History
Though bound with Spanish history and the collective heritage of the Canary isles, both Tenerife and La Gomera have their own distinctive histories. Their early history is, however, shrouded in mystery, for despite vague references in Classical literature, it was only when European slave raiders began to land on the Canaries in the fourteenth century that accounts of the natives began to filter through to the Old World. At the dawn of Europe's era of great exploration, the culture and origins of these Stone Age inhabitants perplexed outsiders, and only recently are conflicting scholarly theories about them being resolved - with links to ancient Berber tribes being the most likely hypothesis. By the end of the fifteenth century Spanish conquistadors had claimed and conquered the entire archipelago for Spain, beginning a period of settlement in a pioneer society that wiped out the indigenous culture and created an island economy based on farming and trade. Prevailing winds put the Canaries right on trade routes to the New World making them an important last stopping point before an Atlantic crossing, a pattern that Columbus started when he paused in La Gomera before, unwittingly, discovering America. People and goods as well as ships moved through the ports, helping to forge strong cultural and economic links with South America. Crops discovered there, such as sugar cane, cotton, tobacco, cochineal and bananas would be introduced to Tenerife as monocultures, often suffering boom-bust cycles which led to regular bouts of mass migration of Canarians to South America in search of work. But sooner or later many of these migrants returned to their native islands, reinforcing cultural ties with the Americas and weakening the sense of a communal identity with the distant Spanish mainland, its people and the politics of Madrid. Today the Canary islands have a large amount of political autonomy within the Spanish state, and the islanders will generally call themselves Canarians rather than Spanish. But despite this rift at the level of the nation-state, the Canaries are being tied ever more closely with the rest of Europe by tourism , which brings millions of visitors to the island from northern Europe every year and has encouraged large numbers of others to emigrate here, too.
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