Before the press consolidated as an informative activity, the first newspapers in Arrecife revealed the contradictions of a society in transformation: day laborers who earned less than pack animals, families forced to emigrate, disputes over the right to receive burial, subscribers who abandoned a publication due to its opinions, and projects to turn a small island port into an Atlantic stopover.
There are stories that do not usually occupy the pages of great historical accounts, but which survive in the yellowed copies of newspapers. They do not necessarily speak of presidents, wars, or grand inaugurations, but of people who could barely live from their work, merchants who dreamed of opening Lanzarote to the world, neighbors in conflict over religious matters, and a population seeking solutions to problems that, in some cases, are still recognizable.
During the second half of the 19th century, Arrecife began to produce its own newspapers. These publications were not limited to transmitting news: they also debated, denounced unjust situations, defended interests, and reflected the transformations of a society that was trying to find its place in the archipelago. Their pages allow us to discover a much more complex Lanzarote than traditional chronologies suggest, marked by the contrast between poverty and aspirations for progress, the weight of customs and the arrival of new ideas, economic dependence and the desire to open up to the outside world.
The first surprise is found even before the island had a printing press.
A handwritten newspaper for an island that wanted a voice
In the summer of 1858, El Crisol began to circulate in Arrecife, a handwritten publication that was passed from hand to hand among its readers. The necessary conditions for establishing a printing industry in Lanzarote did not yet exist, but a group of people found a way to produce a newspaper without printing machinery.
Its eight issues, distributed between July 25 and October 25 of that year, included local news, ship movements, prices, festivals, judicial events, and literary contributions. It was a modest, though significant, initiative: it demonstrated that there was an interest in generating and sharing information from an island perspective.
Three years later, that aspiration acquired a new dimension. Miguel Miranda's printing press arrived in Arrecife aboard the schooner Villalva on November 8, 1860. On February 16, 1861, Crónica de Lanzarote appeared, the island's first printed newspaper, which would reach 105 issues.
Beyond the arrival of the machinery, what was truly significant was what came next: Arrecife began to produce information regularly, to debate its needs, and to claim its own role in the economic and cultural life of the archipelago.
The denunciation that portrayed the poverty of the workers
Among the most revealing testimonies of that early press is a denunciation that breaks with the image of a nineteenth-century society concerned exclusively with trade and navigation.
In the editorials published on November 30 and December 7, 1861, corresponding to issues 42 and 43, Crónica de Lanzarote described the deterioration of the living conditions of day laborers. Its editors denounced that the prices of essential goods and rents had increased, while wages fell to between four and five reales per day.
The comparison used was particularly forceful: the newspaper stated that a pack animal could earn double that of a day laborer working the same hours. It was not a simple observation about wages, but a denunciation of the social and economic consideration received by those who lived by their work.
The publication proposed the creation of a workers' association financed through fees and donations, which would function as a mutual aid fund. The initiative aimed to provide assistance to those facing economic difficulties and to ensure that its members received a dignified burial.
Those pages allow us to recover a social reality that rarely occupies the center of the narratives about nineteenth-century Lanzarote: that of those who sustained a large part of the island's economy with their effort, but had few resources to meet the most basic needs.
An island that was leaving: emigration as a response to precariousness
Emigration also occupied a prominent place among the concerns of the early Arrecife press.
In April 1862, Crónica de Lanzarote described the departure of inhabitants to America as an increasingly frequent phenomenon. Behind those trips were difficult decisions: leaving behind family, personal relationships, and birthplace to seek opportunities that the island's economy could not always offer.
Drought, agricultural difficulties, and the fragility of economic activities contributed to explaining that reality. However, emigration cannot be reduced to a single cause nor attributed exclusively to poor harvests. It was the result of a combination of economic and social circumstances that affected numerous households.
In this regard, the newspaper constitutes direct testimony of how its contemporaries perceived a phenomenon that would profoundly mark the history of Lanzarote.
The port that could change the island's destiny
While a part of the population endured serious economic difficulties, the commercial and intellectual sectors of Arrecife defended an ambitious project: to improve the conditions of Puerto Naos and take advantage of Lanzarote's geographical position to attract ships traveling the Atlantic routes.
The editorials of Crónica de Lanzarote called for actions to facilitate the entry and exit of ships, improve navigation conditions, and promote the movement of goods. In issue number 5, published on March 16, 1861, the newspaper expressly addressed the port's needs and called for improvements that would allow its activity to develop.
The proposal reflected a conception of island development that went beyond port infrastructure. For those editors, Arrecife's economic future also depended on its ability to participate in commercial exchanges and take advantage of the possibilities offered by its situation in the Atlantic.
