Hermitage of Saint Teresa of Jesus in Las Breñas de Anaga

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1677

The valley of Las Breñas is one of the most remote places in Tenerife. It is located near the northeast tip of the island, situated between the lighthouse and the Roques de Anaga. Here, in this very isolated place, there was a wine-growing estate that had a small hermitage under the invocation of Saint Teresa of Jesus.

During the 17th century the wine trade experienced a rapid boom in the Canary Islands due to the demand for this product in the markets of England, Northern Europe and America. The northern slope of the Anaga massif, despite its remoteness and inaccessibility, was one of the areas of greatest wine production during much of the seventeenth century. On its steep slopes appeared, around the cultivation, estates, houses, wine presses, wineries and also small places of worship that fulfilled the spiritual needs of the inhabitants of those very scattered places. 

The ownership of the valley of Las Breñas de Anaga was, since the mid-17th century, in the hands of Tomás Castro-Ayala, landowner, shipowner of the Carrera de Indias, moneylender and lessor of royal rents, Captain of Militias, Perpetual Alderman, General Procurator and Governor of the Castle of San Juan de Santa Cruz. A prominent man of the 17th century in Tenerife. 


He was the one who founded in his domains of Las Breñas de Anaga the hermitage under the invocation of Saint Teresa of Ávila. The works began in 1676, being completed the following year, since on 9 October 1677 there is record of the granting of a licence to bless it by Bishop Bartolomé García Ximénez. We imagine a small temple of a single nave with an Arabic tile roof and a semicircular arch doorway, as was usual in this type of construction. 
 
The crisis of vine cultivation at the beginning of the 18th century deeply affected the whole Anaga area, leaving these remote places almost permanently abandoned. We know that the hermitage of Saint Teresa of Jesus in 1724 was already totally abandoned and only served as an improvised stable for the cattle grazing nearby. Years later, in 1747, on the visit made by Bishop Guillén to the area, he found it “ ruined so that mass cannot be celebrated in it ”, recommending that it be sealed so that animals could not enter “ nor indecencies be committed in it .”

 
Over the centuries the trace of the original construction has been lost, although there are some vague remains of its existence in the area.

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