Monument to Diego Guigou y Costa

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Art · Subcategory: Sculpture · Year: 1924 · Authors: Francisco Borges Salas

The monument to Dr Guigou, one of the great benefactors of childhood in Santa Cruz and a passionate promoter of the construction of a public park for the city, has undergone changes over time both in its appearance and location. 

Diego Guigou y Costa (Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife, 1861-Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1936) completed his early studies in La Laguna and later joined the Santa Cruz Town Hall as a civil servant, a position he left to move to Cádiz to study Medicine, which he completed in 1887. From that moment on, he carried out commendable humanitarian work, first shown in 1893 with brilliant conduct during the terrible cholera epidemic that devastated the city and its surroundings; then with the foundation of a reference children's hospital, known as the "Hospitalito de Niños"; and finally, through his prolonged efforts in the pages of the local press to achieve the creation of a public park for the city.

The first news of a tribute to this benefactor is found in 1924, when journalist Leoncio Rodríguez proposed the idea that all the children of Tenerife contribute one real to create a bronze medal to immortalise him. The Tenerife sculptor Francisco Borges Salas then made a profile portrait of the admired doctor, to which the gold-lettered legend was added: " The children of Tenerife to Dr Guigou ". The first and most important element of the monument we see today had been established. 

Years after the death of the distinguished doctor in 1936, the Town Hall wished to perpetuate the tribute by placing Borges's work on a stone base adorned with two marble "putti" (little angels). The new monument was installed near what is now the Domingo López Torres promenade in García Sanabria, behind the flower clock.  

After the park's remodelling in 2007, the tribute was moved to the corner of Numancia and Méndez Núñez, from then on configured by a square-based concrete prism on which rests the original bronze plaque with the profile of the honouree surrounded by scrolls and the municipal coat of arms framed by two large wings. At the top of the effigy appears a six-pointed star and at the bottom an hourglass, both elements of Masonic symbolism. The plaque is completed with the original inscription reminding us that this is a tribute from the children of Tenerife to their great benefactor. Below is a metal base with an inscription signed by Diego Crosa that reads: “ There are men who should not die, but be eternal, for the happiness of their loved ones, for the glory of their people ”.

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