We do not know his name. Nor his age, nor what he died of. We only know that he was a child, that his parents were called Francisco Bravo and Catalina Rodríguez, and that both were neighbors of Femés. We also know that, on September 12, 1728, his remains were buried in the precinct of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in Yaiza. And we know something else: that simple notation became the first entry in the death register of the newly created parish.
Behind that apparently brief notation, however, there was a profound transformation in the lives of the inhabitants of southern Lanzarote. For years, the residents of Yaiza, Femés, and other villages in this part of the island had to travel to the Villa de Teguise to receive sacraments such as baptism, marriage, or burial. The distance and the difficulties of travel explain why the residents requested the bishop for the stable presence of a priest and the conversion of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios into a parish capable of directly serving that population.
The request was not solely a religious matter. The residents themselves had to commit to financially supporting this new reality. According to the historical documentation preserved about the temple, prominent residents of Yaiza, Femés, Las Casitas, Uga, and Chupadero signed a deed by which they undertook to contribute to the expenses incurred by the priests and by the construction and equipping of the church. They managed to gather 170 fanegas of wheat to sell in Gran Canaria, in addition to the alms they collected. The new parish, therefore, was also born from the material effort of those who needed to have religious services closer to them.
The process culminated in September 1728. On the 10th, the canonical erection of the parish of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios took place, and two days later, on September 12, the enthronement of the Most Blessed Sacrament occurred. The ceremony was officiated by don Ambrosio Cayetano de Ayala, the owner-beneficiary of the parish of Teguise. From that moment on, the sacramental books of the new community began to be registered.
And the first story that was written was not that of a baptism, nor that of a marriage, but that of a death.
The first entry in the death register was precisely recorded on September 12, 1728. It records the burial, within the church grounds, of a child, son of Francisco Bravo and Catalina Rodríguez, residents of Femés. The source that preserves this record does not provide his name, age, or cause of death. Nor does it allow us to reconstruct, with the available data, the specific circumstances of that death.
That silence is important. In an era when parish documents constitute one of the main ways to reconstruct people's lives, the entry provides us with barely a few clues: a child, two parents, Femés as their place of residence, and Yaiza as the place of burial. There is no name to utter today. There is no age to imagine. There is no personal story we can complete with certainty.
But there is a documentary certainty: he was the first to be registered among the dead of the new parish.
His burial also helps to better understand the function that Nuestra Señora de los Remedios was beginning to perform. The church was not solely a place of worship. In a society where the Civil Registry did not yet exist, parish registers constituted a fundamental part of the documentary memory of communities. Baptisms, marriages, and deaths were recorded on their pages, and through them, entire generations of inhabitants could be traced centuries later.
The church in Yaiza also maintained the function of a burial space for a long time. Historical documentation indicates the existence of an old cemetery within the church grounds, to the point that part of the current floor covers the space that previously had that use. Therefore, the burial of the young resident of Femés was not an unusual circumstance for that time: it was part of the funerary practices of the era and of the church's own life.
The new parish soon began to also record births and marriages. On September 30, 1728, the first marriage entry appeared, corresponding to José Linares and Lorenza de la Cruz, residents of Yaiza, although both had already been married in the parish of La Villa. And on October 6, the first baptism entry was recorded: María, legitimate daughter of Marcial Machín and María de la Cruz, residents of Yaiza.
The succession of those first entries is almost symbolic. First, a death. Then, a marriage. Finally, a birth. Three essential events in the life of a community that began to be recorded in the new parish books.
In charge of that parish was don Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, destined to become a fundamental figure in the history of Lanzarote a few years later. Curbelo would be a direct witness to the volcanic eruptions that transformed the island between 1730 and 1736 and left a written account of those events. The church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, newly
incorporated into parish life, would thus become one of the places that survived that extraordinary transformation of the Lanzarote landscape.
When the eruptions began, barely two years had passed since that September 12. The temple that had begun to record baptisms, marriages, and deaths was surrounded by a territory that would change radically. The church survived the tremors and lava flows and continued to be a point of reference for the residents of the area.
But before becoming a witness to the eruptions, the processions, the generations, and the history of Yaiza, that temple had to begin writing its own memory. And that memory began with a death.
It is not difficult to imagine that on that day the attention of the neighbors was focused on the ceremony of enthronement of the Most Holy Sacrament and on the beginning of a new religious era for Yaiza. However, among all the names and events that accompanied the birth of the parish, one was fixed forever on the first page of the book of
deaths: that of a child who was not even identified by name.
Perhaps therein lies the true strength of this anniversary. The history of the creation of a parish could be told solely through bishops, priests, documents, dates, works, and administrative decisions. But the first record that gives us a specific person does not belong to any of those protagonists. It belongs to a child.
A child from Femés.
A son of Francisco Bravo and Catalina Rodríguez.
A child whose life was left out of the great chronicles, but whose death ended up opening one of the books that today allow us to reconstruct the daily history of Yaiza.
The First Book of Deaths of the parish covers from 1728 to 1769. For more than four decades, its pages accumulated names, families, and generations. Each annotation turned a particular death into a small fragment of memory. But none has exactly the same meaning as the first, because that was the one that opened the record.
And that first name, paradoxically, we do not know.
We know he existed because someone decided to write that he had been buried. We know who his parents were and we know where they came from. We know where he was buried and we know exactly when he was incorporated into the documentary history of the new parish. Everything else was lost.
On September 12, 1728, Yaiza began to write the memory of its new parish community. And the first page of the book of the dead was occupied by a child whose name we do not know.
He was the first to be written among the dead of the new parish. And perhaps that is the only way we have today to give him back something of what time took from him: a place in memory.
DOCUMENTARY SOURCES
1. History of Yaiza, "The Church of Ntra. Sra. de Los Remedios (IV)". Historical document on the canonical election of the parish, the enthronement of the Blessed Sacrament, and the first sacramental records, including the first death record of September 12, 1728.
2. History of Yaiza, "Data on the historic temple of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios" and "Temple of Los Remedios, part of a town". Information on the previous dependence on Teguise, the neighborhood effort to sustain the new parish, and the first celebrations and records.
3. University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), Art History study. Reference to the Parish Archive of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios de Yaiza and its sacramental books, including the First Book of Deaths (1728-1769).
4. Census-Guide of Archives of Spain and Ibero-America, Documentary collection of the Parish of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios de Yaiza. Reference to parish documentation and the Femés collection.
5. Sergio A. Oliva and Guillermo Perdomo, "Documents for the history of Yaiza: from the 17th century to 1920", LeCanarien Ediciones, 2021. Study based, among other sources, on notarial protocols and parish documentation of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios since 1728.
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