The invisible map of Tenerife: nine territories between the sea and the Teide
Drive the TF-5 or the TF-1 and the same words keep coming at you from the signs. Tacoronte. Icod. Adeje. Güímar. You could be forgiven for reading them as what they are today: motorway exits, postcodes, town halls.
They were something else first. They were borders.
Before the Castilians landed, Tenerife was not organised into municipalities but into nine independent territories. That map never went away. You stand on it every time you get out of the car.
Nine territories, and one place that belonged to nobody
At the time of the conquest the island was divided into nine menceyatos: Anaga, Güímar, Abona, Adeje, Daute, Icod, Taoro, Tacoronte and Tegueste. Each had a mencey at its head.
And there was a tenth place that belonged to none of them.
The centre of the island, the high plateau around the Teide, stayed common ground. The Candelaria town council's own leaflet settles it in a single sentence, and that sentence tells you more about Guanche Tenerife than a chapter of royal lists: «La zona central de la isla era una zona común para todos, utilizada para que el ganado pastase.» The central area of the island belonged to everyone, for grazing livestock.
Think about what that means. Nine territories that also fought each other, and the most important summer pasture belonged to none of them. Whoever drove a flock up there grazed it alongside the neighbour's animals.
The mencey statues on the Candelaria seafront square in January 2025, before the refurbishment of the square.
Why they look nothing like today's municipalities
On a modern administrative map the boundaries seem to wander for no reason. The menceyato boundaries were natural ones.
Dr José Juan Jiménez González, curator of the Archaeological Museum of Tenerife, puts it like this: the island was segmented into nine natural districts, and that division did not come from one decision but from population growth and differing ecological niches.
That matters, because tradition says something else. According to the chronicles Tenerife belonged to a single ruler, Tinerfe the Great, and after his death his nine sons divided the island between them. It is a good story, and it is still the popular version.
But the two explanations are not the same thing. One is a decision in a single moment; the other a process across centuries. Archaeology leans towards the second.
The mencey was not a medieval king
The Castilian chronicles called them kings, and the word stuck. Do not picture castles, crowns or throne rooms.
The mencey led a pastoral society. He did not decide alone: he swore his oath before the tagoror, the assembly of nobles and elders.
The most telling thing is what he had to arbitrate. The museum curator's list is literal: «la organización ganadera (terrenos de pastos, querellas entre pastores, competencia por fuentes y abrevaderos)». Grazing land. Quarrels between shepherds. Competition for springs and watering places.
Not military campaigns, not dynastic disputes. Water and grass. If you want to understand what held these nine territories together, that sentence gets you closer than any list of kings.
When the island split in two
Alonso Fernández de Lugo landed in April 1494. He did not meet a united people.
The nine territories fell into two camps. The bandos de paces, the peace factions: Anaga, Güímar, Abona and Adeje. The bandos de guerra, the war factions: Tegueste, Tacoronte, Taoro, Icod and Daute.
Look at the map and an explanation seems to draw itself. The peace group to the south and east, on the drier side. The resisters to the north, on the green one. It sounds reasonable: those with most to lose fought for it.
Except that the explanation collapses immediately.
Anaga sits among the peace factions, and Anaga is not the dry south. It is the far northeast of the island, the Anaga massif, one of the wettest areas there is, covered in laurel forest. If climate had decided it, Anaga would belong on the other side.
This is not a small blemish, it is the weak point of the whole scheme. Nor is it a new discovery: historians did dispute whether Anaga really belonged to the peace factions. The documents contemporary with the events settled it, and they leave no room for doubt.
So why, then?
The answer sits in one sentence of the menceyato description, and it is far more concrete than the weather: peace meant that no slaves could be taken from there. «Anaga queda así incluida en los denominados bando de paces, asegurándose la libertad de los asaltos esclavistas.»
What counted was not whether the land was dry. It was whether people were being carried off.
Two battles, two directions
April 1494, La Matanza de Acentejo. The Guanches destroyed the invaders in the ravine. Eighty per cent of the Castilian force was lost there. The place is still called what it is: the slaughter.
November 1494, Aguere. Half a year later, where La Laguna stands today, the balance tipped the other way. Bencomo, mencey of Taoro and the man holding the northern resistance together, fell in that battle, and his brother Tinguaro with him.
It is worth putting the two dates side by side, because the popular account tends to blur them. Bencomo did not die in the final defeat, he died long before it. The second battle of Acentejo, where resistance collapsed for good, only came in December 1495. By then Bencomo had been dead for over a year.
The conquest officially ended on 29 September 1496.
Bencomo, mencey of Taoro, on the square in Candelaria in January 2025, before the refurbishment.
What we do not know, and it is better said out loud
Everything above has a source behind it. Here comes the part where there is none.
I could not confirm an image that gets repeated a great deal: that the menceyatos ran in regular strips, like slices of a cake, from the coast up to the summit, each with its own piece of shoreline, mid-altitude land and highland. The logic is appealing and it fits what we know about the shared central pasture. But neither the museum's description nor the menceyato literature I consulted contains that specific claim. What they do contain: «natural districts» and differing ecological conditions.
The strip picture may well be true and written down somewhere I did not look. It may also be a teaching diagram that hardened into a fact. Until I know, I am not asserting it here.
The same goes for the añepa, the staff cited as the menceyes' emblem. Several popular accounts mention it; I did not find it in the museum and encyclopedia texts I checked.
What is left of it five hundred years on
The menceyatos ceased to exist as political units. The map did not.
When you cross the island today and say these words out loud, Anaga, Tegueste, Tacoronte, Taoro, Icod, Daute, Adeje, Abona, Güímar, you are naming nine territories that no engineer laid out. Water, pasture and altitude did.
And if you ever go up to the Teide plateau, remember that you are standing on the one place that belonged to no mencey. Because it belonged to all of them.
Pelinor, one of the menceyes, on the square in Candelaria in January 2025, before the refurbishment.
Where can you see this today?
MUNA (Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología), Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The archaeological material is here, and part of what is stated above comes from here too, from a named researcher.
Plaza de la Patrona de Canarias, Candelaria. The nine bronze statues of the menceyes, the work of José Abad, stood on the seafront square. Before you go: because of the full refurbishment of the square that began in 2025, the statues were temporarily lifted from their plinths and cannot be seen on the promenade until the works are finished. The symbolism of the place remains and the square is still worth the trip, but you will not find the nine figures there for now.
The Anaga massif. If you want one place that shows you why climate was not the deciding factor, this is it.
And a closing question I have no answer to either: if the centre of the island really was common pasture, then the nine territories did not only fight each other, they also came to an agreement about something every single year. How? On that, the sources are silent.
