Casa Fuerte de Adeje

The Casa Fuerte is a 16th-century fortified compound that the Ponte family built in Adeje to protect their sugar mill. Pedro de Ponte applied for permission in 1553 and received it by royal charter signed in Valladolid on 2 May 1555; the work was completed in 1556. It was more than a manor house. For three centuries it served as the political, economic and social centre of the Ponte lordship, and it guarded the sugar mill that this corner of the south of the island lived on. The almost square compound covered some 7,200 square metres and brought together a tower, warehouses, a granary, stables, a forge, a bakehouse, ovens, living quarters and an archive room that came to be known as the treasure of the Canaries.

On Wednesday 9 April 1902 a fire tore through the complex. The upper-floor rooms, the furniture and much of the documentation burned, including the municipal and court archive. The tower, the gateway, the kitchen walls and the remains of the bakehouse survived, and the building has stood in that ruined state ever since. Local oral tradition holds that the fire was set deliberately. The estate archive was not entirely lost: in the 1930s it passed to the Museo Canario in Las Palmas, and today it can be consulted in digital form. The Casa Fuerte has been listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural in the Monument category since 1986. In 2019 it was added to Hispania Nostra's Red List of endangered heritage, and in 2024 the south-eastern plot came off that list following restoration work.

That south-eastern plot is the part you can see from the inside today: the tower, the cistern, the ground floor, the bagasse store, the gatekeeper's room and the storerooms have been recovered, and restored farm tools are on display there. Admission is free, and it opens on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10:00 to 13:00; for groups, or for visits outside those hours, it is worth calling or sending a WhatsApp message in advance. It stands in the middle of the old town, on the same street as the Barranco del Infierno visitor centre and about three hundred metres from it, so the two visits fit together well in one morning.