A family history
that remains alive
For more than a hundred years, La Gañanía has been our family’s home.
Today, we continue to care for it with the same love with which our ancestors built it, to share its peace and history with those who visit us.
ABOUT US
The soul behind La Gañanía
We are Blanca and Javier, the current hosts and heirs of this house that has been part of our family for generations. In 1980, we began to renovate it for our own use, bringing it back to life after years of being closed. We spent summers here with our children, celebrations with friends, and many quiet afternoons under the wooden corridor.
In 1998, we took it a step further and opened the doors of La Gañanía to rural tourism, making it one of the first rural houses in the Canary Islands. Since then, we have cared for it with the same love and respect with which our ancestors built it, and we continue to work with the hope that this story will continue in the family.
A house with roots
Canarian rural architecture and history, preserved with love
The word Gañanía is known as a stable or cowshed. The dornajo (Canarian word for manger) presides over the exterior patio of the house and reminds us not only of the existence of a gañanía in the back of the house, but also of how the area is known: Las Gañanías.
Today, we continue to live this project with the hope of maintaining its family continuity, and of continuing to work for what unites us: our Canarian idiosyncrasy, our customs, the nature and culture of our island.
In its whitewashed stone walls, its intimate structure and its Mudejar-style wooden roofs, the spirit of the old rural houses of the archipelago is preserved. Nearly two hundred years after its construction, it maintains intact the forms that make it so genuinely ours.
It is a faithful reflection of the kind but strong identity of the Canarian people, who for centuries, almost without exception, have built their homes on the same ideas: simple, functional and beautiful by nature.
These houses did not alter the landscape, but accompanied it, trying to stop time in their way of living. But La Gañanía has an even more important value: it is a living summary of the popular history of our islands.
The Origin
A woman, a house and a vocation that marked an entire family
Bárbara González, our great-grandmother, married to Domingo Hernández, was the first of the family to inhabit the house, acquired for her by her father. There, the couple took care of the countryside, a key element to understanding the history of our land.
Bárbara was a housewife, dedicated with care to raising her children: three boys (Agustín, Felipe and Nicolás) and two daughters, Frasquita and María. The two eldest emigrated to Cuba as teenagers, like so many young Canarians forced to seek new horizons.
Of the work of that time, there are several testimonies in the house, such as the laundry room that is still preserved next to the barbecue, in what was the garden of the house, and which was used not only by the family but also by the neighbors.
My mother and the siblings born in the house
But Bárbara didn’t just want to be a housewife. In the afternoons, in a small school that she organized in the central courtyard, she taught the children of the neighborhood to read and write. Even at night, men and women came after work to receive her classes.
Many elders still remember with gratitude having learned with her, and said that “they knew how to write thanks to God and Doña Barbarita”. Her work was enormous, and it is no coincidence that many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren are teachers today: it is in our blood.
Unfortunately, Bárbara never allowed herself to be photographed, but in the living room of La Gañanía there is a pastel portrait of Doña Frasquita, her daughter, our grandmother.
Family lunch in the courtyard of the house, with my grandparents and my aunts
My siblings Tere, Pepe and I
NEXT GENERATIONS
From our grandparents to the present
Francisca Hernández, “Doña Frasquita”, daughter of Bárbara, married Eulogio Méndez Dorta, from Buenavista del Norte. They had a son (who died in the Civil War) and several daughters, including Manola, our mother. They spent their childhood and youth in La Gañanía, until each one followed their own path: some went to live in La Orotava and our parents to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Around 1954 the house was uninhabited. Time left its mark, but the heirs did not want to allow its ruin. In 1980 we made a first simple repair, which allowed us to enjoy it again as a family.
We renamed the house with the name by which it is known today: La Gañanía, in memory of the old stable that existed in the back of the house. Even the street where it is located was known among the neighbors as Camino de la Gañanía.
We hope that those who come to inhabit it for a few days will find here the same as us: its charm, its peace and its memories, so dear to us and so common to the history of all Canarians.
Javier Pérez Méndez
Great-grandson of Bárbara, grandson of Frasquita and son of Manola.
