El Baluarte

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1513

Built between June and mid-August 1513, the fortress known as El Baluarte, of which today not even the foundations remain, was the first defensive building that Santa Cruz had against external invasions. There were several earlier towers on the coasts of Añazo (Diego de Herrera and Fernández de Lugo) erected during the campaigns of the Europeans to control the territory, but they were more places of protection against the aborigines than against enemies from overseas.

The external threats during these early years of the 16th century, once the Conquest was completed, came from French fleets, at war against Spanish interests on the European international stage at the time. 

El Baluarte, born from that need for defence, was erected on a coastal promontory that closed off to the south the cove later called Blas Díaz, a landing place in the Santa Cruz of that time. Its construction was very modest: local stones, low height and few embrasures for artillery. It dominated a coastal sector that barely covered the entrance to the Caleta and the rudimentary pier, which was a high wall of masonry and wood overlooking the sea near the Carnicería beach. Shortly afterwards it was framed by nearby civil buildings that hindered its operability.

Its efficiency was limited. It did not prevent pirates in 1514 from taking all the ships anchored in the Santa Cruz roadstead at that time; nor that in 1523 a small French fleet looted, set fire to and then wrecked the ships anchored there. It was also not effective against a French and an English ship that in 1547 entered the bay and took several anchored vessels.

Nevertheless, this structure remained active for decades until the island authorities decided to build a new fortress to remedy its deficiencies. El Baluarte was the first in a long succession of defensive buildings that over centuries were erected in the bay of Santa Cruz as defence for the town.

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