Diario de Tenerife

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1886

Diario de Tenerife was the most important newspaper on the island during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded by the writer and journalist from Tenerife Patricio Estévanez in November 1886, it fulfilled its daily uninterrupted work for more than 30 years.

The Diario de Tenerife was first published on 1 November 1886 from the printing press of Vicente Bonnet, with a format of four pages with four columns each. A few years later it moved to the workshops of the Imprenta Isleña, then located in the ground floor of a house on the street now called Teoblado Power, opposite the "Santa Cecilia" building, currently the Parliament of the Canary Islands. From that moment its format increased to five columns. 

Patricio Estévanez was a pioneer in developing a novel way of understanding modern journalism, incorporating technological advances into the obsolete panorama that then prevailed in the local press. He took advantage of the newly installed telegraph cable, subscribing to several press agencies in Madrid (Fabra and Almodóvar) and introduced for the first time in the islands the system of exclusive correspondence, thus publishing more complete, faster and unique news. Telegrams received directly from London were incorporated into the newspaper, a very important innovation in a port dominated by English trade. Additionally, it included on its front page the Civil Registry, the plaza order, the saint's calendar, religious services, meteorological observations, currency exchange rates and the day's anniversaries.

In 1892 it began publishing literary articles with works by authors of the stature of Salvador Rueda, Pardo Bazán, Maupassant, Echegaray, Clarín, Juan Valera, Zola, Castelar, Silvela, Tolstoy, etc., paying copyright fees for this. Its work in engraving services should also be highlighted, both clichés in line to illustrate articles on women's fashion, and the advance of the zincographic cliché with halftone, or in other words, the first attempts to insert photographs in the pages of the press; a true technological revolution for that time. 

Its initial print run reached the fabulous figure of 500 copies; a year later demand rose to 600, and three years after that, it reached about a thousand.

In short, it was the best newspaper of the moment, with authority, solvency and impeccable periodicity, something not common in the press of those times in these parts.

At the end of 1917, the year of the Soviet revolution which the newspaper reported on so well via telegraph, the Diario de Tenerife ceased publication. Its founder and alma mater , Patricio Estévanez, became seriously ill and the dedication to the newspaper he had founded did not continue.

Reading and consulting this important newspaper is fundamental to understanding the history of Santa Cruz in those 31 years (1886-1917).

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