I flow out to Tenerife with overnight stop at Los Cristianos. The following morning I took the fast Fred Olsen ferry to La Gomera with quick ferry change from San Sebastián to Vuelta Harbour near Valle Gran Rey.
I had a good walk from the harbour after a tuna salad lunch to my apartment at La Calera. Good steady climb with two full rucksacks I was carrying. The apartment was good climb of many steps to my small apartment.
La Gomera has dear place in my heart it was from Veutra with my girlfriend Rosie that we sailed across the Atlantic to Antigua in the Caribbean. We left at the end of November 2007 and it took 30 days to cross or 3000 nautical miles to the Caribbean. We arrived on Christmas Day. We took the trade wind passage heading towards the Cape Verde Islands and picked up strong easterly winds that blow us to our destination of Antigua. We experienced big sea but with following winds Barada my Nicholson 32 was like small cork riding these big seas. In fact the winds got so strong we were virtually on bare poles!
Later I did sail all the Canary Islands the last one I visited was El Hierro the smallest south westerly island. I got interested in the indigenous peoples of the islands prior to the Spanish conquest in the 1400’s. All the islands of the Canaries archipelago were inhabited by people, who had migrated from North West Africa. They were evidently from the Amazigh or Berbers ethnic group who predated the Arabs.
They were first encountered by the early Spanish explorers or conquistadors. They were named Guanches and had fairly light browned skin tallish with reddish blond hair. Physically well built and hardy. They lived in primitive cave dwellings. Had religious sites with many rock carvings or petroglyphs in circular formations. Always seem to be near water in hidden location. One site I visited few years ago was at El Paso on the island of La Palma.
The original conquest of the Canary Islands took place between 1402 and 1496. It was not an easy task, militarily, given the resistance of Guanches aboriginals in some of the islands. The conquest was carried out by the Spanish nobility for their own ends and without the direct participation of the Crown. Under a pact of vassalage the Crown granted the rights to the conquest and in exchange the noblemen swore allegiance to the crown.
The first phase is known as the Conquista Betancuriana o Normanda (the Bethencourt or Norman Conquest) was carried out by Jean de Bathencourt and Gadifer de La Salle between 1402 and 1405 and involved the subjugation of Lanzarote, El Hierro, and Fuerteventura.
The second phase is known as the Conquista Señorial castellana and was carried out by Castilian nobles whose appropriation of the land was mediated through purchase, cession and marriage. This phase included the land conquered in the first phase and also the island of La Gomera and lasted until 1450. A prominent force in this phase was the Peraza family which had managed to consolidate the Canary Islands under a single unified Lordship and seigneury for the reigns of Hernán Peraza and his daughter Inés Peraza though this did not hold.
The great Guanches rebellion of the original inhabitants of La Gomera, against the Castilian conquerors of the island and their governor Hernan Peraza the Younger in 1488. Perazas grandfather, Hernan the Elder , had previously sealed a pact of peace with the original inhabitants and their chieftains in a ceremony of brotherhood that involved the drinking of milk from a traditional earthenware pot.
This pact set down rules and laws for both parties and was later repeatedly broken by Hernan the Younger, who despite having ratified the agreement began treating the population with great brutality and selling many as slaves abroad. The local chieftains subsequently held court and condemned Peraza to die, and to symbolize the end of the pact the earthenware pot was broken.
His assassination by a local warrior, Hautacuperche, took place as he was caught in the act of breaking the pact yet again, and this was the start of a full-scale uprising of the local population who besieged the stronghold of the ruling Spaniards, the ‘Torre del Conde’ (which still stands in San Sebastian de La Gomera and is open to the public) and Peraza’s wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla (who is said to have had an affair with Christopher Columbus later), had great difficulties in defending it. She called for reinforcements from the governor of Gran Canaria, who sent 400 veteran soldiers to La Gomera.
The rebellion was put down with awesome brutality and at the end local men over the age of 15 were cruelly executed and the remaining youngsters were sold into slavery. Part of this barbarity was blamed on the vindictiveness of Peraza’s widowed wife, whose excessive brutality even came to the attention of the rulers of Spain, and a committee of inquiry was established that held lengthy deliberations centered on the question whether Guanches had souls.
Finally the governor of Gran Canaria as well as Beatriz de Bobadilla were admonished and most of the enslaved Gomeros were released – in Spain – from where they had to find their own way home without any means, to arrive on their now totally subdued natives.
The small Spanish town of La Gomera San Sebastián was the town plan the conquistadors used for their new towns and cities during their conquest of central and South America.
After Christopher Columbus discovery of the Caribbean islands. The Spanish nobility or hidalgo were looking for fame and fortune in these new promised lands of the americas. Gold and silver was uppermost in their minds. Exploration was the driving force of these brutal conquests. Fame, money and power drove these early conquistadors to subjugate and control whole swathes of lands in the America’s. They achieved this by sheer will power and ruthlessness. They were in search of El Dorado!