El Rosario

Municipality: El Rosario

History

This municipality has a surface of 40,4Km. In the middle of the 70s El Rosario yielded 13,2 km of the surface to Santa Cruz. As a consequence lost ¼ of the space and population too. 

Monument

The municipality has two differentiated well zones: the suroriental, which is drier, and the northeastern one. The principal core is Machado. The plowing of the forests was intense between the 17th century and the XVIIIth (Not only in this municipality, but also in the whole island).

El Rosario has essentially two historical payments: El Rosario and La Esperanza,  due to an enormously fragmented and dispersed territory (both were included from the first decades of the 16th century).

Town Hall and square (during Christmas)

During the prehispanic period, the place was a preferential step in the routes of the North and La Cañadas and towards the South. There are archaeological remains in the Ravine of La Cruz (caves of burials, skeletons and funeral apparels). In Barranco Hondo, El Tablero, El Chorrillo and Taco there were found mummies, ceramic and useful.

This route of traffic was kept after the conquest, inside the strategy of evangelism up to the point that Machado's payment or El Rosario were a forced route between La Laguna and Candelaria. 

From this evangelism the name of the municipality comes, El Rosario, is one of Marian devotions more extended between the Christian people. On having been a place of traffic, as it has been said, this hermitage was constructed in 1534 as a place of rest for the pilgrims, and also for the Virgin of Candelaria, who was resting here, when it was going out of the sanctuary in Candelaria (every time a misfortune was destroying the island). It is in 1813 when the municipality is constituted. The above mentioned hermitage is extended according to the donations of the villagers.

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La Esperanza,  the capital of the municipality, that owes the name to El Adelantado Fernandez de Lugo, who  came to this place with his men fleeing La Matanza de Acentejo.

From the place, in which now the church is  placed, it spied Añaza's camp. That one supposed the salvation of his army, for what it promised to raise in the place a hermitage to La Virgen de la Esperanza.

Road

Clearly rural municipality, one of the principal crops was the potatoes, followed by cereals. The place did not see removed from the emigration of the inhabitants before the different economic crises. Most of the settlers were lessees and laborers. Two important roles inside the population were Los Pinocheros (the mount of La Esperanza was providing patient resources) and milk jug (it possessed in the past important extensions of pastures and an important cattle cabin).

The municipality has not possessed a parish, but a great number of hermitages. With the liberalism it is formed as a town hall in spite of not having a parish (the municipalities were constituted by the parish), so it was an exceptional fact in the island. Until 1929 did not have a parish, depending on La Laguna one.

Views

Representative Buildings 

Parroquia Nuestra Señora del Rosario: BIC 2003. The Church consists today of a ship of rectangular base.

The floor is of unequal slabs (which suggests the ancient origin). A room, larger than that of the sacristy, served as a bedroom for priests and pilgrims who transported the Virgin of Candelaria from the Sanctuary to the "City"

The ship is oriented from North to South rather than East to West (as is the common rule)

El Rosario

Casa de los Mesas: it is very close to the Church and next to the road, wrapped in mystery and known as "House of the Pirate Amaro Pargo" (it traded with America in the XVIII and of which it is said that it hid a treasure)

Mesa´s House 

Iglesia Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza: Raised where the former hermitage of Nuestras Señora de la Esperanza, this church neocolonial is declared a parish in 1929. The principal dedication is to San Juan Evangelista and stands out the image of the mistress, of the XVIIth.

Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza Church

Camino viejo de Candelaria:  One of the most important historical routes of the Island, with allusions from the distribution of lands of the conqueror Fernandez of Lugo, continues using as access to Candelaria, it was declared BIC in 2008 and sample ethnographic elements like Eras (circle to grind the wheat).

Bosque del Adelantado: It is the only redoubt of laurisilva, located in an urban, existing area in the Canaries. It has an extension of 25.397 square meters and an altitude reaches between 850 and 875 meters on the sea level. It gets this name for El Adelantado Alonso Fernandez of Lugo, who was fleeing of Acentejo's battle, course to Añaza.

Forest