First Aeroplane. Aviation Festival

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1913

The arrival of the first aeroplane in the Canary Islands took place in the spring of 1913. The experience of aviation, almost like a fairground spectacle, came to the Islands thanks to the president of the Tenerife Tourism Development Board, Juan Martí Dehesa, who, taking advantage of the events of the May Festivals in Santa Cruz that year, included in the programme a new feature previously unknown in these parts: an Aviation Festival. Barely ten years had passed since the first successful flight carried out by the Wright brothers' biplane on 17 December 1903, an event considered the first page of aviation.

Martí Dehesa, together with a group of enthusiasts from Las Palmas, hired the French aviator Leonce Garnier for the show, who with his Blériot XI aeroplane had already made numerous flights on the Peninsula. The pilot, along with his wife, mechanics and with the aircraft dismantled, travelled by ship to the Islands intending to perform some aerial exercises "which in a note of Europeanism and civilisation" would be "worthy of the culture and progress of our people," as reflected in the local press.

The expedition arrived at the port of Santa Cruz on 19 April 1913, where it was received by a crowd of enthusiasts and onlookers. After identifying the place to hold the displays, it was agreed to prepare a space near the Ofra mountain, between a mill and the old powder magazine. While a team of workers levelled the ground and set up chairs and stands for spectators, Garnier travelled by ship with his dismantled aeroplane to Gran Canaria, where on 30 April 1913 he made the first flight in the Canary Islands' skies.

For Tenerife, the programme announced the exhibition for Saturday 10 May at four in the afternoon, and Sunday 11 at ten in the morning, all accompanied by the Santa Cruz Municipal Band. Tickets sold out quickly, although many spectators climbed to the heights near the spectacle site. So many people attended that the Civil Guard had serious problems controlling them.

At half past five on 10 May, Garnier and his companion, the Tenerife engineer Juan Santa Cruz, perfectly dressed in the period's official attire, headed towards the aircraft. The aeroplane began its run along the improvised Ofra runway and for a few seconds rose half a metre off the ground, although it fell back down; then it continued rolling until it lifted into the air to the applause of the incredulous people of Tenerife. Thousands of eyes followed the pilot's exploits in amazement, first over the city of Santa Cruz, then over the crowd, later over Geneto, where at about seven hundred metres altitude he made a new turn and, in a perfect manoeuvre, the aeroplane landed gently in the field; but as it rolled along the runway, a small unevenness in the ground tilted the aircraft nose-down, breaking the propeller, the landing gear, the rudder and other engine mechanisms. Fortunately, neither the pilot nor his companion suffered any injury but the aeroplane was so damaged that the rest of the show and the programme scheduled for the following day had to be cancelled.

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