Museo Canario — Attraction in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

It is pity that every visitor cannot be made to visit this museum. It is fascinating for both what it says, what it does not say and what it misleads. What is does do is give an intriguing understanding of why the Canaries are like they are today. In most places, the islands are moonscapes as soon as you are more than 200 metres from the shore, packed with tourist hotels less than 200 metres from the shore.

It is worth starting with a quote. Pliny, an eminent Roman citizen, visited the islands 2,000 years ago and wrote, “they all have an abundant supply of fruit and of birds of every kind, Canaria also abounds in palm-groves bearing dates and in conifers; that in addition to this there is a large supply of honey, and also papyrus grows in the rivers, and sheat-fish [a type of cat fish]”. (Translation by H. Rackham, first published 1942). So how did these lush tropical islands become a complete desert or moonscape?

The invasion of the Canary Islands in the 15th century was driven by greed, mainly in the form of slaves and wood. Then, the islands were covered in the coveted Canary wood, (also known as Centrolobium) which is a type of hardwood that is now native to South America. The colonialists ruthlessly cut down all the Canary wood as well as most other types, transporting it all to Spain for ship building. Hence the moonscape-type islands we see today were created by the Spanish colonialists. (The Canary government, in fairness to them, are trying to replant the islands but it is a massive job.)

Most experts agree that the Guanches arrived in the Canary Islands from Africa in the first or second century BC. These first inhabitants of Tenerife and the other Canary Islands lived in caves, which probably offered excellent accommodation as caves are cool in summer and warm in the winter. The Guanches also had knowledge about geometric symbolism and carried out the embalming and mummification of their dead, as well as drilling the skulls of the living. What they were not is aborigines as the museum keeps referring to them. Neither were they desert dwellers as the museum portrays them.

But then another motive of Spanish colonialism was to spread Catholicism. The virtual genocide of the Guanches during the invasion by the Spaniards is, by implication, portrayed by the museum - looks at the thousands of skulls. Perhaps it is time for the museum to introduce a more balanced view of Canarian history, as opposed to the version of the Spanish colonialists currently, in large part, portrayed. Go to the museum and make your...

.

It could have been SO much better!

I like museums, because I like learning things. I like to read all the labels and gather the information.

Yes, I know that I gather it and then lose it, as I can never remember most of it, but I still like the gathering.

This museum was disappointing. The information was scarce in any language but Spanish - not a problem for me - but what information was actually given was not very useful. There were cases and cases of broken bits of something-or-other. The information given was Where it had been found, When it had been found, but never What exactly it probably was and How exactly it was used and Why. Seeing something and being told it had been dug up in October 1965 in the town of X was of no interest to me.

And cases and cases of skulls? They would have done better to select three or four that were representative of different epochs or geographical origins, and explain carefully the differences and similarities, and give an idea why. A Guanche skull from 8 centuries ago, comparing its features with a Berber skull from N Africa today, for example.

Slightly more interesting was the large model of a dwelling, but I am going to be picky here too. They showed the roof, with branches - thinnish ones, not tree-trunks - making a base for the roof. On top were placed flat stones.

But the stones were totally out of scale. Measuring them against the human figures, they would have been so heavy that it would have been almost impossible for the builders to lift them, without technology, onto the roof. And then the weight would have brought them immediately crashing down through the fragile roof supports.

This was so clearly unscientific that it annoyed me almost as much as the couldn't-care-don't-care attitude of the lady at the front desk, who could barely take her eyes off her smartphone to give us our change when we bought our tickets, and, later on, when I asked where the lavatory was, didn't even bother to raise her eyes or even open her mouth - just gave an airy wave of her hand.

The museum is, however, situated in an attractive part of the town - go and visit the Mercado de la Vegueta if you are there one morning - a wonderful bustling produce market. Much more fun than this rather...

A nice little museum about the history of the Guanches, before the Spanish conquest of the island, with precious and intriguing artefacts that attest to the arts, crafts and daily life of the original inhabitants. It's a real shame that 95 % of the texts are only in Spanish, and that most also look like they've been hanging there for at least 30 years. There's a new audioguide in English but you have to listen on your phone, so be sure to bring a headphone because we didn't... Oddly, there doesn't seem to be much actual 'history' told. I didn't notice any dates or periodisation on any of the artefacts - not even on highlights of the collection, like the Idol of Tara. These literally could date from any time between 500 BC and 1500 AD. It feels like the Guanches are imagined to have been cavemen, and that the pre-Hispanic history of the island is one big blur. No attention seems to be paid to the conquest and colonization of the island. This kind of historical scrunity and nuance might be available to Spanish-speaking visitors, but it definitely isn't to foreigners. The room containing the skull collection attests very clearly to the 19th-century ethnographic collection the museum grew out of, when 'scientists' were obsessed with differentiating Canarian races on the basis of cranial measurements and such. It sometimes feels like the museum is still rooted in that time period and thought. The top of the cabinets is lined with busts - apparently life casts made of subjects of various ethnicities, likely also made out of ethnographic interest. Again, I found no explanation or contextualisation for these busts. I hope the museum will invest in new, multilingual information panels that contextualize and historicize the collection, and that explain how views of the Guanches have evolved over time. Now, you leave with more questions than answers, and especially as a tourist, you ultimately...