Short History of Lanzarote

As it is the matter with the other Canary Islands, Lanzarote’s early history is veiled in myth and mystery. Greeks and Romans certainly knew of the existence of these islands, but there is no evidence that they ever set foot there. Yet, it is known that Plato believed these islands to be the remains of the lost continent of Atlantis. To others, they were also known as the ‘Fortunate Islands’ clinging to the edge of the world where people had no sorrows.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe forgot the Canary Islands for almost 1,000 years until Mediterranean sailors rediscovered them in the early 14th century.

It is widely thought that Lanzarote’s name derives from the distorted name of the Genoese sailor called Lanzarotto (or Lancelotto) Malocello, who first landed on the island in 1312. He had lived for some time on the island before the Guanches – as the early inhabitants of the Canary Islands were called – killed him. Known to Europeans at this stage, the island was invaded several times by Portuguese and Spaniards in search of riches and glory and to take back natives to their countries to be made slaves.

There are several theories about the origin of the Guanches but what seems to be confirmed is that they came from North Africa and that they were descendants of the Berber people. The Guanches lived on a very primitive level, mostly in caves and under rock spurs, but had quite a sophisticated social structure.

In 1402, when the two Normans, Gadifer de la Salle and Jean de Béthencourt, landed on Lanzarote, another major change in the island’s history came about. The then reigning Guanche king Guardafía welcomed them because he thought that the Frenchmen came to protect his people from further slave raids. De la Salle stayed on the island, while de Béthencourt left to offer sovereignty of Lanzarote to the Spanish court, which made him King of Lanzarote in the following. In the meantime, the Guanches had become hostile to de la Salle and it needed a war to defeat them, which finally came about in 1404. Guardafía, the Guanche leader, and many of his followers were baptized to prove their submission to the Crown.

When de Béthencourt returned, he succeeded de la Salle and set out to conquer Fuerteventura, El Hierro and La Gomera, for which he also recruited a number of Lanzaroteños. After the rapid conquest of these islands, he decided to return to France and left his nephew Maciot in charge. Maciot de Béthencourt married Guardafía’s daughter and made Teguise – at the time referred to as Vila Real (Royal Town) – in 1418 to Lanzarote’s capital, which it remained until 1852. By that time invasions by buccaneers had diminished and it had become less imperative to have a capital in the interior of the island, in consequence the administration was transferred to the port Arrecife.

The conquest of Lanzarote – as well as of Fuerteventura, La Gomera and El Hierro – was, in fact, no great feat because diseases that were introduced by the Europeans during the years of slave trading had already decimated the small Guanche population on these islands.

With begin of the Spanish conquest, the islands of the archipelago experienced different histories. While the bigger islands Gran Canaria and Tenerife still rendered fierce resistance – and it should take almost one century until they finally surrendered to the Spanish crown – the process of exploration and colonisation of the island of Lanzarote had already set out. Soon the first churches were built and surviving Guanches were forced to convert to Christianity.