There are scientific studies that prove that the human brain, with three lines drawn without joining together, is able to see a triangle and fill in the spaces. They say it is a survival mechanism from when we lived outdoors to recognize the face of possible predators hidden in the undergrowth. This mechanism operates in the minds of archaeologists; where a countryman only sees remains of walls, earth and bags of rubble, they see substrates of history of what could have been, for example, the passage of five centuries of a city, its oldest streets and the people who lived or poorly lived there. , even those people who do not appear in history books with names, much less surnames.
This report begins in what is known as North Solar of the Cathedral of Santa Ana, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. For those who pass by there daily, it is a mystery, a blank space on the city map, right next to one of its most emblematic buildings. For all this, archaeologist Marco Moreno and his team from Tibicena are working to fill in the blank spaces in History so that everyone knows that this space belongs to the city and is owed to it.
There are about 110,000 people with the surname Santana in Spain at the moment. 70% are in the province of Las Palmas, 3% in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and 2% in Huelva. “And they all leave here, from this ground we are on,” Moreno tells this editorial team, without releasing a blue folder that gives an account of everything he explains. The cradle of foundlings (orphans given to the beneficence and charity of the Church) is created in the city in 1648because they were usually left on the street, at the door of the Bishopric and many appeared bitten by dogs or other animals. From the moment they are welcomed, they adopt the surname of the adjacent cathedral, Santa Ana, and its acronym Santana.
You have to go back to 1481. In that year Martín González de Navarra died, leaving a pious order in his will; he bequeaths all his resources, money, houses and others, for the construction of a hospital for poor solemnity. This hospital would be the first of its kind in the Canary Islands and would be served from the Cathedral.
From that moment on, the history of Solar Norte seems to be doomed to a swing of hostility and return to light, a dynamic that continues to this day and which Tibicena intends to end with patience. “This should be open to the public, when we are working and we open the East door, people stare at how we work.”
Thanks to a drawing by Pedro Agustín del Castillo from 1668 we guess what the remains that we see today of the hospital, a church, and several rooms looked like in 3D. “We know that the hospital was divided: there was a building for men, a building for women, but at the same time it also had a chair for the grain warehouse, a mill, an orchard, and a cemetery.”
At the end of 17th century The completion of the works on the Cathedral must necessarily involve deciding the fate of the North Solar with the completion of a transept, and an important detail: “they wanted to make a church of the tabernacle, the place where the Eucharist is kept. It is usually a chapel, which sometimes functions as a parish. In fact, in the cathedral of Seville there is an interior parish that is the church of the Sagrario. And this is the Sevillian model and it was planned here.”
It is then that the Church takes ownership of the plot of land. late 18th century. “There is also a lawsuit between two engineers; the Sevillian engineer Miguel Hermosilla y Carvajal, who comes here to see the defense of the city and was commissioned to draw up a plan for the Sagrario church. The ecclesiastics, let’s say, interfere with the engineer’s approach and he gets angry and leaves.”
Then enter the scene Diego Nicolás Eduardo Villarrealwho was a horiundo rationero from Los Realejos, and was already part of the curia of the Catholic Church. Out of curiosity and lowering his tone of voice a little, Moreno points out that “his plan looks very similar to that of Hermosilla” and that he believes that the Sevillian was right for his anger. But, he warns that Diego Nicolás Eduardo “was good, he built the church of Gáldar, a guy who came to do important things.” So Diego Nicolás plans a building on the north lot, begins construction, finishes it, so to speak, but he dies in 1798. His work is continued, in some way, by the sculptor. Lujan Perezwho is the one who, following Diego Nicolás’ plan, manages to close everything that we see from the outside today. Luján Pérez, based on these plans, imagined a church of the Sagrario, but death, stubborn and at that time impassive, found him in 1815.
The mystery of what is going to happen to the Solar Norte, in the second half of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, transcends the press of the time and meanwhile serves as an arsenal for the Cuban war, as a carpentry shop, as a biology workshop. and even to house a zoo.
In 1819, with the division of the diocese of the Canary Islandsbetween the Nivariense and the Canariensis, there is a decrease in flows for the manufacture of what is proposed to finish the Cathedral. In 1821fully immersed in the Liberal Triennium, Cathedrals are prohibited from having associated parishes for economic reasons and the Sagrario church project is abandoned.
The mystery of what is going to happen to Solar Norte, in the second half of the 19th century and first decades of the 20thtranscends the press of the time and meanwhile serves as an arsenal for the Cuban war, a biology workshop, a nursery and was even planned to house a zoo.
