The Provincial Council promoted in November 1878 the road between Arrecife and Haría, demanded by the municipalities in full subsistence crisis. Three years later, the Ministry of Development put out to tender one of its sections, although its completion would still be the subject of claims during the following decade.
The road between Arrecife and Haría was one of the most significant projects for the modernization of Lanzarote's land communications during the 19th century. Its construction responded to a need that went far beyond facilitating travel: it aimed to connect the main population centers, promote the transport of goods, and help alleviate the economic difficulties of a society marked by precariousness and isolation.
The claim had been ongoing for years. On April 4, 1876, the Haría City Council and the island's other municipal corporations proposed requesting funding from the Ministry of Development to build this infrastructure. The proposal responded to a particularly worrying situation, where the lack of employment aggravated the subsistence difficulties of numerous families. The road was therefore seen as a necessary investment to improve communications and, at the same time, generate job opportunities.
The initiative gained greater urgency in the following years. Lanzarote was going through a deep economic crisis, aggravated by drought, agricultural losses, and the deterioration of agricultural activity. The decline in income from cochineal, one of the products that had sustained a large part of the island's economy, intensified the difficulties of a population that depended heavily on agriculture. The lack of resources and employment turned emigration into an alternative for those who could not find sufficient means to remain in their towns.
In that context, public works acquired a social dimension. Road construction offered the possibility of improving communications and providing daily wages to workers who lacked employment. Local administrations demanded investments capable of alleviating the situation of their residents and reducing the isolation of an island where traditional roads continued to condition the transport of people and products.
On November 9, 1878, the Provincial Council adopted an agreement related to the construction of the road from Arrecife to Haría. The reference is included in the study by Carmen Julia Hernández Hernández, "Anotaciones a una crisis: hambre y miseria en Lanzarote y Fuerteventura (1878)," published in the II Conference on the History of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. The author identifies the procedure as the approval of the report by the Superior Authority, an administrative step forward in the process of a long-demanded infrastructure.
The road was designed to connect the island's capital with the northern municipality, passing through Teguise and Los Valles. The route responded to an evident territorial need: to facilitate the connection between Arrecife and the inland towns, bring the agricultural areas closer to the main commercial center, and improve transportation on an island where distances and terrain conditions made travel difficult.
A construction that was delayed for years
The road was not built immediately. The administrative processing and the execution of its different sections were prolonged for years, as demonstrated by the documentation later published by the Ministry of Public Works. On October 24, 1881, the Gaceta de Madrid announced the public auction of the works for the second section of the road from the port of Arrecife to Haría via Teguise. The contract budget amounted to 129,580 pesetas and eight cents, and the call set the following November 23 for the auction to be held.
The official announcement allows us to confirm the progress of the project within the State Administration and to know the economic dimension of one of its phases. The bidding included the submission of offers in both Madrid and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, as well as establishing the conditions and guarantees required of the contractors. The initiative had thus moved from municipal demands and administrative procedures to a specific phase of contracting the works.
However, the execution continued to be marked by delays and by the lack of completion of some sections. A decade later, the Lanzarote press was still demanding the completion of the road. The newspaper El Horizonte, published in Arrecife between 1887 and 1889, made this issue one of its recurring demands. Its pages denounced that the fourth section was still missing and demanded that the pending works be included in the next budgets, considering it insufficient to have a road that was not completely finished.
These demands appeared in different issues of the publication during 1887 and 1888. The debate transcended the infrastructure itself and reflected the discontent over the distribution of public investments in the archipelago. From Lanzarote, greater institutional attention was demanded for the needs of the eastern islands, which continued to suffer from significant deficiencies in their land and port communications.
The press thus became a space for expressing the aspirations of a society that saw public works as an opportunity for economic transformation. The road from Arrecife to Haría symbolized this expectation of progress: connecting towns, facilitating agricultural and commercial activity, and reducing the difficulties that had conditioned the lives of the inhabitants of northern Lanzarote for generations.
Its history reflects the difficulties the island faced in equipping itself with basic infrastructure in a period of scarce resources and profound social needs. From the first municipal initiatives to the journalistic demands for the completion of the works, the project was marked by a prolonged wait and the need to keep the demand alive before the institutions.
The agreement of November 9, 1878, became linked to an aspiration that went far beyond building a road. For the northern towns, having better communications meant getting closer to the capital, facilitating the export of their products, and opening up new development possibilities. In a time of hunger, unemployment, and emigration, that road also represented the hope of overcoming isolation and improving the living conditions of the population.
DOCUMENTARY AND BIBLIOGRAPHIC SOURCES
• Hernández Hernández, Carmen Julia. "Annotations to a crisis: hunger and misery in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura (1878)". II Conference on the History of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, vol. I, 1990, pp. 473-494.
• Gaceta de Madrid, no. 297, October 24, 1881. Ministry of Development. Announcement of the auction of the works of the second section of the road from the port of Arrecife to Haría via Teguise.
• Fajardo Spínola, Francisco. "Lanzarote a century ago: a reading of the newspaper El Horizonte (1887-1889)". II Conference on the History of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, vol. I, 1990.
• Perera Betancort, Francisca María. History of water in Lanzarote. Documentary reference on the municipal request for road financing in 1876.
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