The port was not just a space for loading and unloading, but a fundamental piece in the capital's modernization aspirations.
Twenty-three subscribers left a newspaper due to a controversy
Almost three decades later, another publication would demonstrate the extent to which the press could become a stage for social confrontations.
El Horizonte, directed by Leandro Fajardo Cabrera, began to be published in May 1887. Its pages addressed economic, cultural, educational, and political issues from a liberal orientation that did not always find a favorable reception among the more conservative sectors.
A letter sent from Yaiza by Lorenzo Betancor, published in issue number 9, dated June 15, 1887, ironically commented on a supposed project for a religious society in Teguise. The controversy had immediate consequences: in issue number 12, dated June 30, the newspaper reported that 23 subscribers from that town had withdrawn their support for the publication.
The reaction allows us to appreciate the influence that a publication with limited circulation could exert on social relations of the time. The confrontation did not end there. The parish priest of Arrecife also attacked the newspaper from the pulpit, accused it of Freemasonry, and recommended that the faithful not read it, according to the historical reconstruction of its contents.
The controversy turned its pages into a space for discussion about the relationships between religion, civil authority, and freedom of thought, in a society where new liberal ideas were beginning to question certain traditional practices.
The merchant who was denied the right to be buried
One of the most surprising episodes recovered from the pages of El Horizonte was related to the death of Joaquín Reguera y Romero, a merchant who, according to the version published by the newspaper, died after falling into the sea.
In issue number 113, dated November 30, 1888, the publication addressed the parish priest's decision to deny him burial. According to the reconstruction by Francisco Fajardo Spínola, the priest communicated his decision to the mayor through an official letter, without specifying the reasons. The municipal authority responded that it could not prevent the deceased from being buried in his own plot within the cemetery.
The burial eventually took place despite the parish priest's threats of excommunication. El Horizonte questioned the ecclesiastical decision and maintained that the forensic doctors had not ruled that the death had occurred by suicide.
The case transcended the family sphere and became a public controversy over religious authority, civil competencies, and the limits of both institutions. It was not solely about the fate of a deceased merchant, but also about the tensions of a society in which the Church's influence remained decisive while liberal ideas began to gain ground.
A city that wanted to modernize, but continued to drag old problems
The pages of El Horizonte also offer a description of Arrecife's urban difficulties at the end of the 19th century. The newspaper called for improvements in public lighting, street cleaning, more adequate hygienic conditions, and greater attention to municipal services.
Its editors defended education, science, and progress, while at the same time pointing out the deficiencies in schools and the difficulties faced by teachers. The modernization of the city, from that perspective, could not be limited to infrastructure: it had to extend to teaching, hygiene, culture, and the quality of life of its inhabitants.
In the same vein, the publication promoted a popular subscription to erect a monument to José de Viera y Clavijo, an initiative that aimed to turn cultural memory into a shared project.
The newspapers disappeared, but their stories survived
Most of those mastheads had a brief existence. Economic difficulties, a small number of readers, and dependence on subscriptions complicated the continuity of any journalistic project. Crónica de Lanzarote ceased publication in February 1863, after issuing 105 issues. El Horizonte closed on May 1, 1889, after publishing 142 issues and a supplement. Other publications, such as Lucero del Alba, El Oriental Canario, and La Legalidad, left a more limited documentary footprint.
However, the disappearance of those newspapers did not erase the stories they had told. On their pages remains a Lanzarote that does not always appear in official documents: that of day laborers and emigrants, printers and teachers, feuding merchants and neighbors, as well as those who dreamed of transforming the island.
Perhaps that is the true value of recovering the first newspapers of Arrecife. It is not only about reconstructing the trajectory of publications born more than a century and a half ago, but about approaching the concerns, aspirations, and conflicts of a society that was trying to find its own way.
Because before Lanzarote began to be told from the outside, there was a group of people who decided to write it from the inside.
Documentary and bibliographic sources
• Cabrera Acosta, Miguel Ángel and Felipe González, Ramón. "Crónica de Lanzarote: a Lanzarote newspaper from the second half of the 19th century." II Conference on the History of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, vol. I, 1990, pp. 349-358.
• 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, pp. 359-370.
• Ferrer Peñate, Mario. Journalism on the periphery of the periphery of Western Europe. Press, society, and public opinion in Lanzarote and Fuerteventura (1852-1982). Doctoral thesis, University of La Laguna, 2012.
• Historical collection of Crónica de Lanzarote, especially issues 5, 42, and 43.
• Historical collection of El Horizonte, especially issues 9, 12, and 113.
• Jable, Digital Press Archive of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
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