La Gomera Columbus´s Last Stop
Final Port of Call In Spain´s Canary Islands
The little island of La Gomera, where he provisioned his ships for the voyage, was the last place Columbus saw land before reaching the new world.
The town of San Sebastian, capital of one of the smallest of the seven Canary Islands, is not far from the coast of North Africa, but it was the last bit of Europe Columbus and the crews of the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria would see before they crossed the Atlantic.
Columbus provisioned his ships with the fruits of La Gomera gardens and filled water casks from a well that guidebooks and locals pointout in a courtyard next to the Tourist Office: Pozo de la Aguada. That the explorer filled his ships` holds with fresh water in San Sebastian is documented. The exact well is not, but this one is as likely as any.
More certain is that he would have at least visited the square stone tower that stands today in the center of a green park. One of the oldest structures in the Canary Islands and the oldest still in its original state, Torre del Conde was a small fort built by Governor Hernan Peraza. In 1488 the governor was killed in an uprising after an incident with the fiance of a powerful island chief. The governor`s wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla, had to take refuge in the tower until help arrived from nearby Gran Canaria. She remained on the island and Columbus is known to have visited her.
More tenuous is the claim of Casa de Colon (Columbus`s house) on Calle Real, said to be built on the site of the house where he stayed in San Sebastian. There is no documentation to support this, or even suggest where he stayed, but the house is worth visiting for the little Museum of the Discoveries located inside it. It's open Mon-Fri 10am-1pm, 3:30pm-5:30pm.
Up the street is Iglesia Nostra Señora de la Asuncion. Columbus would have prayed in this church`s predecessor, which burned and was replaced by the present one in 1768. It`s worth a stop if it is open, to see an interesting polychrome side altar in the right aisle.
San Sebastian is a pleasant, friendly and low-keyed town, easy to reach on a one-hour ferry ride from Los Cristianos on the south coast of Tenerife, another of the Canary Islands.
And apart from the small clusters of candy-colored buildings around the harbor and up two of the hillsides, the landscape of jagged rock peaks and deep plunging ravines looks just as it did when Columbus sailed in with the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
