Casa Fuerte - Adeje

This once impressive palace-fort , which for centuries was the residence of the Ponte family and their descendants in Adeje, was built around the year 1556 by Pedro de Ponte who had built a sugar mill a few years earlier.

The reason for the construction of the building was the raids of French and English pirates on the coasts of Adeje.

It was a fortified residence, a mixture of manor and fortress, with an almost square plan and covering an area of 9,024 varas castellanas ( 7,200 square meters) . It consisted of a castle and keep, storehouses , granaries, stables, forge, bakery, ovens, quarters for servants and administrators, a prayer chapel and the main palace . According to the French naturalist Berthelot, “ the most important room is the archive room ”, which had four large cabinets full of documents, described by the historian Viera y Clavijo as “the treasury of the Canary Islands”.

For more than three hundred years, Casa-Fuerte became the political, economic and social center of the jurisdiction of Adeje , as well as an imposing symbol of an entire era: that of Ponte's manor regime. The last member of the Ponte family to live in this fortress house was the Marquis Don Domingo José de Herrera Ayala y Ponte, who died in 1766. From then on it was the residence of the administrator of the Marquesses of Belgium and his employees.

A fire destroyed the building in 1902. The tower and entrance gate have been spared, along with the walls of the kitchen, parts of the fence and the bakery. The animals and family archives have also been preserved . The archives were later transferred to a museum.

In 1904 the Curbelo de Gran Canaria family moved into the complex and built new buildings inside and outside the walls,[particularly on the eastern front of the complex, which was previously an open courtyard. In the 1980s, competition from elsewhere led to the closure of the packing plant, although tomato cultivation continued on the site until the early 2000s under the San Sebastian cooperative.

On February 7, 1986 it was protected as a structure of historic interest for the Canary Islands.

Today it is still in the same condition. In 2019 it was placed on the Spanish red list of endangered heritage. Since then, restoration work has taken place and part of the monument has been opened to the public for daily visits.

In the mid-16th century , the island's last sugar mill stood in Adeje, fed by the waters of the Barranco del Infierno ravine . This sugar mill was located in the Casa Fuerte before the latter was built and its production was the most important in Tenerife.

Sugar cane was introduced to the Canary Islands from Madeira at the end of the 15th century and became the main source of wealth in the 16th century. It quickly adapted to the climatic conditions and developed the sugar industry in the Canary Islands , which brought with it the cultivation systems and everything necessary for the transformation process and the installation of the sugar factories . On the island of Tenerife, cultivation spread first to the north of the island and then to the south in the mid-16th century, with the sugar mills of Adeje and Arona.

In Adeje we find two sugar mills, one in La Concepción, built by Antonio de Castro and another in Casa Fuerte built by Pedro de Ponte.

Construction of the Adeje Mill began in 1554 , when Pedro de Ponte agreed with Antonio de Blas, a master mill-maker, to build one in Adeje in November 1553.

The factory's income was significant until the 1880s, when it began to decline due to competition from Brazilian sugar, pirate attacks, natural disasters, and the mayorazgo's harsh obligation clauses. The mill was shut down in 1811 due to the poor harvest of the sugar cane fields, which were then used for vineyards and fruit plantations.

Sugar was exported directly via the port of La Caleta to Cádiz and Antwerp.

Willem Vandenameele