Plaza de los Patos (Ducks Square)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: 1913-1925

In the very heart of the Hotels neighbourhood lies this square, one of the most beautiful and secluded that once existed in the city. Its official name, Plaza de 25 de Julio, coincides with the tree-lined avenue that crosses it from north to south, although its popular name, Plaza de los Patos, is the one that has endured over time, due to the fact that in its early days its small pond housed a group of these animals.

It was in 1905 when this area began to be urbanised. A year later, when King Alfonso XIII visited the city, the square was still unpaved, and the monarch laid the first stone of what was to be a monument in honour of the illustrious son of this city, General Leopoldo O'Donnell, Duke of Tetuán, who presided over the Council of Ministers of Spain during several periods in the reign of Isabel II. The monument was never built, but it was from those years that the square began to be planted with trees and paved with cobblestones. Shortly afterwards, the construction of another monument was proposed in this place, this time dedicated to the Deed of 25 July 1797, but it too was never realised.

It was from 1913 that the square began to take shape. In its centre a small pond was made in which the statue of a boy held the basin of a fountain, later replaced by a stone pyramid topped by the figure of a heron. A group of ducks lived in the pond, and from then on it became known by its popular name (Plaza de los Patos).

Between 1924 and 1925 the enclosure acquired the peculiar appearance it presents today, as a replica of the Plaza de las Ranas in the Sevillian Parque de María Luisa. It forms a small roundabout where the combination of Andalusian-style tiles on its pond and on the benches surrounding it (with advertising from that time of the commercial firms that donated them) make it very eye-catching. In the centre there is a pond surrounded by small frog figures that spout water from their mouths into the interior, where there is a representation of a duck.

This urban space, still surrounded today by some prestigious buildings that have been spared demolition, is one of the most characteristic city landmarks.

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