La Palma and its Parador [brochure]

The First
On The Left
“The land to which you arrive and,
once there,
Folk Saying
LAP ALMA
And Its Parador
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his intense, full island has served as a refuge for climates and
ideologies, inhabited by many passionate people. But the bad
also anchored along these coasts, intrepid and unscrupulous adventurers,
in search of rumored treasure or slaves to sell beyond the Atlantic ocean,
or possibly even fishing grounds where ships could restock their provisions
–water, wood, nets, and other necessities for crossing the Atlantic depths.
These islanders are peculiar: peaceful, patient pacifists, but in certain
situations, when forced to be, intolerant. They are as cultured as they are
modestly proud. They know that their island is a treasure, and they know
how to respect and preserve it.
For this and many other reasons, La Palma is the first on the left.
Travelers will doubtless have numerous opportunities to see this for
themselves: ask at the Parador’s reception. Canary Islanders say, and so
does it seem, “To speak of the Canaries is to be unpardonably simplistic:
a stupidity appropriate to Visigoths and other anemic tourists plagued by
melancholy.”
It must be said that the islands, or better said, the archipelago, is a
collection of distinct things: you cannot compare apples and oranges. The
visitor will have had many opportunities to notice this, although it may
require a certain degree of concentration.
Because the weather turns cloudy on occasion, we have chosen an
getaway to the archipelago, in a much-needed and impulsive search for
the first island on the left: La Palma.
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Silent, heavily sweet, and covered in lava, its people have more than
enough reason and willingness to avoid leaning to the right, or even to the
center. From the beginning of time, its goods have belonged to the
community.
It is known that those first tribes were, nevertheless, hopeless sailors,
which may well explain the well-known differences and peculiar features
of the islands in physical appearance, political and social organization,
family structure, economies, and housing.
The women have never needed emancipation or embarrassing quotas;
they have always taken an equal part in wars and tournaments,
participating indiscriminately in other activities. La Palma was the first
democratic municipality of Spain. Her children have always had, and still
do have a special predilection for printing, illustration, and new things to
be absorbed, which at worst turn out to be rebellious and insolent.
The visitor should know, remember, or imagine that the peoples who
live here today dedicated themselves primarily to tending animals and
harvesting the abundant native produce.
Some learned scholars call these and other differences among the
Canary Islanders a lack of cultural unity in the archipelago. Be that as it
may, no one can deny that the Palmeros are especially generous: when
they want to give they do, naturally.
Their La Palma is more a paradise than a garden, created by a god who
today takes the form of a peaceful volcano.
It is not known how or when things
happened in the beginning, but there
must be something to the great
creation myth of the archipelago. Or
was Atlantis no more than a dream?
What is certain is that the legend
has never been refuted, not for lack of
rigorous studies with the same degree
of uncertainty as the theory of
continental shift, of Wagner and other
intellectual deliberations.
Atlantis could have been an
immense place set in the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean.
“They were very fertile lands,
inhabited by a noble race of strong
giants, the Atlantes, governed by an
even more enormous giant called Atlas.
But the king succumbed to the sin of
pride and sought to invade Europe. It
was a futile undertaking: they were
defeated by the gods of Olympus. The
just wrath of Zeus condemned the sixth
continent to disappear and forced Atlas
to undergo the punishment of holding up the Pillars of Hercules forever,
relieving the other god, who was at that time holding up the Straits.”
At the last moment, Atlas was able to see his last wish come true: “that
his name be given to the high African mountains as irrefutable evidence of
events”. There is also the Atlantic as further and more profound proof.
What a terrible shame if the truth turned out to be different!
This is not an insurmountable contradiction, as the possibility exists
that the first known settlers on the Fortunate Islands were already there
1,000 to 2,000 years before our time, although on La Palma there are
many archeological sites with cave engravings, attesting to remote and
unknown beginnings.
