Recova Vieja (first market)

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Sites of memory · Year: 1815

The first recova that Santa Cruz de Tenerife had was opened in 1815 and was located around what is today the lower part of Imeldo Serís street, very close to where the monument to General Gutiérrez currently stands.

Before the inauguration of this market, fish was sold on the beaches or at the dock, vegetables in the squares, meat near the slaughterhouse at the mouth of the Santos ravine, etc. There was no suitable place in the city functioning as a distributor of supplies. 

In 1775, at the height of Enlightenment ideas, three deputies of the city council requested from the captain general the installation of a recova and fish market with hygienic-sanitary measures appropriate to the new times. The proposed location was a plot near the dock, at the edge of the marina, where ten years later the Alameda would be established. The highest military authority did not attend to the request but proposed the installation, on agreed days, of portable and dismantlable stalls to serve as market stands, to be placed in what was then called Plaza de la Pila, today Plaza de Candelaria. This idea also did not come to fruition. 

Finally, in 1813 it was agreed to build a building intended as a supply market. It was installed on land known as "La Plazuela de las Verduras", a place now disappeared between the end of Caleta street and the beginning of Luz street, very close to the mouth of the Barranquillo. The new building, of very modest construction, was funded with amounts taken at six percent annual interest from the Hospicio de San Carlos.

This first recova that Santa Cruz had was inaugurated in April 1815. The facility was equipped with a table, two benches, a glass lantern with a tin lamp, scales, weights and measures; and even a painting alluding to Justice hung on its walls. 

This establishment soon became insufficient, impractical and at times ruined by several maritime floods, being very close to the coastline. Nevertheless, it remained in operation for nearly forty years, until in 1854 the new market located in what was then Plaza del Teatro, today Isla de la Madera, came into operation. 

The old building that housed the first recova was converted in 1878, after years of abandonment, into a coal warehouse, a function it performed until its definitive disappearance well into the twentieth century.

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