 If you are a visitor to Tenerife it probably won’t be long before you hear about the Guanches or even see a statue of one of their leaders, of which there are many such monuments on the island. There is a hotel in Tenerife South named after a Guanche princess in Los Cristianos – the Hotel Princesa Dácil. In La Orotava in the north of the island there is a statue of the same princess forming a decorative fountain.
But who were these mysterious people who lived on Tenerife and the other Canary Islands before they were conquered, and in many cases killed by the Spanish invaders? Many people believe that the Guanches, who were white-skinned, and blonde-haired and blue-eyed in many cases, were descended from the Berbers who live in North Africa in Libya, and in the Atlas Mountains and surrounding areas.
 Others have suggested that the Guanches were survivors or descendants of Atlantis and this theory is backed up by a map in the book The Lost Continent of Mu (1931) of James Churchward that shows the Canary Islands as being included in the island continent of Atlantis, which was said to have been covered by the sea. Because of their pale skin and blonde hair yet other people have put forward the idea that the Guanches were of Scandinavian origin.
Part of the mystery is that although there were different races of Guanches on each of the Canary Islands they did not trade or keep in touch with each other and there is no evidence that these people had any form of boat. So how did they get to Tenerife remains the question.
 What is known for certain about the Guanches of Tenerife was that they divided the island up into nine territories known as “menceyatos,” and each of these parts of Tenerife was ruled over by a sort of a king or ruler known as a “mencey.” The names of the territories of Tenerife have survived to today and are Anaga, Tegueste, Tacoronte, Taoro, Icod, Daute, Adeje, Abona and Güímar and statues of the nine menceyes are to be seen on the wall along the seafront in Candelaria.
It is also known that the Guanches made pottery, that they dressed in goat or sheep skins as well as clothes made from woven rushes and palm leaves, that they lived in the caves of Tenerife as well as in huts they made, and that they mummified their dead.
 The Guanches employed a means of pole-vaulting to get them across the treacherous steep ravines and cliffs of Tenerife and they also indulged in a fencing-style game known as “palo” with the opponents battling each other with a strong stick.
Besides being hunter-gatherers to a degree, some of the Guanches were shepherds and moved around the island according to the seasons. For example they would take their flocks of goats to graze high up on Mt Teide in summer but would go back to the coasts in winter.
There is also evidence that shows that the Guanches cultivated some cereal crops and one of their staple foods was a flour made from ground and roast grain known as “gofio.” It is also known that the Guanches made flour from certain types of fern roots and rhizomes. Gofio is still a popular food on Tenerife today and exists in many brands and varieties.
 The Guanches also kept pigs and dogs and it is said that they used the milk from the sheep and goats to make cheese, and that they ate the pork from the pigs. They also ate birds, lizards, fruit, figs, dates, seafood and fish, as well as tapping the sap from the palms that grow on Tenerife.
The Guanches made goatskin bags, wooden bowls and combs, knives made from obsidian and a needles fashioned from fish-bones. In Tenerife the Guanche men armed themselves with a weapon similar to a javelin and known as a “banot.”
The Guanches had their version of a harvest festival called the beñesmen, which was held at the end of summer when the fruit and cereals had been gathered. They celebrated with singing and dancing and with contests such as the palo stick game.
The Guanches wore basic jewellery of strings of beads made from clay and seashells and they made seals known as pintaderas with geometric patterns such as triangles, circles and a sun symbol on them that are believed to have been used for painting the body.
Another part of the mystery surrounding the Guanches concerns the pyramids found on the island of Tenerife, with the most famous being the Pyramids of Güímar, housed today in the Ethnographic Park that was created by shipping magnate Fred Olsen and the late world-famous explorer Thor Heyerdahl. Some people believe the Guanches made the pyramids, but academics deny this and suggest they were made later on by landowners of Tenerife. Heyerdahl said that he had seen similar pyramids on his travels and that they were authentic stepped-pyramids.
The Spanish conquest of the Canary Island Guanches on all the islands lasted 94 years from 1402 to 1496 and on Tenerife was led by Alonso Fernández de Lugo who finally defeated the islanders after several bloody battles including the Battle of La Laguna and the Battle of Acentejo.
The Mencey Benchomo who led some 5,000 Guanche warriors against the Spanish was killed  fighting but his son Bentor took his place as the new ruler. However, after seeing that all hope was lost when the Spaniards defeated the Guanches in 1495, Bentor, who like his father would never submit to the Spanish king, committed ritual suicide by throwing himself over a cliff at Tigaiga in the north of Tenerife.
Some of the Guanches escaped into the mountains but many who were not killed were taken prisoner. The Guanche survivors of the conquest interbred with the Spanish and their genes still show up among the people living on Tenerife today.
 Author of The Guanches Survivors and their Descendants, José Luis Concepción, states: “If we base our evidence, firstly, on historical sources that until only a short while ago were concealed from us and, secondly, on statistics produced by anthropologists in recent years, we can prove conclusively that the Guanches are still the dominant race in the Canary Islands.”
In towns like La Orotava there are murals depicting the Guanches and their culture, and in Parque del Drago in Icod de los Vinos there are life-size figures of Guanches in a mocked-up village setting. In bookshops around Tenerife, you will find books about the Guanches, in museums you will find artefacts, Guanche mummies and displays about these people, in the island’s folklore, and in its place names, in statues, and even in commonly still-used Guanche words like “guagua” (bus) the presence of these people is still felt very strongly on the island.
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Tenerife Island