The assumption is that it was African blood that ran through the veins
of the first Guanche natives, and that Carthaginian raids left behind the
first to take advantage of the island’s agricultural resources, distant, safe,
and necessary for their raids.
They were not skilled fishermen, but they were good at gathering
shellfish and diving. They lived in family groups in natural or man-made
caves.
They were extremely egalitarian: plunder and harvest were carefully
distributed, to the point that a pregnant woman received a double ration.
The Palmeros had a very strange concept of property: robbing a
neighbor was reason for honor and distinction. Justice took the form of
personal revenge, and executioners enjoyed the right to asylum and full
immunity in the neighboring tribe.
Historians agree that for many centuries
the island was a generous and pleasant
oasis where survival was a superfluous and
idle concept. And so it was, until cultured
and civilizing European navigators arrived,
that is, ambitious men.
Unilateral relations with the continent
were taken up again with the rediscovery
of the archipelago by a certain Genoese
navigator who opened the eyes and
inflamed the ambitions of an intrepid
Norman.
Jean of Bethencourt happened to arrive
at Lanzarote, firing the starting gun of
conquest when the 15th century had
scarcely dawned. The Norman immediately
became a feudal lord of Enrique III of
Castile. In the end, the unifying Catholic
Monarchs would purchase the rights of the
conquest from the adventurers, and in
1481 a treaty would be signed bringing the
islands under the Crown of Castile.
Nevertheless, La Palma would not completely submit until 1492, a few
days before the glorious discovery of the New World.
Nor did they do so without a fight: the island’s last redoubt, the
breathtaking Taburiente Caldera –an area which deserve a leisurely stroll–
was defended by the legendary leader Tanausú. The native warrior could
only be defeated by ruses unworthy of the Castilian spirit. Humiliated and
offended, he refused to eat and eventually died not far from the crater.
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Parador De La Palma:
The Solitude Of The Sea
“This solitude of the sea,
which everywhere encircles us,
Miguel de Unamuno
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l fin, y por lo menos quedó todo irreversible y un mucho
positivo: las Islas dejaron atrás la Prehistoria para pasar a ser la
Castilla renacentista del Atlántico.
Llenaron estas tierras tinerfeñas gentes mucho más pacíficas. Colonos
de Sevilla, Cádiz y Huelva, sobre todo. Llegaron nuevos modos y modas y
costumbres diferentes. Se estrenaron ciudades: Santa Cruz, La Laguna, La
Orotava, Garachico, Icod, Hüimar.
Acudieron dineros extranjeros, al principio genoveses. Nacieron casas y
calles; iglesias y palacios que el viajero ya conoce y reconoce como suyas
.Floreció un mudéjar singular y de hechuras ejemplares. Las ciudades
fueron trazadas con cordel, al estilo que hoy queremos llamar americano.
Serían isleños los fundadores de Montevideo, de San Antonio de Texas...
Por fin, vino llegando todo muy de prisa y, afortunadamente, muy
mezclado, como suelen ser los tiempos que en vaivenes que la prosperidad
reboza. Tenerife y otras islas volvieron a recuperar su perdido paraíso; esta
vez dibujado con colores de fiscalidades protectoras y crecederas .Con
impuestos hasta mucho más pequeños de los que gozaba la propia
Andalucía. Serían así estas las afortunadas “Islas del Azúcar”, cuando
estos guanches, nunca del todo castellanos cultivaban, mediado el siglo
XVI, la caña traída de los vecinos de Madeira, en tantos como doce ingenios
y de tanta y tan agotadora actividad que hasta de la ayuda de esclavos
importados precisaron.
Llegarían todavía mayores alegrías económicas cuando, un buen día, las
cinturas de este Teide, por el momento sólo adormiladas, amanecieron
adornadas de unas vides que harían el vino “Malvasía” el más famoso y
cotizado caldo de unos tiempos que duraron, al menos, dos centurias.
