El Atlante

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1837

El Atlante was the first private periodical publication to appear in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, launching on 1 January 1837. It was founded and directed by Pedro Mariano Ramírez, with the collaboration of Ricardo Murphy and José Plácido Sanzón, also supported by Sabino Berthelot.

Initially, it had a four-page format with two columns, later changing to a magazine model, doubling the informative space and adding a third column. Its periodicity was somewhat irregular at first, but from early 1838 it was published daily until its disappearance on 31 March 1839, after 453 issues and just over two years of existence.

Its pages featured the first printed engravings in the Canary Islands, as well as Bulletins of Laws and Decrees, subscribers' notices, port activity in Santa Cruz, literary contributions, extracts from sympathetic peninsular newspapers, and everything that was standard in Tenerife's press throughout the 19th century and early 20th century.

Despite its moderate ideology, it was the subject of the first governmental complaint against a media outlet in Tenerife, after reproducing, in issue 57, a lampoon that appeared in Puerto de la Cruz praising the Freemasons, the Republic, and Mendizábal, and condemning Queen Isabel II.

Two months after its launch, El Atlante gained two ideological rivals: El Tribuno and El Pigmeo , both liberal in ideology and short-lived.

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