The Lanzarote we know today hides another island beneath its lava fields. Before the Fire Mountains transformed the center and southwest of the territory, that area was occupied by villages, hamlets, and agricultural holdings that sustained a significant part of the island's economic life. There were cereal plains, grazing lands, roads, cisterns, mills, corrals, and small hermitages that structured the daily activity of its inhabitants.
That entire landscape began to disappear on the night of September 1, 1730, when the earth opened near Chimanfaya and began one of the longest and most transformative volcanic eruptions in the history of the Canary Islands. For almost six years, the lava flows and materials expelled by the volcanoes covered extensive areas, destroyed homes, rendered farmland unusable, and forced numerous families to abandon their places of residence.
The scale of that transformation has been reconstructed thanks to research that allows us to look beyond the current volcanic landscape. Archaeologist José de León Hernández dedicated years to studying the territory prior to the eruptions and locating the disappeared settlements. His doctoral thesis, defended in 2006 at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and later published as Lanzarote bajo el volcán, identified 21 buried population centers, ranging from villages of some importance to small hamlets formed by just three or four houses.
The figure reflects the magnitude of a catastrophe that did not only affect buildings. Other historical estimates extend to around 30 the villages and hamlets destroyed, buried, or rendered unusable, with more than 2,000 people affected and some 700 homes and 1,500 cisterns disappeared or damaged. The differences are due to the different criteria used to count the settlements and the areas affected by the lava flows.
Tingafa, the largest of the disappeared villages
Among the settlements erased by the volcano, Tingafa stands out, considered the most populated of the 21 centers reconstructed by José de León. Its population has been estimated at around 500 inhabitants, a size that allows us to understand that the catastrophe did not only affect small groups of houses, but also consolidated rural communities.
Its importance is reflected in historical documentation. During Bishop Dávila's visit to Lanzarote, in March 1733, Antonio Riviere identified Tingafa among the places destroyed by the eruptions and attributed 64 inhabitants to it. This reference constitutes documentary evidence of the entity that the settlement maintained during those years.
The name survived the disappearance of the town and remains associated with the Tinga or Tíngafa mountain, located in the vicinity of the current Timanfaya National Park. The continuity of this designation allows us to recognize a part of the geography prior to the eruptions, even though the surrounding landscape has completely changed.
Chimanfaya, the town that gave its name to the volcanic landscape
The first eruption occurred near Chimanfaya, an ancient settlement that was buried by the initial lava flows. Its disappearance has a historical peculiarity: the name of that population ended up associated with the volcanic territory that transformed the island and that we know today as Timanfaya.
The account attributed to the parish priest of Yaiza, Andrés Lorenzo Curbelo, describes how the first emissions reached Timanfaya, Rodeo, and part of Mancha Blanca. In the following days, new lava flows advanced over other settlements, including Maretas, Santa Catalina, and Mazo, until they reached the coast.
Historical descriptions allow us to follow the evolution of a phenomenon that rapidly altered island life. In addition to the lava flows, there were explosions, ash emissions, and clouds of volcanic materials that covered large areas, rendering agricultural land unusable and hindering communication between inhabited centers.
The history of Chimanfaya cannot, therefore, be separated from the transformation of Lanzarote's toponymy. A population disappeared, but its name became incorporated into one of the most recognizable natural spaces in the Canary Islands.
Santa Catalina, Testeina, and Masintafe: the vestiges of a lost geography
Other settlements allow us to approach the human dimension of that destruction. Santa Catalina, El Chupadero, Testeina, and Masintafe are part of the historical reconstruction of a territory where rural communities maintained a direct relationship with agricultural lands and natural resources.
In the vicinity of Testeina, elements of that pre-eruption occupation can still be recognized. Among them are an ancient taro and remains of housing walls that have survived among the lava flows. The research by José de León even identifies the location of a house belonging to Domingo Hernández Fajardo, an ancestor of the enlightened José de Viera y Clavijo.
This detail allows us to understand that the buried settlements were not mere names on an old map. They were places where people were born, grew up, and worked, whose families left their mark on the subsequent history of Lanzarote.
The reconstruction of that landscape has been supported by notarial documents, historical references, testimonies passed down through generations, toponymic studies, archaeological surveys, and aerial photographs. The combination of these sources has made it possible to recover ancient roads, dwellings, agricultural exploitations, and heritage elements that had disappeared from collective memory.
The lands of Ságabo: a document from 1791 reveals the magnitude of the destruction
One of the most interesting documentary findings comes from the ancient term of Ságabo, located in the municipality of Yaiza. Its history has been reconstructed through the study of 18th-century notarial protocols and, especially, a document of hereditary distribution dated 1791.
The researcher Jesús Manuel Cáceres Rodríguez recovered from that documentation the extent and approximate boundaries of an agricultural and livestock territory that had been partially buried by the eruptions. His work made it possible to identify an area of approximately 15.2 square kilometers and recover 24 toponyms that had fallen into disuse or appeared incorrectly placed on later maps.
