Los Llanos

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

The disappeared neighbourhood of Los Llanos was one of the population entities with the greatest personality and popular roots in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Located on the southern outskirts of the city, like its neighbour El Cabo, it disappeared at the end of the 20th century as a result of the major transformation this area underwent following an important urban development plan that gave rise to what is now known as “Cabo-Llanos”.

The site was located in the southernmost area of the Santa Cruz bay, where a low coast full of small black sand and pebble beaches gave way to an extensive plain. It was here that Europeans landed in 1494 with the purpose of conquering the island, although they quickly moved northwards, reaching the course of the Santos ravine, where they established their camp. Therefore, that area, from very early on, was far from where the main nucleus of the population of Santa Cruz would develop.

This southern tip began to be populated during the first half of the 17th century, after the establishment here of two buildings of enormous importance at that time: the Castle of San Juan and the Hermitage of La Regla. The place was then known as Campo de las Cruces (Field of the Crosses), as along the road leading there was a series of wooden crosses forming a Calvary. Slightly later, some windmills were built on this wind-swept plain, giving the place its definitive name: Los Llanos de los Molinos (The Plains of the Windmills). Its isolated character meant it was sometimes chosen as a burial place during times of great mortality and also for executions. In the 18th century new buildings appeared such as the Casa de la Pólvora (1758), a specific place to store artillery ammunition; and a large fish salting factory (1772) which shortly afterwards became a lazaretto, a place of internment for those infected with contagious diseases.

But it was at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the next when the neighbourhood of Los Llanos reached its peak thanks to the settlement here of a large population attracted to Santa Cruz by its booming port and industrial activity. The newcomers settled here as an extension of the neighbouring El Cabo district. They occupied modest houses built in haste and four large citadels, where hygienic measures were completely absent. At its peak, Los Llanos had more than 3,000 inhabitants, mostly engaged in various and multiple port activities. The disorderly overcrowding, settlements around new industries (gas factory in 1909 and refinery in 1930), the installation of the municipal landfill nearby and the lack of basic services were sufficient factors for the neighbourhood to become an utterly marginal place.

In the mid-20th century, new urban plans and the search for better connectivity of Santa Cruz with the rest of the island led to a total transformation of the southern part of the city. New fast roads and a new expansion were planned for this sector. The dismantling and total disappearance of the old neighbourhood of Los Llanos took place definitively during much of the 1970s and 1980s, with the consequent relocation of its inhabitants to other peripheral urban entities of Santa Cruz: Santa Clara, Somosierra, Miramar, Ofra, Barrio de la Salud, etc.

From then on, the land vacated by the old neighbourhood together with others freed by the refinery gave rise to the new urban space called “Cabo-Llanos”. From the old site only the Castle of San Juan, the Casa de la Pólvora and the Hermitage of La Regla remained standing. Everything else was new: a fast access road to the city and port from the south, the old landfill transformed into a lush Palmetum and a group of new “emblematic” buildings by renowned architects, so fashionable in early 20th-century urbanism, among which stand out a spectacular auditorium, a surprising fairground, an unusual maritime park and various high-end residential buildings.

Looking at the new space created, no one can imagine that here existed one of the most popular neighbourhoods of Santa Cruz, whose former residents and their descendants still come from various parts of the city to celebrate the festivity of the Virgin in the Hermitage of La Regla every September, just as they always have.

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