Presidial Detachment

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1841 · Authors: Gregorio Carta

With this name, there existed from 1841 a building, now disappeared, located at what is today the corner of Ángel Guimerá Avenue with Calle de la X, which functioned as a prison for several decades. 

In Santa Cruz, until the inauguration in the mid-20th century of the prison on Benito Pérez Armas Avenue, there was always a shortage of facilities to confine common criminals. The first known place adapted as a prison was a premises located on La Marina Street, later known as the Old Prison, which began operation in the mid-18th century and was abandoned due to poor condition in 1837.

In 1840 the town council commissioned the master builder Gregorio Carta to draft a project for the construction of a prison to be located below the military hospital, on the site formerly occupied by the San Miguel barracks. It seems that by the following year after the commission, the building was already ready for use. The building, similar in design to Los Lavaderos conceived by Gregorio Carta himself, was square in plan with sides of about 30 metres (112 feet), featuring a central courtyard distributing four wings that could house more than a hundred inmates. It was built as a single storey covered with tiles and had a small four-tier tower rising in the middle of the main façade. 

This facility was in operation for just over twenty years, as we know that by 1868 its state of conservation was already lamentable, with no security conditions and poor sanitation. This caused the prisoners held there to be transferred first to the lazaretto, then to the Paso Alto fort, and finally to the former premises of the ex-Franciscan convent, a place that had previously functioned as a prison and would continue to do so for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  

The facilities of the former Presidial Detachment were converted from 1870 into commercial warehouses and some time later into an inn and a stop for horse-drawn carriages and diligences. Already in the first decades of the 20th century, a large residential building was erected there.

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