Canary Wharf is one of the main financial centers of London. Its name is not coincidental and has a direct relationship with the Canary archipelago
London has been the richest city in the world for decades, monopolizing the main financial transactions and operations among its many banks and investment funds. Currently, after the departure of many investors and businessmen due to Brexit, it is the richest city in Europe and the fourth in the world, behind New York, Tokyo and San Francisco. It owes this wealth mainly to the activity carried out in its two main financial districts: The City and Canary Wharf; The name of this last district is not coincidental, since its history has Canarian roots.
Canary Wharf is the second largest financial district in London, located on the Isle of Dogs in Tower Hamlets, located in the Docklands area. After The Shard, the three tallest towers in the United Kingdom are located in Canary Wharf: The HSBC towers, One Canada Square and Citigroup Centre; which places Canary Wharf as a prominent element of the London skyline alongside such characteristic elements as The London Eye or Big Ben.
But what does the Canary Islands have to do with this important area within the fourth richest city in the world? Well, a lot, especially in the XNUMXth century. The influence of the archipelago was so great that it served as the name for the area and even had a lot to do with its relevance as a financial center over the years.
In the XNUMXth century, the area where Canary Wharf is now located was an inhospitable and uninhabited area. Despite the great advantage that the area had as a strategic point for the arrival of ships, these tasks were carried out on unreliable piers that many Sometimes they ended up causing accidents in which the merchandise and even the lives of the workers were lost.
Robert Milligan, a slave trader and Scottish landowner who owned sugar plantations in Hawaii, observed this circumstance was wasting him a lot of time and proposed the creation of a port to operate in a safer and more organized way with the Caribbean colonies.
Work on the West India Docks (name of the port) began in 1800, with the creation of several docks and infrastructure that facilitated the arrival and departure of ships. Two north and one south docks were created, in the first two (capable of holding more than 500 ships) the ships unloaded their merchandise and, continuing along the canal, arrived at the south dock where they filled their holds and began their way back.
West India Docks had a large commercial activity, which was a business opportunity for many traders. Many of these merchants were Canarian fruit, a market that grew little by little on the docks of the West India Docks and that, thanks to Juan Bravo Murillo and his Free Ports law, which sought to provide fiscal incentives to the islands by freeing their customs, called the attention of the British authorities; which showed greater interest in the archipelago due to its geographical location.
Such was the interest that the United Kingdom invested in the creation of the ports of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Gran Canaria, where many Britons settled. This represented a qualitative leap in the lives of local farmers who began to see the possibility of importing their products to a prosperous area such as London in the mid-XNUMXth century.
The Canarian and Spanish presence in the West India Docks was increasing, so much so that pier 32 adopted the name of a huge warehouse in the port owned by Fruit Lines Ltd, a company dedicated to trade with Spain: Canary Wharf.
With the new freighters and huge containers, West India Docks began to become too small and activity began to move to other places with infrastructure that could receive this merchandise. In the 80s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher began a redevelopment project in the area that, together with foreign investment, has turned Canary Wharf into one of the most important financial districts in the United Kingdom.