Británicos, flamencos, franceses, italianos, españoles y hasta la incipiente
colonia americana tenía a gala brindar con “malvasía”. Tan jugoso fue el
negocio que despertó graves envidias de otras islas y la incontinencia
codiciosa de Inglaterra que aquí se vino a establecer con frustrados
intentos de apropiarse del comercio bodeguero.
Estas playas y estos puertos recibieron numerosas e incómodas visitas
de piratas y corsarias potencias extranjeras. Hasta el propio Nelson en
persona, aunque acabaría con el rabo entre las piernas y un brazo de
menos. Fue, cuando ya por poco amanecía el siglo xviii, una guerra de
redundantes cortesías: Si el Almirante hizo saber que “mi mayor deseo es
que ningún isleño sufra las consecuencias de mi petición de rendición”.
Los fieros defensores guanches, tras su victoria concedieron que “las
tropas sean embarcadas con todas sus armas y sus botes. Y que se
obliguen a no molestar al pueblo los navíos de la escuadra británica...”
Más o menos por entonces, la isla ya gozaba de las bellas maneras y el
singular aspecto que hoy enseña al viajero :templos, palacios, casas
señoriales y una naturaleza verbenera –virgen todavía de turistas– para el
venerable asombro de tan ilustres visitantes como Humboldt, inmortal
naturalista y primer consagrados de La Orotava: “...confieso no haber visto
en parte alguna un cuadro más variado, de más atractivo y más hermoso
por la distribución de las masas de verdura y rocas que el Valle de La
Orotava; ni siquiera después de haber recorrido las orillas del Orinoco, las
cordilleras del Perú...”
Aparecen todavía restos suficientes de las casas que blasonaron estas
calles. El barroco de la iglesia de la Concepción; la Casa de los Balcones,
construcción del XVII, que atesora hoy una sugerente colección de artesanía
canaria.
A dos mil ciento cuarenta metros se alza este Parador de Las Cañadas
del Teide dentro del Parque Nacional, en un escenario bellísimo e
irrepetible. El Teide, sosegados sus eructos desde el siglo xvii, comenzó a
ser ya el pacífico milagro que el caminante puede degustar a lomos, tal
vez, del teleférico con parada, fonda y panorama por sí mismo
sorprendente desde el Parador de Turismo.
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The Parador Kitchen
“…for sweet things, the Canary Islands
Luis de Góngora
a Palma is definitely not a gourmet’s paradise, but neither is its
cuisine to be sniffed at, as long as you look off the beaten path.
The traveler will easily find pleasing local dishes outside of the
normal tourist areas.
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The fish is abundant and excellent: Grouper, Perch, Bream,
Conger Eel, Tuna, Octopus, and different types of mollusk. Above all,
if you choose but one fish, let it be la vieja, a variety of sea bream, and
the local specialty par excellence. It will not disappoint.
Try the Vegetable Soup with watercress, cabbage, and zucchini; one
of the Casseroles or the Canary Islands’ own unique Puchero Stew.
Meat is for those who can manage with whatever is available – mainly
Pork, Rabbit and Goat, frequently marinated or Salmorejo, a sweet and
spicy pepper sauce, and always with potatoes. Look for out-of-the-way
places with surprising and excellent stews, like Goat in Sauce, which can
be served for dinner or as a Tapa. Locals tend to prefer one of the many
Churrasquerías, which serve barbequed meats.
With everything, and anytime, you will find Gofio, a type of polenta
bread made with wheat flour or toasted corn. The inseparable companion
of all foods is a dipping sauce called Mojo. Mojo Palmero is a
concoction made of dried peppers, garlic, oil, and cumin. Mojo Verde is
colored with green pepper.
There are many potato dishes, such as the Escachón, made with
cheese, lard, mojo verde, and other ingredients; or Borrallera, where the
potato is roasted in sand, ideally volcanic.
There are delightful desserts much appreciated by the sweetest tooths:
Almendrado, Almond Macaroons; Marquesotes Cookies;
Alfajores Cakes; Queso de Almendras, an almond candy.
