El Águila Tobacco Factory

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Industrial architecture · Year: 1924 · Authors: Domingo Pisaca Burgada

Manuel Morales Clavijo, founder of the El Águila Tinerfeña tobacco factory, was born in Arico. He emigrated to America (Argentina, Cuba and the United States), where he learned tobacco manufacturing techniques. Upon returning to Tenerife in 1907, he founded his own tobacco manufacturing business located on Puerta Canseco Street, also having a tobacco shop on Imeldo Serís Street.

In 1923 this owner commissioned the architect Domingo Pisaca to build a building on Suárez Guerra Street for his new factory. Pisaca used a cylindrical body embedded in the angle where the two façades meet, serving as a hinge between them, while also concentrating the firm's emblems on it, in this case an eagle. The building's floor plan, due to its configuration, adopts a radiocentric shape. Each of the four floors had its own function: the ground floor was used as a raw materials warehouse, administration and retail sales; on the next floor the final phase of tobacco production took place (sealing boxes, banding, pressing, etc.); and on the two upper floors hand rolling and tobacco selection were carried out (cigarettes on the top floor and cigars on the lower one).

At the end of 1969, the building became the headquarters of the newspaper La Tarde , hence the name inscribed on the main balcony below the eagle. Today, after having been part of the Canary Islands Parliament complex, it houses the Audit Office of the Autonomous Government of the Canary Islands.

28.468066, -16.252821