-	All photographs of History and Culture

The culture and history of Tenerife, Canary Islands is a history of isolation due to distance. The islands in Spain, are located in the Atlantic far away from the Hercules Towers that signified the arrival of the Straits of Gibraltar and supposedly the end of the world. This is what the old legend said.

This has caused the Canary history to be written, in certain ways due to Columbuses trips. The natives of Canary Islands were the Guanches. There are manuscripts written from the Roman era.
The Guanches are the true canaries, tied to the these volcanic lands, of tropical climate and a lot of sunshine. They could perfectly be from northafrican origins, and they lived from the fruits of their land, since there isn't any navigational tradition in their history.
As to what culture is referred, we must point out important questions one one hand the sculptural traditions, and on the hand the folkloric. From it's sculpture, Tenerife has a sevillano Martin de Andujar one of their greatest, just as Rodriguez de la Olviva, Luján Perez or Fernando Esteve are. Each of them gave a big part to the great arts of Tenerife after the XVII centuries.


A historical event in Tenerife was the attack that it suffered by the english float at the command of Horacio Nelson, in 1797. That summer, Nelson attacked Santa Cruz, the Tenerife capital, in an offensive way that cost him the loss of his arm and his battle.
From then on in the last century many visitors have had the island, visitors not as hostile as Nelson, or of the same calliber. .,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,Alexander Von Humboldt)))))))) (naturalist) made Santa Cruz and de la Isla a first class tourist destination.

As to what folklore is referred, spanish and portuguese influences have marked this art, always melted into the guanche influence. The typical canary music and dance are a fusion of hispanic, local, portuguese, latinamerican rythms that make up the canary folklore. All danced to by a small 4-5 string guitar.
The great folkloric date takes place in the month of September in La Laguna with the Sabadeño Festival. Another important date is the International Folkloric Festival, which is celebrated in the Playa de los Cristianos in August.
The history of Tenerife is also tied to the volcanos. It hasn't even been 100 years since the last erruption that took place on the canary island, in 1909 with the Chinyero volcano. That eruption took place on November 18th, and during 10 hours it had the whole town on watch.