La Palma: Encyclopedia II - La Palma - History

La Palma - History

The Canary Islands had been settled by the native Canarians called Guanches whose origin is still controversial. They had a neolithic culture without agriculture and split up in several clans led by a chief. Their name for La Palma was Benahoare. The main relics of this culture are the caves they lived in, petroglyphs which are mysterious stone engravings of cultic meaning (perhaps) and the stone paved paths through the mountains. After the Spanish occupation of La Palma the native Canarians vanished completely by assimilation into the Hispanic population.

Though some historians think that the Canary Islands were known to the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Romans -to whom the island was known as Junonia- there is proven knowledge that the Genoese Lancelotto Malocello reached the archipelago in 1312. In 1404 the Spaniards began the conquest of the islands. Though the first landing on La Palma was in 1405 it took until 1493 and several bloody battles until the last resistance of the natives was broken. The conqueror of La Palma was Alonso Fernández de Lugo who defeated Tanausu, the last king on the island. He ruled the area known as Acero (Caldera de Taburiente). Tanausu was ambushed after agreeing to a truce arranged by Fernández de Lugo and Juan de Palma, a Guanche who had converted to Christianity and who was a relative of Tanausu.

For the next two centuries, La Palma became rich as a trading post on the way to the New World and received immigrants from Castile, Portugal, Majorca, Flanders, and Catalonia.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki