Gualterio E. Williams

The Canary islands (in Spanish Islas Canarias ) are with the Spain since the 15th century. They are located in the Atlantic Ocean at the west of the Morocco at some encablures of the Saharan coasts. They constitute two provinces: Las Palmas of Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz of Tenerife. They belong to the ultraperipheric Régions of the European Union.

Etymology

The Canary islands draw their name from Latin Canariae Insulae (islands with the dogs); this name applied initially to only Large Canarie ( Canaria Insula ). It comes from the large wild dogs ( ducks ) that the first explorers discovered on the island.

Geography

The archipelago includes/understands:

Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Large Canarie form the province of Las Palmas. Tenerife, Will gum It, Palma and El Hierro forms the province of Santa Cruz. These islands present geological characters and configurations very different:

  • Lanzarote has a relief strongly marked by a recent volcanicity and still credit;

  • Fuerteventura is enough punt and especially, very arid: it is closest to the Sahara;
  • Large Canarie is a massive island, of round form with a marked and rather confused mountainous relief;
  • Tenerife is the largest island; it is dominated by an active volcano located in its center, the Teide, which is more the high summit of Spain;
  • Will gum, near to Tenerife, is an small island with the very parcelled out relief, with valleys without easy communications between them, so much so that its inhabitants invented an extraordinary whistled language, the Silbo , to communicate;
  • Palma is mountainous, it is wettest and most wooded of the islands of the archipelago;
  • El Hierro is smallest, most remote and the least known.

The secondary islands Graciosa, Alegranza, Montaña Clara, Castling del Este and Roque del Oeste form the Archipel of Chinijo.

The population is concentrated mainly in the two large islands of the archipelago: Tenerife and Large Canarie.

During the summer 2007, the archipelago knew big fires: at July 31st, 2007: 35000 hectares had already burned and: 13000 people were evacuated.

History

The Canary islands are probably known since antiquity under the name of “Fortunées islands”. They will be redécouvertes by Europeans only at the 12th century.

The Canary islands were known Phénicien S and Carthaginois. However, in the writings phenicians, not a word does not treat aboriginals of the Canary islands, if is not to describe the atrocities perpetrated by the explorers on the Guanches.

It is for the moment impossible to determine with certainty when and by which were discovered the Canarians. Some say the Arabs, others the Portuguese, others still Génois… It appears that in 1335 unloaded with Lisbon 2 boats containing 4 prisoners guanches. These boats were chartered by the king of Portugal with a Florentin crew, génois and Spanish. These boats would have reached the islands in July of the year 1341 under the command of Génois Niccoloso da Recco and the Florentin Angiolino del Teggihia of Corbizzi. They remained 5 months there and, to their return to Lisbon, they brought interesting things as well as Boccace in person took its feather to write a portrait of Guanches while being based on the data brought by Recco. According to what Boccace reports, the Canary islands " are of the rocky grounds without any type of agricultural cultures, but rich in goats and other animals and filled stripped men and women being connected with savages. Some of these men seem to have capacity on the others and get dressed with red dye and goatskins dyed using saffron. These skins have the air fines and are bent carefully thanks to wire made in tripe of animals. Their language is very soft, and their way of speaking very sharp and fast points out the italien" . Boccace posed the problem which always intrigues those which study Guanches, i.e. how is possible that in the Canary islands coexist at the sides of troglodytes, of people of higher cultures which have houses with kitchen gardens filled with vegetables? These Guanches more civilized of the Eastern islands lived also stripped or almost. On the other hand, they cultivated corn and lived in cities. They had kings, priests and a nobility, they adored a female divinity and embaumaient their deaths. The two the civilized groups, troglodytes and farmers, were fair with the blue and very large eyes, like individuals of the Germanic type. The Guanches were men of more than 2 meters, with the clear skin, alive of the breeding and Agriculture before the arrival of the Spanish colonists.

In the years which followed, the islands were the place of predilection for the hunters of Esclave S of all the horizons which captured the large fair ones in order to resell them with the lords of North Africa. And this until in 1402 and the arrival of the Norman conqueror Jean de Béthencourt accompanied by French emigrants. Béthencourt, the purpose of which was christianization of the islands, managed to be established in Lanzarote, then in Fuerteventura and El Hierro. He was recognized king of the Canaries by Henri III of Castille, but never put foot on the other islands, more populated much and whose inhabitants were savage warriors.

During tens of years, Portuguese and Spaniards disputed the possession of the grounds. The archipelago, big step on the sea routes leading towards the Southern Africa, Asia and America, were finally allotted to Spain in 1479 by the treaty of Alcaçovas.

The conquest of the last islands was made only in 1491 (Palma) and 1496 (Tenerife).

Massacred, taken along in slavery or assimilated by the colonists, the various Guanches people disappeared, like their languages and their culture.

Christophe Colomb lived and there made stopover there during its voyage of discovered of America.

Economy

Approximately 2 million Canarians lives the 7 islands.

Of a soft climate, subtropical and sunny during all the year, profiting from singular landscapes marked by volcanicity, the Canaries are a tourist destination of very first plan (mainly in Tenerife, Lanzarote, Large Canarie). The tertiary sector accounts for 75% of the economy of the Canaries.

Industry is especially developed in the port activities and the refining of Pétrole (the " Refinería de Petróleo in Santa Cruz de Tenerife" is largest Raffinerie of Spain) and the agro-alimentary one.

Only 10% of the surface of the islands are cultivated with Céréale S, Vigne S, Tabac, Banane S, Tomate S and tropical fruits (lawyer S, mangos and Ananas). These products are exported primarily towards Spain and the European Union.

