SANTIAGO 43

The determining factor that gave birth to El Toscal was the expansive stage of the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the 18th century, when the primacy of overseas trade fell on it due to the destruction of the Port of Garachico by the eruption of the v lcan in the year 1706. It was a popular colonization that surrounded the center of the city, where the bourgeois who directed to the port trade settled. In its origins, El Toscal, or Los Toscales or Las Toscas, constitutes an extensive area of orchards, cement and wastelands that cover the west and north of the primitive hull. Then the successive spontaneous expansions begin, which lack relationship between the parties. At the end of the 19th century, a significant stage of the construction of the City began with the appearance of urban entrepreneurship (building societies) in the 1860-80 years, which collaborated in the second major expansion of the city. The Society of Buildings El Progreso built at the end of the 19th century, 17 houses in El Toscal, between the streets of San Mart and Santiago.

The General Urban Planning Plan of 1951 affected El Toscal, approving widening of streets and interior equipment in several blocks and authorizing the total rebuilding of the neighborhood, its remodeling and tracing. The small size of the plots, characteristic of the self-construction areas, has delayed the reform that the Plan entrusted to the private initiative.

Bibliograf a: History of Santa Cruz. Alejandro Cioranescu; Criteria and objectives and general solutions; Several authors PGOU -199 ...