Tazacorte

The town and port of Tazacorte is located in the west of the island of La Palma. Today’s Port of Tazacorte is where Alonso Fernandez de Lugo began the conquest of La Palma, by the mouth of the Ravine of Sorrows, on September 29, 1492.  He landed without resistance, allowing for a subsequent peaceful settlement in the plain of Tazacorte where the first camp and the Chapel of San Miguel were built.
After successive transfers and sales, in 1513, the Flemish Groenenberg Jacome, who would change his name from Jacome to Monteverde, acquired the fertile Tazacorte. Thereafter the property will be devoted to growing sugar cane, under a regime of semi-feudal exploitation of nature.  At the end of the eighteenth century the peasants of Tazacorte were poor and badly dressed, and their main food were roots of fern.

The anchorage of the Port of Tazacorte was the second largest of the island, after the capital.  Since the sixteenth century, sugar cane, wine and other products of the country were used both domestically and for foreign exports.

In August 1812, the town of Los Llanos was formed with the population of the same name as the header, plus El Paso, and Argual Tazacorte.  In 1815 productivity and profitability of sugar cane started to decrease.

Sugar cane is a demanding plant and production decreased due to the depleted soils of the region.  In 1830 the last sugar mill closed in Tazacorte, and from that time the crops were replaced by those for the farmers’ own use.  From 1850, Tazacorte began a fishing industry and the cultivation of cochineal, two economic activities that will bring wealth to some and for others a means to survive.

Since 1890, the shipments of snuff, sugar, and cochineal still placed in foreign markets, and to these Tazacorte added the increasing production of tomatoes first, and then bananas.  The end of World War I reopened the European markets for bananas and tomatoes.

Since 1919, the British company Fyffes Limited has leased the farms of the largest owners of the municipality.  The company improved banana plantations, selling increasingly larger and better-priced amounts, so that by the mid-twenties 70% of the population of Tazacorte worked in the industry for the export of bananas.
In 1923, the town of Tazacorte was the largest population center of the municipality of Los Llanos, with 2,316 inhabitants, and the largest economic development of the Valley Aridane.  On September 16, 1925 the dictatorial government of Primo de Rivera granted the decree giving independence to Tazacorte from Los Llanos.