History of the banana in Tazacorte

The banana is a traveller. It was born in Southeast Asia, in Malaysia, and took centuries to cross the world: it passed through India, through Arabia, along the coasts of Africa, and, carried by Portuguese navigators, reached the Canary Islands in the 15th century. For a long time it was little more than a garden plant, almost a curiosity. The great leap came at the end of the 19th century, when growing for one's own table turned into export: the export houses arrived on La Palma then —among them the English firm Fyffes—, and in those early years the crop was concentrated in very few places, with Tazacorte and Argual leading the Aridane Valley. One small, hardy variety took hold, the Dwarf Cavendish (Pequeña Enana), so well suited to these islands that in time it would be grown almost only here and on Madeira.

But this is, above all, a story of families: those who learned to read the plant, to take turns at the irrigation, to carry the bunches down to the quay. In the San Miguel area, century-old plants set out in the early 20th century still endure, having gone on bearing fruit generation after generation. Behind every bunch there is a family that has been tending it for more than a hundred years.