El Cabo

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites

El Cabo was one of the most characteristic populated enclaves of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It was so both because of its antiquity and its idiosyncrasy full of enormous personality granted thanks to the humble people who always inhabited it. Today, from that urban space full of small and grouped terraced houses, secluded squares, narrow streets, open spaces with windmills and some small manufacturing industries, almost nothing remains. Everything has been transformed over time into something totally different, with scarce vestiges of its original layout remaining.

El Cabo was one of the oldest neighbourhoods of the city. Here the conquerors first settled after their landing, although later, after the urban centre moved to the north side of the Santos ravine, this enclave would remain as a suburban place, a characteristic that would accompany it until very recently. The neighbourhood already appears fully configured in 1588 when Torriani, in his map of Santa Cruz, records about twenty scattered houses settled on the edge of the road that ran towards La Laguna.

It was an area occupied by fishermen and sailors. A little later, bakeries, windmills and bread ovens appeared. Craftsmen and some lime kilns were also installed, all located here, on the outskirts of the city for safety. We could say that El Cabo was the first "industrial estate" of Santa Cruz and for a long time it maintained that character.

San Telmo square was always the backbone of the neighbourhood and its civic centre. Located opposite the entrance of the hermitage, at a slightly lower level than it, the square, first dirt and then cobbled in 1838, was the scene of festivals, neighbourhood meetings, celebrations and all kinds of demonstrations. It disappeared in the 20th century when Bravo Murillo street was opened.

In the 18th century two public buildings of great importance for the population were erected in the area: the first San Carlos barracks and the old hospital of the Desamparados. But large plots and orchards still existed in the place, especially in its upper part, where some windmills were soon erected and, already at the beginning of the 19th century, the first public cemetery.

The population increase during the 19th century meant that the neighbourhood demanded services that did not exist until then. An important public water source came into operation in 1838, known as Morales, the surname of the general who completed the water conduction works to the city. Also, later in the century, the first elementary school of the place came into operation.

The houses in the neighbourhood were always modest, single-storey rectangular, with little street frontage, tiled roofs and a small interior patio. The overcrowding of the mid-19th century due to industrial and port activity brought with it the appearance of a new form of housing lacking any sanitary measures: the so-called citadels; single-storey communal housing with rooms around a patio, with shared services, kitchen and toilets being common. El Cabo had several buildings of this type, including one of the largest in Santa Cruz, known as "La Portada", demolished in the 1940s to build the Mercado de Nuestra Señora de África (Our Lady of Africa Market). This citadel housed almost a quarter of the neighbourhood's population. Another quite large one existed just opposite, where the TEA now stands.

In November 1909 El Cabo changed its appearance in its upper part when four large metal towers intended for radiotelegraphy were installed there. Now disappeared, these towers gave an alternative name to the neighbourhood: "Cuatro Torres" (Four Towers).

From the second half of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, the neighbourhood accentuated its character as an increasingly degraded peripheral area, having been left between a ravine whose course had become a dump and the new industrial zone further south. Forgotten by the administrations for decades, the 1959 partial urban plan proposed changing the face of this sector of the city, designing the large conglomerate that would later be called Cabo-Llanos. This initiative became reality decades later, towards the end of the century, when El Cabo, after the demolition of the entire old neighbourhood layout, was totally transformed. Thus arose a new space where the little that remained standing was diluted among new squares with abstract sculptures, government presidencies of avant-garde architectural style, modern buildings for offices of the various public administrations and immense spaces built to house artistic and cultural activities. Behind was left that small and humble neighbourhood that had so much personality in the old Santa Cruz.

28.462883, -16.249636