The 1791 document is particularly revealing. The lands had belonged to Ruy Gutiérrez, who received them as a legacy from the Marquis of Lanzarote. After the eruptions, his heirs had to proceed with the distribution of the property.
The measurement recorded 910 fanegas of land, of which only 198 remained free of the lava flows. The rest was affected by the volcanic territory. That documentation allows us to observe how a natural catastrophe also modified the properties, inheritances, and economic structure of the island.
The case of Ságabo demonstrates that notarial archives can restore identity to places that seemed definitively lost. Under the lava flows, not only villages and homes were buried, but also the names and boundaries of an economic and social geography that had been essential for Lanzarote.
The exodus of families and the reconstruction of an island
The loss of homes, farmland, and resources to maintain livestock caused a significant population displacement. Affected families had to seek new places to settle, reclaim land to work, and find livelihoods. Some moved to other areas of Lanzarote, while other families left the island and sought opportunities in neighboring territories.
The gravity of the situation forced the authorities to intervene from the first months. Documentation from October 1730, which gains special relevance on this November 10th anniversary, reflects how concern over the loss of land and property had already reached institutions. The Royal Court of the Canary Islands then requested authorization for the distribution of royal lands in Lanzarote to compensate for the damages suffered by the residents. The initiative aimed to provide new lands to those who had lost their farms and prevent the crisis from causing even greater depopulation.
The studies by José de León Hernández and Pedro Quintana Andrés on population displacement between 1730 and 1736 analyze the social consequences of that crisis and the requests made to obtain new lands. The distribution of land became a fundamental measure to prevent the population from continuing to emigrate and to guarantee the survival of agricultural and livestock farms.
The distribution of inhabitants also changed. Some settlements gained greater importance and others were reorganized in different locations, while areas that had remained outside the reach of the lava flows began to receive those who had lost their homes. The island had to adapt to a completely different geography, conditioned by the surviving areas and by new possibilities for land use.
From volcanic disaster to a new agricultural culture
The transformation did not end with the cessation of the eruptions. Volcanic ashes and sands, which had initially represented a threat to traditional farming, ended up becoming an agricultural resource. Farmers learned to take advantage of the properties of these materials to conserve moisture and protect crops from the island's environmental conditions.
The development of the "enarenados" (sandy fields) and the expansion of viticulture in La Geria are part of that adaptation process. Traditional agricultural techniques made it possible to reclaim land and create a unique productive landscape, where plants grew protected by layers of volcanic material. Agricultural activity thus found new possibilities in a territory that had been profoundly altered.
The relationship of the inhabitants with the landscape and its religious manifestations also changed. Devotion to the Virgen de los Dolores acquired special prominence among the residents of Tinajo and its surroundings, who sought protection against the advance of the lava flows. The history of the hermitage and the image became closely linked to those events, eventually becoming one of the symbols of the collective memory of the eruptions.
Almost three centuries later, the ancient settlements continue to be present in the toponymy, in historical documents, and in the vestiges that have survived among the lava flows. Archaeological and documentary research has made it possible to recover part of that geography, although there are still names, properties, and spaces whose location deserves further verification.
The work of José de León Hernández opened a fundamental path for reconstructing the Lanzarote prior to the eruptions. To this labor have been added investigations such as the one dedicated to the Ságabo area, which demonstrates the extent to which notarial archives can restore identity to places that seemed definitively lost.
Timanfaya is today one of the most recognizable volcanic landscapes in the Canary Islands. However, beneath its lava flows lies the memory of another island: that of the residents of Tingafa, the families of Chimanfaya, the inhabitants of Santa Catalina, and those who worked the lands of Testeina, Masintafe, and other ancient settlements.
The volcano forever changed the geography of Lanzarote, but it did not manage to completely erase its history. The names of those villages, recovered in archives and in the memory of the territory, continue to recall that before the Fire Mountains there existed an inhabited, cultivated, and organized island that was buried under the lava.
Documentary sources and bibliography
• José de León Hernández, Lanzarote under the volcano (2009). Publications Service of the Cabildo de Lanzarote.
• Jesús Manuel Cáceres Rodríguez, Documentary and spatial study of the Ságabo term. Territory buried by the Timanfaya volcano (1730-1736).
• José de León Hernández and Pedro Quintana Andrés, Population displacements and habitat restructuring in Lanzarote, between 1730-1736 (1999).
• Ministry for the Ecological Transition, Timanfaya National Park. Historical documentation on the eruptions of 1730-1736.
• Government of the Canary Islands, Decree 82/2003, on the hermitage of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores and volcanic events.
• Saúl García, "Villages buried under the volcano: a tour of the Lanzarote eruptions," El Diario, December 1, 2018.
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