This past Sunday, July 27th, marked the 175th anniversary of the birth, in the city of Arrecife, of Francisco Fernández de Bethencourt, considered the father of Genealogy in Spain. This politician from Conejero, historian and genealogist has the honor of being the only person born in the Canary Islands who is a member of two Spanish Royal Academies, a member of the Royal Academies of History (1889) and the Spanish Language (1914).
The mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León, the city where this illustrious Arrecife native was born on this past Sunday, 175 years ago, supports and endorses that July 27th be institutionalized as Genealogy Day in the Canary Islands, in memory of Fernández de Bethencourt, who died in Alicante on April 2, 1916.
Francisco Fernández de Bethencourt, who has a street dedicated to him in the Valterra neighborhood, was a prominent politician, historian, and genealogist. He graduated in Law from the Central University (1879); he had also studied at the Las Palmas Seminary and the La Laguna School of Law. He was a deputy to the Cortes for the constituency of the Canary Islands and a senator for the Canary Islands. As recalled in the Spanish Biographical Dictionary (2001), "during the Sexenio he was a supporter of the Bourbon Restoration."
A great expert in genealogy and heraldry, his publications include Nobiliario y blasón de Canarias: diccionario histórico biográfico, genealógico y heráldico de la provincia (1878-1886), Historia genealógica y heráldica de la monarquía española, Casa Real y Grandes de España (1897-1920), La Corona y la nobleza de España (1903) and Anuario de la nobleza de España (1908-1917).
He was appointed academician of the Royal Academy of History and the Royal Seville Academy of Belles-Lettres, honorary president of the Imperial and Royal Adler Academy of Vienna, member of the Italian Genealogical Academy, honorary president and general delegate of the Heraldic Council of France, and decorated with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Conception of Villaviciosa of Portugal and of San Olaf of Norway. Fernández de Bethencourt was a scholar with universal projection: journalist, writer, speaker, historian, politician, genealogist and heraldist.
A member of the Royal Academies of History (1889) and the Spanish Language (1914), he is considered the founder of modern genealogical history in Spain, being the introducer of the method of the French school of Borel.
He published the first volume of Blasón y Nobiliario de Canarias, followed by six more, between 1878 and 1886. In the 20th century, revised and updated by a board of specialists coordinated by Professor Juan Régulo, called Nobiliario de Canarias, published in four volumes. Between 1880 and 1890 he wrote Anales de la Nobleza de España, which consists of eleven volumes. His magnum opus, as highlighted by the Association of Genealogists of the Canary Islands, was Historia Genealógica y Heráldica de la Monarquía Española, Casa Real y Grandes de España, of which ten volumes were published, which he could not conclude in his lifetime.