Places of Interest in and around Corralejo

places of interest

A few meters away stands the “Casa de la Capellanía”, also known as hermitage of Puerto Escondido or Puerto Rico, with an interesting facade made of local white stone and decorated with a floral design. La Cilla of La Oliva, dating from the beginning of the 19th century, is located on the left-hand side of the road that leads to Lajares. The cillas are buildings where the church stored the produce it collected from tithes and the revenue from its properties. The one in La Oliva currently houses a grain museum. La Casa de la Costilla is another type of house, owned by the Cabrera-Manrique de Lara family, where the tenant farmers or administrators of their estates lived.

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The molinos (tower mills), molinas (open trestle mills) and lime kilns which proliferate over the length and breadth of the municipality are traces of economies and ways of living close to our own time. Outstanding are the El Cotillo lime kilns, which produced a large part of products for export. There are also examples in Villaverde, El Roque, La Oliva, etc. Noteworthy in La Oliva is the church dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Candelaria. It has a nave and two side aisles, each with a chapel. The central nave is supported by semicircular arches on square-based Tuscan columns. It is a popular, Mudejar structure dating from the end of the 17th century that features the particular shapes of the region and of the Renaissance in its supports and facade. The latter is in a very simplified classical style, dating from the beginning of the 18th century. The tower, made of dark stone, is not only the bell tower but also a watchtower. With the arrival of the Colonels it became the second most important ecclesiastical building on the island.

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The Ermita de Nuestra Señora del Buen Viaje in El Tostón or El Cotillo was founded towards the end of the 17th century by Sebastián Trujillo Ruíz, captain and sergeant major of the island, and its first festival was held on 21st November 1860. Most of the hermitages to be found on Fuerteventura were built during the 18th century, and they were in large part the work of significant groups of residents. The Villaverde, Villaverde, Tindaya and Vallebrón hermitages, and possibly the beginnings of the Ermita de La Caldereta, date from the 18th century. The construction of the Ermita de San Antonio in Lajares belongs to a later period.

Tostón Tower, also known as the Tower of Our Lady of the Pillar and Saint Michael, is exceptional. It is a “cheese” tower, so called because of its round shape, and its main function was to afford protection against the attacks of pirates that were very frequent at the time. To that end it was fitted with some simple artillery pieces. Built from rocks taken from a quarry near the El Cotillo hermitage, it dates from the middle of the 17th century and was declared a Historic Monument of Cultural Interest in 1949.