By 2026, the Italian community in southern Gran Canaria is a deeply rooted part of the present, its influence in sectors such as business, tourism, and real estate going hand in hand. But this presence is no accident. The beginning of this saga in the south was solidified on July 19, 1691, a key date in the records of the notary José García, where Gotardo Calimano made a donation of two shares of a slave inherited from his wife, revealing the management of human assets on his Maspalomas estate. According to Professor Alexis Brito, just a month later, on August 27, 1691, Gotardo sealed his alliance with the local elite by marrying Ana Jiménez de Contreras, daughter of Captain Gaspar Jiménez de Contreras and Ana de la Cue, in the Sagrario parish church—a strategic move that linked Venetian commercial acumen with the territorial control of the large landowners of Tirajana.
The expansion of the lineage continued with administrative precision in the following years. On July 25, 1690, his brother, the lawyer Francisco Jiménez de Contreras, provided his sister with a dowry to secure the family patrimony, while the descendants of the family were recorded in the baptismal registers of the parish of San Juan Bautista in Telde. The baptisms of his children are documented there on consecutive dates, marking the consolidation of the surname: the first record appears in book 11 (folio 142), followed by entries in book 12 on folios 59 (recto and verso), 113, and finally 188, which documents the continuity of the family's influence well into the 18th century.
Professor Brito notes that "although he initially settled in the city of Las Palmas, he soon moved to Telde, where he is listed as a resident from 1691. Like the rest of his family, he was involved in commerce. In a will drawn up in 1702, he indicated that he owned a shop in Telde and had credits in his favor worth more than 2.976.000 maravedis, spread over a wide area encompassing Telde, Agüimes, and Tirajana. He had also maintained commercial dealings with other merchants, especially with the Irishman Diego O'Shanahan, to whom he owed 1.776.000 maravedis for the remainder of his accounts."
This control over southern Gran Canaria was not a temporary coincidence, but rather a decades-long plan. The Calimano family took advantage of the vacuum left by other merchants after the sugar crisis of the early 17th century to position themselves as the necessary intermediaries between the ports of Maspalomas and the capital, Las Palmas. This chronology of marriages, baptisms, and slave donations between 1690 and 1710 is not genealogy; it is the record of a successful hostile takeover of the south's economic structure, where the Venetians went from being foreigners to the de facto owners of the Maspalomas Dunes and the region's water resources.
The Calimano lineage, begun by Gotardo and his brother Juan Bautista Calimano, became intertwined with the names of the land. Children like Francisco Calimano, Bárbara Calimano, Gaspar Calimano, and Margarita Calimano grew up amidst the prestige of their father—who rose to become the island's treasurer—and the vast expanses of the Maspalomas dunes and farmlands. This chronicle of names, from the laborer Silvestre de la Nuez working in the wells to the aristocrat Francisco Calimano in his palaces, is the true story of how the hard work of some and the shrewdness of others shaped the south of Gran Canaria.
With the support of the priests, the Calimano family acquired vast tracts of land. The influence of the priests in 17th- and 18th-century Maspalomas was decisive, as they acted as the true managers of social and property order in a territory far removed from the direct control of the capital. Figures like Francisco Jiménez de Contreras, brother of Ana Jiménez de Contreras, were key players in the consolidation of powerful lineages like the Calimano. By providing a dowry for his sister on July 25, 1690, Francisco not only secured a marriage but also facilitated the transfer of land and water rights in the south, legitimizing the entry of foreign (Venetian) capital into the local property structure. These clergymen not only administered sacraments but also operated as de facto notaries and protectors of the interests of the landed aristocracy, ensuring that wealth remained within a closed circle of influential families.
Furthermore, their power manifested itself in the oversight of rents and the control of economic morality in the area. Priests linked to the Cathedral Chapter, such as the canons who managed the sugar tithes, wielded an authority that blended the divine with the purely administrative. Their influence allowed southern Gran Canaria, despite being a landscape of dunes and isolated pastures, to function under a strict hierarchy where the Church validated who owned the land and who worked it. In the records of the time, their signature on wills and dowries was the necessary seal for families like the Calimano Nardari to go from being Venetian merchants to lords of Maspalomas, fully integrating themselves into the Canarian elite.