An entire century of unexecuted proposals
It is in 1902 when Father Cueto asks to resume work to carry out the works on the Sagrario church. “In the newspapers of that time, the claims of the mayors are recorded, first by Hurtado de Mendoza (1925) and by Federico León (1928) to give it a public use, in this case a plaza where all that space would be used,” explains Moreno. . Later, the site continued to be used in a different way, being rented as mechanical carpentry, “with fire included”, destroying part of the stained glass windows on the north face. “Even, Bishop Marquina Seeing the needs and economic situation of the city during the First World War, he proposed the construction of twelve homes to provide employment to the city’s needy.
None of those ideas took root. On the other hand, other voices, such as that of Fray Lesco, speaking on behalf of Néstor Martín de la Torre, proposed in 1928 the construction of a garden cloister, taking advantage of the existing walls, which would complement perfectly with the future diocesan museum, but the post-war economy was not for those trots.
The year has to come 1953 so that Secundino Suazo, who had arrived in the city years before to create a new urban planning plan, is invited by the City Council to expand the tabernacle chapel, with the construction of a baptistery and an archive. We would have to wait for 1962 so that a “substitute” for Suazo’s initial work can be built, which was paralyzed after a harsh social protest, led by journalist Benítez Inglott, who, in a frontal attack, calls the newly built factory “El adefesio.”
“Fábregas, already knew that the foundations built by Diego Nicolás Eduardo from the end of the 18th century were going to appear. What was not expected was the rest. The excavation that began on July 9, 2001, between the ringing of the bells, modified again the course of the North Solar,” the archaeologist continues explaining
Marcos Moreno
— Tibicena archaeologist
After the dictatorship, in 1979 The restoration of the Cathedral is approved by Salvador Fábregas who directs the work until its completion in 1998. “In this period of optimism,” says Moreno, “is where funds and interest appear in recovering the old cathedral building.” Francisco Caballero Mújica, Dean at that time, proposed in 1987the completion of the Cathedral, with a view to the year of 1992. However, a liturgical building is not proposed, but rather a sociocultural center that would provide services to the civil and religious community. The architect materialized his classicist proposal in a model that was presented publicly in 1991. “That indicated the manifest destiny of the Solar, creating a kind of indelible future imprint that had to be completed. That was the destiny of the Solar and no other.”
However, despite the fact that the Caja de Canarias de Enconces would finance the work and that the permits were available, even with two negative reports against its execution (from the ULPGC and the Vegueta-Triana Commission), the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria approved its completion, with all the blessings of the intervening administrations, but they did not have powerful detail: the excavation work would begin as required by compliance with the new heritage lawwhich by fate, was published the same day that the completion of the Fábregas project was approved by the Government of the Canary Islands. “Fábregas, I already knew that the foundations built by Diego Nicolás Eduardo from the late 18th century were going to appear. What was not expected was the rest. The excavation began on July 9, 2001, between the ringing of the bells, once again modified the course of the North Solar,” the archaeologist continues to explain.
“In one of his stories, Galdós talked about the Manca Cathedral, we believe that it is not manca, but mute, or even gagged.”
Marco Moreno
— Tibicena archaeologist
In 2007with the recently deceased José Miguel Pérez being president of the Cabildo, the State was able to finance a large archaeological excavation through the Ministry of Culture, with the aim of rescuing the place from oblivion, recalibrating the process and now having as protagonists, “the same archaeological remains that others saw as a problem, coinciding, furthermore, with the will of Bishop Cases. The excavations carried out in 2010 doubled the historical interest of the place.”
The heart of the city
The North Solar hides, although it is impossible to know it with the naked eye, the memory of five centuries in about fifty steps. There is, in Moreno’s words “kilometer zero of the city”, the oldest buildings in the city, but also funerary remains, of nameless Santaneros who never thought that history would allow them to transcend and, now, almost 14 years laterthe Cabildo of Gran Canaria once again takes the initiative together with Monsignor José Mazuelos, to give the last push to this space, and transform it into an archaeological park urban, which allows knowledge of the Cathedral and this Solar, and its relationship with the past development of this city. “In one of his stories, Galdós talked about the Cathedral with a Manca, we believe that it is not disabled, but rather mute, or even gagged,” says Marco Moreno, taking advantage of that maxim that is already a popular saying when something takes a while to come to fruition. “The cathedral of Santa Ana, it is the same today as it is tomorrow.”
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