approximately 1870.

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