The archipelago accommodates 10.000.000 tourists per annum. Many chooses to plant their parasol in basaltic sands of Puerto of Cruz, with the Tenerife, largest of the 7 islands, whose wooded or desert landscapes never dissimulate the traces of volcanic angers of formerly. An enormous monument of nature, carved by wind erosion, is drawn up on the buttresses of the peak of the Teide, whose snow-covered top culminates to 3.718 Mr. the national park of Las Canadas, in Tenerife, exhibe thus its jewel. In the Canaries, according to altitude, the landscapes change brutally.

It seldom rains on Lanzarote, the island with the 300 volcanos, that where the fire of the ground runs to the strong current of the ground and côtoie water. The island was devastated on different occasions by eruptions which made sterile a great part: what is called the Malpais, the " bad pays". But its clever inhabitants succeeded in making there push Vigne S. the seedlings, nested in made powder craters of lava, are inserted with a sufficient depth so that the roots reach the arable ground. The night dew restores moisture with the stocks, while the low walls protect them from the wind. But one goes especially to Lanzarote to cross to back of camel the Montana del Fuego, the mountain of fire to the incandescent entrails, where one feels very near to these colossal telluric forces which haunt our subconscious since humanity exists

Palma, the pretty island , is greenest of the archipelago. If its center is occupied by one of the largest craters of world (28 km of perimeter, 9 km diameter and 800m of depth): will caldera of Taburiente on the walls of which runs torrential water, giant ferns, enormous pines push. Its fertile banks accommodate Bananeraie S luxuriant. Tomato S, Tobacco, Amande S pushes without effort on this island.

Fuerteventura, the second island of the archipelago by its size, is separated from Africa only by one thin corridor of sea where abound Sardine S and Thon S. the beach of Corralejo, from where emerges a concrete hotel, is surrounded by Saharan dunes modelled by the wind. Forte adventure owes its name with French, Jean de Béthencourt, which baptized it after having conquered it in the name of the king of Spain. It has the appearance of a desert: water misses cruelly in Fuerteventura (an island where all is beach, where all should one is sand say rather). Nowhere elsewhere, one with the illusion to be in the Sahara (moreover with some encablures from there only).

On the round island of Will gum It, to the exuberant vegetation, the terraces of the mountainous slopes go down in staircases to banks where Christophe Colomb approached. (Christophe Colomb made stopover in the Canaries with each one of its voyages in America). On this island, one can visit San Sebastian, small village pink and capital of but especially Garajonay, the first reserve of woodland bay-trees of the world Will gum.

Gran Canaria point of disjunction the international airport of Gando and the city Las Palmas, most important of the archipelago which is on the way to become a large metropolis with more than 400.000 inhabitants. One passes there without transition from the vast campaigns rich in Bananier S and Tomate S to the escarpés ravines of the volcanic Massif Central; stone plains to the cutting arètes with the sand beaches end, white, yellow or black; tops of almost 2.000 meters of Los Pechos (Centres) with the depths to will caldera of Bandama, an impressive crater extinguished, or heights of Agaete at the edges of the sea of Maspalomas, a tourist complex where the pigeons of the Africa neighbor come to seal their thirst in the lagoon.

Large fair with the blue eyes, only, the man does not appear to me at the same time in his place on this small boat which makes for the island of Hierro, most Western, southernmost and smallest of the Canaries, which the tourists hardly visit. This desiccated island hardly attracts today but the amateurs of loneliness and silence.


Malgrès a very strong tourist attraction, the workers of the Canary islands are less the paid goods of Spain with average wages lower than 1325€ Net monthly magazines.

Migratory current of the Africans

Main door of the European Union, the Canary islands received since the beginning of 2007 more than 4.700 clandestine. In 2006, the number of arrivals had reached 31.200 illegally unloaded people. Approximately 300 people would have perished at sea in 2006 during the crossing in Cayuco , boat traditional of the fishermen of the Senegal, of the 800 km separating the coasts from the Mauritania in the island of Tenerife.

This new sea route of illegal immigration developed since the intensifying of the control in the Straits of Gibraltar.

The European Union brought its financial support and material in Spain and the kingdom of Morocco to encourage them to fight effectively against this migratory current. Missions of police force of the agency " Frontex ") (arranges European of control of the borders external of the European Union) are regularly organized, like on the Spanish African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

Still 2006, the large majority of the sub-Saharan immigrants who arrived at the Canaries were transported towards lodging houses of the Iberian peninsula, for lack of agreement of repatriation with their countries of origin. After two months spent in a lodging house and provided with an inapplicable chart of expulsion, they were slackened in Spain. The majority took then the road towards the north of Europe. In 2007, Spain expelled 500 sub-Saharan immigrants. It legalized approximately 500.000 clandestine immigrants these last years.

The Ong Human Rights Watch (HRW) published on July 26th, 2007 a report entitled Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain' S Failure to Protect the Rights off Unaccompanied Migrating Children in the Canary Islands (annoying Responsibilities: Incapacity of Spain to protect the rights of the migrant children not accompanied in the Canary islands) where she denounces the detention conditions of the African migrant children made clandestinely at the the Canaries. Between 400 and 500 children are held in over-populated reception centres, with deplorable conditions of hygienes. they are underfed and undergo ill treatments and sexual harassments.

Codes

The Canary islands have as codes:

See too

External bonds

  • Mythology and Canary islands

  • Photographs of the Canaries on Flickr
  • Historia/Canarias/Navegación

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