Casa del Capitán

The Captain's House of San Miguel de Abona is more than a mansion, it is a large rural house in the south of Tenerife.

It is precisely for this reason, its southern location, that we have included the property in this section, because the fundamental source of income of the great Tenerife historic mansions was  agricultural wealth via international business trade. Over the years this was mostly of sugar, Malmsey wines, tobacco, cochineal and bananas, at different points in time. The south of the island, without noticeable ports and without water or quality soil necessary to grow fine crops, was always a zone of lower income, more depressed than the North side of the isle. The tourist boom of recent decades has drastically changed the situation.

However, although scarce, there are also remarkable examples of stately architecture on the southern slope, the ill-fated manor house of Adeje (La Casa-Fuerte de Adeje) being undoubtedly the best example of it.

The builder of this great house of Tenerife, was captain of the militia of Tenerife and mayor of San Miguel de Abona, D. Miguel Alfonso Martínez. It was built during the early years of the nineteenth century, in the area called Calvary, a central district of San Miguel town.

It is currently owned by the Tenerife council and it houses an ethnographic museum of the region.

Next to the house is located one of the chapels that form the towns “Via Crucis”, giving the whole a singular artistic and historical value.