Nor should we neglect to mention the excellent Goat Cheese, or a wine
worthy of heroes and gods. Might Malmsey not be the nectar of Mount
Olympus or Atlantis?
SECRET RECIPES
GOFIO ESCALDADO
Gofio escaldado is a traditional stew on many of the islands. It contains
polenta and potatoes, pumpkin and sweet potato, and salted meat. The
result is unique and delicious.
MARQUESOTES
Eggs, sugar, flour, leavening agent, ground cinnamon, and grated green
lemon.
Handicrafts, Whims,
Or Special Purchases
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or those who love to buy gifts and souvenirs from wherever they
visit, Embroidery, Black Pottery, and Cigars are
recommended.
The locals use very different types embroidery stitch: Richelieu,
Herringbone, Relief, and Drop Stitch. They are truly exquisite.
The potters still mold their pieces as their ancestors did. They use a
black clay from Tijarafe or Puntagorda and mix it with black sand.
They do not use a potter’s wheel. After letting the pieces dry for several
days, they are decorated and baked.
It is well-known that La Palma’s Cigars are magnificent. Experts say
that this is due to the island’s microclimate: excellent tobacco is grown,
and there are workshops where cigars are still made by hand. It is said
that when Winston Churchill visited the island, he was sure not to leave
without a few handfuls of the excellent cigars.
Traveling
At Leisure
a Palma is rich in scenery, frequently breathtaking. It may be
green, but intense and exciting, or of many colors: from sepia to
black, passing through a whole spectrum of reds and browns.
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Visitors will relax as they travel through the magic of this tiny
continent, inspiration for the informalism of the painter Manolo Millares, a
La Palma native enchanted by his island and by pre-Hispanic Canary
Island motifs. His incredible “hessian and homunculus” series of is
exhibited in museums far from his beloved island.
Many sites deserve special legal protection: Taburiente Crater, the
Canal and Los Tilos, Cumbre Vieja and Teneguía, the beach in
Nogales, the river ravine, and several others. No one who visits La Palma
should leave without having seen Taburiente Crater.
A visit is the best way to grasp the immense difficulties encountered by
the men of Alonso Fernández de Lugo in maneuvering through this
tangled skein of impossible trails, forests, and streams. Few places in the
world compare with Taburiente Crater, whose many streams and torrents
build and erode this circle of peaks around eight kilometers in diameter.
Along its paths, it is easy to forget which century you are living in. This
is an encounter with a fantasy world of geological formations which evoke
remote epochs, interrupted by pure water, and surrounded by the remains
of volcanic explosions.
Taburiente Crater is today a National Park, which also includes the
headwaters of Angustias Ravine, and the south side of Bejenado and
part of Riachuelo Ravine. Recommendations for hikers and visitors are
vitally important: protect yourself from sunstroke, and wear appropriate
clothing and shoes (sports or hiking).
It is advisable to go with a guide, who, as well as providing you with
more information on the park, will be prepared to deal with any problems
which may arise.
Los Llanos de Aridane is the second-largest city on the island. It has
an exceptional climate, and a shady square where one can sit under giant
laurel trees. The Carnival celebrations here are well-known. The beaches
of Tacoronte received the first invader, Alonso Fernández de Lugo.
The area offers excellent fish, which must be tried if the opportunity
arises. Gourmets, whether or not they like bananas, should know the best
bananas on the archipelago are grown in Los Llanos.
Canary Island Wrestling
It will be immediately obvious that this island has everything: beaches
and art, mountaintops and caves, handicrafts and gastronomy. There are
people and houses and pleasant things that the traveler will be enchanted to
stumble upon. Not for naught is it said that La Palma was the favorite
island of the Guanches.
If you have the slightest opportunity to see a Canary Island wrestling
match, do not miss it. It is an ancient sport, which appears to have been
handed down from the first settlers on the archipelago. Locals say that the
sport, which is gaining popularity, emphasizes nobility and art. Palmeros
are proud of the fact that their island has always produced great wrestlers.
