Romero Lithography (Copy)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1880

During much of the 19th century almost all printing workshops used the typographic printing process, until the lithographic technique was permanently established in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in 1880 by the hand of the Cádiz native Ángel Romero Tardido. Litografía Romero was founded by this great enthusiast of fine arts, who had learned stone engraving in the workshops of his native Cádiz. He moved to Tenerife in 1880 with his family and several workers, travelling with essential equipment and tools to start his industrial workshop: presses, lithographic stones, assembly tables, guillotines, bookbinding tools, an engraving machine, vignettes for bills of exchange, cheques, etc.

During the first years the business was established on Castillo street, then moved to San Francisco street, where its real development began with the installation of two lithographic presses from France and Belgium, equipped with the most significant technical advances of the late 19th century. After the First World War, the company acquired an offset rotary press, when indirect printing was still a novelty in printing systems.

Soon it became necessary to have a larger premises, which led them to move to Imeldo Serís street, where it continued to grow thanks to the great demand from the tobacco industry and the packaging of agricultural products.

After the civil war, the lithography built a new industrial complex on a large area near the La Laguna main road (today the headquarters of the Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias - Technological Institute of the Canary Islands), on the outskirts of the city at that time, where it remained until its move to the Guímar industrial estate.

Litografía Romero, still active, is a company where a select roster of professionals and masters of the graphic arts worked (Davó, Galarza, Sureda, etc.), admirably projected in the local field of Fine Arts.

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