Secundino Delgado Park

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Leisure · Subcategory: Green spaces · Year: 2000

This public park contains spectacular vegetation undoubtedly inherited from an old estate located to the north of the Salamanca neighbourhood, an orchard from which several green spaces in that area emerged: the now disappeared Bellamy or Salamanca gardens, the Oliver Club, and this public park, inaugurated in 2000, which bears the name and contains the bust of Secundino Delgado.

Secundino Delgado Rodríguez (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1867-1912), considered the father of Canarian nationalism, was born into a humble and large family. From a very young age he emigrated to Cuba and then to North America, where he witnessed and empathised with political movements (anarchists and socialists) that tenaciously advocated for Cuban independence. After the insurrection on the Caribbean island, Delgado collaborated in the Cuban emancipation process, conspiring against the Spanish authorities and forces. In 1896, after being pursued for acts of sabotage, he returned to Tenerife, where he stayed for ten months before returning again to America. This time his destination was Venezuela. In Caracas he founded the newspaper El Guanche (1897), a publication that openly advocated for the independence of the Canary Islands.

After Cuba’s emancipation in 1898, Secundino Delgado became a Cuban national. In 1900 he returned to the islands, where he continued his political activity founding the Popular Autonomist Party (PPA), considered by many as the first party in the Canaries with a clearly nationalist and workers’ ideology. His voice was reflected in the newspaper Vagaguaré , a publication that was persecuted by the authorities. Secundino Delgado’s political activity led him to spend eleven months in prison. After his release he returned to America, finally coming back to Tenerife in 1910, where he died two years later from tuberculosis.

The figure of Secundino Delgado symbolises the trajectory of a person of humble origins who, with little formal education, committed himself to workers’ and emancipatory ideals that deeply shaped his personality during his years as an emigrant working in the Cuban tobacco industry in Florida. Delgado sought to bring these ideas to his homeland, adapting them to its reality, thus forging over the years the ideology of Canarian nationalism.

Secundino Delgado Park, with its splendid gardens, sports area and children’s space, is configured as an outstanding area intended for the enjoyment of the inhabitants of the Salamanca neighbourhood.

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