The departure point: people walking in the dark through sand and rocks, climbing into an overloaded boat. Some have given all the money they had to the organisers of the journey so they can set sail for what they believe will be a better life. Others have handed over their possessions. At sea they are hungry, thirsty, living with lice and surrounded by vomit, their clothes are worn by the saltpetre, some fall ill, several die.
The point of arrival: the authorities intercept them. Some try to escape along the coast. The agents arrest the crew with the intention of sending them back to their country. The rest are taken to a small island with unsanitary conditions, which they cannot leave for weeks. They are not even given clean clothes.
This could be the story of any migrant arriving in Europe from Africa, but it relates to another story: that of thousands of Canary Islanders who in the 1940s and 1950s fled their homeland in search of a better life in Venezuela. Now that the Canary Islands have become a focus of attention, it is worth remembering that there were Canarians who suffered similar conditions in the past.
“New immigrants in the port of Carúpano“, reads the headline in the Venezuelan newspaper, dated 25 May 1949. It referred to the 106 Canary Islanders who had arrived on the boat La Elvira and 57 others from another fishing boat intercepted a few days earlier.
La Elvira was a 19-metre fishing boat that took 36 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean, pushed by the trade winds. Onboard were ten women and one girl, the rest were men. Most of them were peasants from Gran Canaria, who sold everything they had to pay the thousands of pesetas asked for the clandestine passage. A labourer earned, at most, twelve pesetas a day.
In those years it was very difficult to travel legally. Many people who wanted to leave had been involved in trade unions or political parties, so they were marked by Francoism. A record of good conduct was required, even for the local priest it was very difficult to obtain”, says Professor Manuel Hernández González, author of the book ‘La emigración canaria a América’.
In 1948 Venezuela had a democratic government headed by Rómulo Gallegos, who had no diplomatic relations with Franco’s Spain. In fact, he only maintained an embassy of the Spanish Republic, as a symbolic gesture. Under his rule, Spanish emigrants were well received, they were considered anti-fascists and it was known they suffered from the dictatorship and poverty that came after the Civil War.
On 20 November 1948, there was a coup d’état in Venezuela that changed everything. From that moment, Spaniards who had previously been welcomed were now seen as communists, as illegal, as clandestine and of course, they came without papers. When they arrived, they were crowded together and detained on the island of La Orchila, or on the island of Guasina, which was much worse, with an unbearable smell and unsanitary conditions. Several died on Guasina.
Life in the Canary Islands was not easy in those years. Economic conditions were bad, poverty hit hard and on the island of El Hierro, there were no schools or electricity. Between 1948 and 1950 alone, some 65 ships left the Canary Islands for Latin America. 10.2% of this clandestine emigration was from El Hierro.
They used fishing boats that were not prepared for long trips, but they took advantage of the trade winds. They ran out of fuel, the crew was often inexperienced in sailing. Sometimes, instead of reaching Venezuela, they ended up in Martinique, Trinidad or Brazil. Some were blown by the winds to Senegal.
In all cases, the boats were overloaded, the people overcrowded and hunger hit hard in the middle of the journey. They ate mainly gofio and lacked water, so many resorted to saltwater, which caused illnesses. They paid up to 6,000 pesetas for the passage and as there was no system for official loans, they mortgaged themselves at very high-interest rates.
Juan Francisco Martín Ruiz, professor at the University of La Laguna, has studied the Canarian migration in-depth, from the 18th century until the 1980s. Most of the people who migrated were young, single men, farmers, many of military age or persecuted by the Franco regime. Martín Ruiz calculates that in just eight years of the 20th century, 128,000 Canary Islanders left the islands.
Between 1948 and 1950 Venezuela was the most common destination. When they arrived, in addition to being sent to prison islands, they were also held in hotels or migrant barracks, where they stayed for at least forty days before being used as cheap labour in mainly agricultural work. In many cases, these quarantines ended up being prolonged.
Port of Santa Cruz from where numerous clandestine trips were organized or departed
Some of the best-known journeys in the Canary Islands at that time were those made by the ships Telémaco, La Elvira, Saturnino, which took 86 days to reach its destination and El nuevo Teide, which carried 286 emigrants. The Telémaco left the island of La Gomera in August 1950, with 171 people on board, all men except one woman, Teresa. At sea, they ran out of fuel and continued under sail, until a storm destroyed the ship’s rudder and swept much of the food reserves they were carrying overboard.
They ate gofio with worms or mixed with saltwater, one of the survivors, later recounted when they thought they would die of hunger, thirst or disease. The Telémaco crossed paths with the Spanish tanker Campante, whose crew said over a loudspeaker that the nearest land was Barbados, but that they could also sail to Martinique and asked them not to approach the tanker because they feared the spread of disease.
Finally, the Telemachus arrived in Martinique with its travellers exhausted, hungry, some ill. They remember the generosity of the people who welcomed and cared for them before setting sail again. When they arrived in Venezuela, they were transferred to the island of Orchila, “which was used to quarantine livestock”. Food was brought to them once a week in a boat and they slept on the ground; they did not receive clean clothes, so some of them walked around naked or with shreds of clothes torn throughout the journey.
On the island of La Orchila, several expeditions of Canary Islanders coincided, they were there for several months and then taken to the countryside to work, in semi-clandestine conditions.
Canarian emigrants in the ‘Telémaco’
The Elvira was another of the ships that became legendary. It was an old fishing boat, more than 90 years old, which left the Canary Islands in 1949. In the days before it sailed, some people hid those making the journey in their homes in Las Palmas. On the chosen night, they slipped down to the quay, climbed into several canoes and headed for the ship, which was waiting for them in Fuerteventura. As they were climbing onto the deck, the Guardia Civil tried to intercept them, but the captain set sail and luckily the wind blew in their favour and they were able to leave the agents behind.
Halfway across, a storm almost wrecked the ship and caused the rudder to break. The Elvira took 36 days to cross the Atlantic. When they arrived, a Venezuelan National Guard boat took them in tow and transferred them to an immigration centre.
Image of ‘La Elvira’, loaded with Canarian emigrants
All these stories have left a mark. The Canary Islands have references to migration that are impregnated in the DNA of the people here. The back-and-forth relationship with Venezuela has cushioned the reaction that Canarian society has to migration.
Now it is others who emigrate and in many cases, they arrive in the Canary Islands or pass through them with the intention of continuing on to mainland Europe. That’s why in recent months, there has been so much talk of the stories of the recent past, when Canarians went to other worlds without papers, spending everything they had for the journey, risking shipwrecks, suffering arrests or detention on unhealthy islands.
Those we now call ‘the others’ were also us.
Taken in part from El Diario
Tenerife Blogs : It's all a matter of perspective 
When we last stayed in Santa Cruz , the Pelinor Hotel was housing immigrants, it was distressing to see them sitting outside the hotel with nothing to do, they came for breakfast at the Plaza Hotel both men and women and conducted themselves very well and were friendly and polite, it appeared to me that the Spanish government or Canarian were treating them well. I hope so.
Yes : Those we now call ‘the others’ were / are also us. Remember the Jews that fled for the Nazis, the Africans waiting in Calais, and many more in the past and just now. All looking for a free and better world.