The banana and the sea

A banana leaving Tazacorte may wake up in a market in Madrid, London or Hamburg. That is the other side of the crop: it did not only feed the valley, it connected it with the world. From the end of the 19th century, the port turned the fruit into an economy —jobs, ships, routes, foreign currency—, and the way it travelled was an epic in itself: first sailing ships, then steamers, later the first refrigerated vessels and, at last, the refrigerated container that today crosses the Atlantic in less than two days.

Against the banana from other latitudes, cheaper but of lower quality, here the bet was on identity: the Canary banana stands out for its flavour, the fruit of this land and of more than a century in the market. And those little dark specks on the skin that the shopper learned to recognise are not a flaw: they are the signature, the sign that the fruit has ripened to just the right point. From the quay to the world, the banana's route is still the thread that ties Tazacorte to half the planet.