Monument to the Fallen

THIS MONUMENT WAS PAID FOR BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE ECONOMIC BOARD UNDER CAPTAIN GENERAL OF THE ARCHIPELAGO HIS EXCELLENCY MR FRANCISCO GARCÍA-ESCÁMEZ INIESTA – YEAR 1946

[Wording on a plaque on the reverse of the monument]

This monument in the Plaza de España, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, completed in 1946, was inaugurated on 17 February 1947. It was the result of a plan by Francisco García-Escámez Iniesta (1893-1951), who had risen through the military ranks to become Captain General of the Canarian Archipelago in 1943. García-Escámez Iniesta was recognised for his service in the Rif war and had worked with General Emilio Mola on the preparations for the military uprising in July 1936. A competition was run for the design of the commemorative monument that would pay homage to the Canarians who fell in the ‘War of Liberation’.

The winner was the Tenerife-born architect Tomás Machado y Méndez-Fernández de Lugo (1908-2003). The monument comprises a 25m cross-shaped obelisk topped with a belvedere situated in a 75m diameter circular plaza. The base of the obelisk features two sculptures at the front and two bas-reliefs on the sides and a crypt lies beneath. The higher sculpture, by Enrique Cejas Zaldívar (1915-1986), is ‘Allegory of the Homeland Holding the Fallen’ and the lower, ‘Victory’ by Alonso Reyes Barroso (1913-1978). Two soldiers with swords in resting position, also by Cejas, are at the perimeter of the circular plaza. The inscription at the front reads ‘Tenerife in honour of all those who gave their lives for Spain’.

In 1950 General Franco visited Tenerife and laid a wreath at the monument, paying tribute to ‘those who gave their lives for God and for Spain’.

In 2019 the Tenerife local government commissioned a report into the Francoist symbols that still existed on the island; it found that the monument was built using the forced labour of political prisoners and that it is in breach of the Historical Memory Law 2007. It recommended that the process of ‘resignification’ that began over 20 years ago—that included the deconsecration of the crypt and the removal of the remains of Captain Gómez Landero who died fighting for the Nationalists in 1937—be continued. At present the removal or modification of the vestiges of Franco in Tenerife are the subject of continuing political discussion.