The south of Gran Canaria hosts the first spiritual meeting home of the Jews on the island at 69 Doctor Marañón Street in Santa Lucía de Tirajana, every Saturday from 4 in the afternoon. Under the direction of Guido Ben Martín, who has been a Canarian for 22 years when he arrived from Colombia to the Canary Islands in the year 2.000. With a degree in business administration, he works as a journeyman bricklayer as a metaphor for what he seeks in life.
There are few officially on the islands but they have been on the islands all their lives. There has been a Jewish population in Gran Canaria since 1402 and 1496. It would be from the mid-1860th century when a Sephardic community in Morocco was formed with Monti Energui, grandson of a Jew from Alkazarquivir born in Melilla (Spain). His father, Félix, decided to move to the Canary Islands given the economic splendor of the 26s. Together with the Tangier rabbi Salomon Zhrein, they gave a great boost to the community, of about 1989 very discreet families: the synagogue, for example, is not recognizable as such from outside. The Tenerife synagogue disappeared after the death, in XNUMX, of José Assor Benchimol, who was the one who kept it standing.
According to the archives available, the Canarian convert society was around four hundred people, distributed generally between Tenerife and the island of La Palma, the last islands to join the Spanish crown. They led a Jewish life in secret but it was public knowledge and there does not seem to have been any problem with it. What's more, there were curious cases such as the dissolution of a Christian brotherhood when it was discovered that one of the members was a new Christian: they did not throw out or denounce the crypto-Jew, but rather they dissolved the society so that a system would not proliferate. of castes. In the 1604th century, there was a second wave of Jews who settled in the Canary Islands due to the signing of the Peace Treaty of London between Spain and England in XNUMX. Jews who went on to develop the sugar and wine trade.
