Gobierno de Canarias launches first industrial heritage inventory for La Palma

The Dirección General de Cultura y Patrimonio Cultural of the Gobierno de Canarias, in collaboration with the Cabildo de La Palma, is driving the registration of assets linked to the island's former industrial and manufacturing activities to produce La Palma's first industrial heritage inventory. The announcement was made by the Consejería de Universidades, Ciencia e Innovación y Cultura in a press release dated 21 July 2026.

According to official information, the document compiles data on the history, use, state of conservation and even restoration proposals for singular elements of historical, technological, social, architectural or scientific value. The project completes the industrial heritage map of the archipelago: La Palma was the last island yet to be catalogued within the research programme launched by the Gobierno de Canarias in 2009. Art history scholar and industrial heritage specialist Amara Florido is responsible for the inventories of all seven islands.

Visit to the Almacén de Yanes

One of the properties included in the database is the former Almacén de Yanes, located at the entrance to the Puerto de Tazacorte. The Dirección General's head, Miguel Ángel Clavijo, the regional minister Miriam Perestelo — who holds the portfolio for Promoción Económica, Comercio, Acción Social, Igualdad, Diversidad, Vivienda y Salud, Cultura y Patrimonio Cultural — and the mayor of Villa y Puerto de Tazacorte, David Ruiz, travelled there to accompany Florido during her fieldwork.

For Clavijo, the document "is the first step towards the management, protection, conservation and promotion of assets that are both fragile and largely overlooked" — not only "at an administrative and legal level" but also in terms of their relevance "for the public". He described it as "the recent socioeconomic history of the archipelago" and announced that "next year the La Palma catalogue will be available to the public".

Perestelo highlighted the Cabildo de La Palma's willingness to work with the Gobierno de Canarias on the "drafting, advisory support and facilitation of the entire process", and stressed that the initiative "represents a unique opportunity for the island". The mayor of Tazacorte thanked the Gobierno de Canarias for its interest in the municipality's heritage, particularly regarding "the recovery and rehabilitation of the Almacén de Yanes as a symbol of our town".

Singular assets on La Palma

Florido explains that industrial heritage "is one of the youngest typologies and therefore one of the least well known", encompassing elements that were in operation from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The category includes material remains — both movable and immovable — linked to the agri-food industry, construction, metalworking, paper, film, chemicals, energy, transport, communications, leather goods, and water distribution and collection.

On La Palma, the assets most frequently recorded by the specialist are those connected to export agriculture, though she also highlights "a large number of mills, bakeries and carpentry workshops in the Valle area". Among the most singular elements are the chimney of a former soap factory in El Paso and an aerial cableway built in the 1930s to transport crates of bananas from the upper reaches of El Time down to Tazacorte.

According to Florido, the Almacén de Yanes "is one of the most important and singular assets of industrial architectural heritage, not only on La Palma but across the whole of the Canaries". The complex was built in 1925 by businessman Armando Yanes and was used for packing bananas, tomatoes, sugar, tobacco and almonds; the operation was later expanded to include a sugarcane mill for alcohol distillation.

A project begun in 2009

The inventories have been carried out without interruption since 2009, commissioned by the Dirección General de Patrimonio Cultural. Before La Palma, Florido recorded 2,736 assets across the rest of the archipelago, according to Canarias7: 1,014 on Gran Canaria, 286 on Fuerteventura, 1,018 on Tenerife, 109 on La Gomera, 69 on El Hierro and 240 on Lanzarote. Of the catalogues produced, those for Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Tenerife and La Gomera have been published, and the author was working on the edition for El Hierro.