La Palma — Island Of Volcanoes
The Benahoares and Their Exciting Island
I wrote about the history of these islands as I came to them (I lived in El Hierro, went on holiday to Gran Canaria, and then moved to La Gomera.) I apologise for any confusion, but:
This is not the order in which the Spanish conquered the islands, which matters now because I plan to write about them all.
A brief clarification of the historical background:
Spanish historians differentiate between two types of conquest. The first were Señorial conquests — by nobles and adventurers, supported by the crown of Castile. The first was Lanzarote (1402) by Jean de Bethancourt and Gadifer de la Salle; then Bethancourt conquered Fuerteventura and El Hierro in 1405.
Only the Bimbaches of El Hierro showed little resistance, mainly because they were few. From the 1420s, several attempts were made to conquer La Gomera this way, but Pedro de Vera, governor of Gran Canaria, eventually conquered it in 1488.
When Isabella of Castile married Fernando of Aragon in 1469, Spain was still fighting for the Reconquista to regain the Iberian peninsula for Christianity after nearly 800 years of Moorish rule. This would end with the surrender of Granada in 1492.