The islet is made up of two very different regions. The north, from El
Paso to Garafía, is marked with deep ravines where the traveler’s vertigo
is soothed by green forests.
El Paso is a lovely place. It is called the City of a Thousand Almond
Trees, and is a haven for painters and craftsmen. The residents show a
visible pride in their city. For many years they have harvested and worked
silk, from silkworm to embroidery.
The south, as far as Fuencaliente, is a younger land of domesticated
dryness. There are volcanoes with legends and history, such as Tacante,
whose loudest and most threatening eruption took place in 1490, doubtless
in protest against the Goths’ arrival.
Other sites include Tijarafe, Punta Gorda, Barlovento,
Fuencaliente, Puntallana, and as many other places as any visitor
might want to see. We suggest another way to orient yourself, following the
coasts:
Tajuya, Charco and Teneguía are all threatening – and beautiful.
The traveler will notice that the land is more welcoming to flowers than
to unusual animal species. The enthusiast will already be aware of this.
Up to 70 native plant varieties can be found, such as the Dragon Tree,
capable of such a long life that more than one of those still standing
witnessed the arrival of the first caravels. The forests of laurisilva are a
sight unique in the world.
The east coast extends from the lighthouse at Punta Cumplida and
Punta de las Salineras, and includes the island’s capital.
The mouth of San Juan Ravine, between La Puntilla and Cercado
Grande is a protected natural area. In its interior there is an interesting
example of a gorge between ravines.
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Nogales Ravine marks the arrival of the Sauces y Puntallana
Nature Reserve at the sea. The area contains a wide variety of plants.
Near Santa Lucia Point is the best area on the island to see the giant
cardon cactus. The capital, Santa Cruz, is next to Caldereta volcano.
To the south of the capital is Conception Crag. Bajamar beach belongs
to the municipality of Breñas Altas, a site of great historical value.
The south coast
Next to the tip of the saltworks is Azufre Mountain, with a cliff on
one side. Los Roques de Anaga are a clear example of coastal land
reclaimed from the sea in recent times, in the area of Lomo Gordo.
The southern vertex of the island belongs to the municipality of
Fuencaliente, protected by Cumbre Vieja y Teneguía Nature
Reserve, whose cliffs are home to many birds of prey.
The volcanoes of Cumbre Vieja, to the south of Taburiente Crater
experience frequent eruptions. In the far south is Fuencaliente’s
Lighthouse and Faro Beach.
The west coast stretches from Punta del Banco to Punta del Mudo.
The first section is cultivated and dotted with farmhouses, the beaches of
Guincho, Remo, Puerto Naos appearing in succession.
Bombilla beach, in Tazacorte, is heavily involved in banana
production and has an important fishing port. To one side of the port is
the mouth of Angustias Ravine, which leads to Taburiente Crater.
High cliffs continue towards the north. Jorobado Ravine comes to an
end at the beach of the same name.
Past Serradero Point begins the protected coast of Puntagorda.
From Santo Domingo Point to Mudo Point the coastline is dramatic.
The North Coast
Virtually the entire coast is made up of cliffs. The limits of the village of
Barlovento are marked by Franceses Ravine.
The area between Las Maderas and Punta Gaviota is a natural
reserve, protected due to its landscape and morphology.
For the most curious travelers, we should note that the lesser monarch
butterfly lives among the milk thistles, together with sea birds and birds of
prey.
Parador de La Palma
Carretera de El Zumacal, s/n. 38720 Breña Baja. Isla de La Palma
Tel.: 922 43 58 28 - Fax: 922 43 59 99
e-mail: lapalma@parador.es
Reservation Center
Requena, 3. 28013 Madrid (España)
Tel.: 902 54 79 79 - Fax: 902 52 54 32
www.parador.es / e-mail: reservas@parador.es
Text: Miguel García Sánchez Design: Fernando Aznar
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