240 years have passed since the nonsense that was almost committed on the Peninsula against the south of Gran Canaria for the interests of the shipping sector and the Church to "spiritually" control the entire region. Carlos III ordered that the southern area of the island be "colonized" in 1782 and if the internal transfer of "500 idle families" from other parts of the islands was not carried out, apply the so-called 'Fuero de Sierra Morena', that is: fill the south of the island with Germans so that the ground, without touching spaces that belonged to the Conde de la Vega Grande, as was already being done then in Andalusia, in the area of La Carolina. Carlos III already had someone in command of the operation: Johann Kaspar Thürriegel, a German colonel of Bavarian origin in the service of Spain, in charge of attracting Central European settlers to the new towns of Sierra Morena. We are talking about 1782 and Thürriegel already left for Germany in June 1767 with settlers after distributing pamphlets in German and French where he mentioned the rights that its inhabitants would have under the jurisdiction and described the peninsular lands in an idyllic way. Most of the settlers embarked in Sète for the Andalusian ports on ships owned by the shipowners Despetis and Thibal.
In part, the solution provided by Charles III was the product of a demand from the Church, which said that those lands were left by God and could be fodder for invasion at any time. The Church began with the matraquilla between September 1773 and November 25, 1776 and Carlos III threatened to apply a solution in 1782. To pay for the operation there was talk of a budget of 100.000 pesos of plunder retained in the treasury of the Cathedral of Las Palmas . He pays attention to one fact: in 1777 the mutiny in the southeast of Gran Canaria occurred, that is, the misery that existed in the south of Gran Canaria was terrible.
The bishop in Las Palmas Juan Bautista Sewera (1769-1777) was the first to ask to populate the valleys of Mogán, Veneguera and Tasarte. Each family would receive irrigated and dryland plots, tools, seeds, etc., in exchange for breaking them and paying a moderate annual fee. It was also offered as a way out for those who moved there to dedicate themselves to the business of catching whales. But the operation failed. Carlos III opted to give land only to the islanders who were really poor on the island and that scared officials who were thinking about other futures for those surfaces because when they made the map they realized that there were 263 families and that they would only be susceptible to cultivation 5.940 bushels. A hopeful future awaited those already established and the new settlers, as long as they improved cultivation and irrigation techniques over the 198 bushels of irrigated land and 3.825 bushels of dry land then in production, 1.420 bushels of corn and 12.400 of wheat and rye. In the end it was agreed that it was more urgent to provide those neighbors with spiritual and political assistance in order to avoid serious fights between them, such as those that occurred between farmers and ranchers. The trustees Russell and La Rocha, with interests in those lands, are in charge of the distributions, leaving the Bishopric of Las Palmas out of their control.
