SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE

Bienes Culturales: 646


Text extracted from the book "Tenerife. Historical and Cultural Heritage" by Manuel Hernández González.
The origins of Santa Cruz, as a population, are dominated by the fact that it is the natural exit of imports and exports from the capital of the island. The population combined the grazing of its inhabitants, in its many wastelands, with an incipient subsistence agriculture, especially the fertile land of its ravines, due to the obstacles derived from water scarcity. The merchant elite resided, however, in the island capital, leaving only a small number of fishermen and sailors in their coves, since the bulk of the transactions took place in La Laguna.
Its native population was reduced by slavery and the banishment decided by the conqueror. Protests before the Crown led to a part of them being integrated into the urban environment, while the rest will continue to reside in caves, between Santa Cruz and Punta de Anaga, dedicated to grazing. To this native group they were joined by gomeros expelled from their native island.
During the first third of the sixteenth century Santa Cruz should not have exceeded the number of 70 neighbors, about 350 people. In 1552 it reaches 446. In 1584 it is still a small place, plagued by plague and condemned to inactivity. In 1587 it only had 275 inhabitants. The rickets of its population remained throughout the seventeenth century. However, it doubles until reaching 2,472 people in 1676. But migration by cams, or by incitement to seek a better future, remains somewhat widespread in Santa Cruz, despite being the seventeenth century a century of widespread economic expansion in the island. In the decade of the 80 we know that many of its settlers went to the island of Santo Domingo to found San Carlos de Tenerife. The first crisis of the second half of the century, derived from the emancipation of Portugal in 1640, which led to the loss of the Portuguese Lusitanian market for vidueño, a table wine that had Brazil and African possessions as its preferred destination, and the ban of its export to the British colonies of America, it was noted with particular crudeness in that port of Tenerife, so the migration reached in it worrying edges.
The eighteenth century is the time of urban and demographic expansion in Santa Cruz. In 1707 there were barely 1,707 inhabitants. In 1739 it houses 6000 inhabitants and in 1768 there are 7,399. It goes from being the fifth to the second population of the island. A growth that with ups and downs, the migration in the second half of the century was considerable while remaining throughout the century. At the beginning of the 19th century, the School census gives it a figure of 6,989 people. The economic reason for this growth is its conversion, in the single port of the island, for trade with the Spanish Indies since the regulation of 1718, and the only return of them throughout the archipelago, to which the paper joins increasingly increasing in intermediation, importing colonial products destined for European ports and exporting, from these to the colonies, manufactures; a situation that will be particularly advantageous in times of war through the use of neutral ships. It will not be coincidental that his greatest prosperity, in that period, was the era of the Napoleonic blockade between 1796 and 1814, in which his main wealth would be the development of these mercantile activities.
The urban expansion of the 18th century The small town, visited by Torriani in 1588, barely had 200 houses, most of them located on the left bank of the Santos ravine. An important part of them were homes of fishermen, miners and merchant agents of the local oligarchy and foreign merchants involved in the traffic with America, whose main residence they owned in La Laguna. By the end of the 18th century their number had increased considerably. It was already 1,746 houses. The bulk of the commerce and with it the residences of the merchant bourgeoisie had moved entirely towards it. This qualitative change definitely determines the urban configuration of the city that is largely the work of the enlightened century, because although there was some growth in the XVII, the real expansion occurs in the next. It is in it when Commander General Valhermoso moves the Captaincy, from La Laguna to Santa Cruz, as a result of the new functions developed by a port, which by the regulation of the Canary-American trade of 1718, becomes the only one of that traffic in the island and the one of forced return for the return in all the Canary archipelago.