Güímar

Before the Spanish conquest, Tenerife was divided into nine kingdoms. Güímar was among the most powerful, controlling much of the island's southern territory. Its people, the Guanches, kept goats, sheep and pigs, farmed the land, and drew food from the sea and forests. The archaeological record is rich: cave dwellings, shepherds' shelters, shell middens, and the cave of Chinguaro, where a statue of the Virgin of Candelaria was kept and venerated for fifty years — making it the island's first Marian shrine. Güímar was also the menceyato that had received the most Christian missionary contact before conquest.

After 1496, when military operations ended, the Guanches were absorbed into the new colonial society. Few received land grants; many continued living in caves in places like Guaza, their isolation allowing them to preserve their identity longer than elsewhere.

The first permanent settlement grew up in the San Juan district — also called Güímar de Arriba — near freshwater springs, and was tied from the start to a sugar mill run by the Piombino brothers. Over time, land concentrated into large estates, the most extensive being the Hacienda de las Vargas, which by the mid-period had grown larger than the modern municipality itself. The valley supplied staple foods to other parts of the island, and later became an important provisioner for the growing Puerto de la Cruz.

A volcanic eruption in 1705 destroyed significant areas of cereal farmland, but local farmers responded collectively, developing new cultivation methods that drove population and economic growth. As the sugar economy later declined, large landowners gradually released land to smallholders. Settlement spread downhill toward the coast, anchored by a small chapel near a water tank — San Pedro del Tanque — that eventually became the nucleus around which the modern town centre formed, organised around the Plaza de San Pedro and the streets of San Pedro Arriba and San Pedro Abajo.

Güímar has a significant concentration of historic buildings, though urban development over recent decades has damaged or destroyed parts of its heritage.

The cave of Chinguaro, classified as a Historic Site, is where the Guanches are said to have brought the statue of the Virgin of Candelaria after it was found on the coast. It became the island's first place of Marian pilgrimage. A chapel on the site collapsed in the late 1970s, and the cave itself was partly affected by the construction of a reservoir earlier in the century. Archaeological excavations in the 1990s were followed by a rehabilitation project, and in October 2007 — after a painting of the Virgin had spent three decades in the main parish church — the restored chapel was consecrated by the bishop.

The Ermita de San Juan, in the old San Juan district, was built around 1530 by Juan Alberto Giraldin beside the sugar mill he managed. After the original was destroyed in a storm, the Baulén landowning family rebuilt it, and later additions included a bell tower and pediment. Inside, a single nave holds a baroque altarpiece with polychrome wooden sculptures of John the Baptist as a child and as an adult, oil paintings of the Cristo de la Laguna and the Virgen de los Remedios, a polychrome pulpit showing the four evangelists, and a coffered ceiling with traces of original paint.

The Ermita de El Socorro, beside the beach at Chimisay — the site where tradition holds the Virgin of Candelaria was first found — is a listed monument, notable for its ashlar façade and bell tower. Inside is an oil painting of the Virgin by local artist Javier Eloy Campos.

The Capilla de San Pedro Abajo (1787), square in plan, is also a listed monument and contains notable frescoes. The former Convent of Santo Domingo, built in 1649, now houses the town hall, while its church continues as the parish church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The main parish church of San Pedro Apóstol traces its origins to a simple stone chapel built in 1606, with a full parish licence granted by the Bishop of the Canaries in 1630.

TITSA bus Line 111 runs along the main highway, connecting Güímar with Santa Cruz, Costa Adeje, and the southern airport; from the highway stop you walk to the Güímar–Puertito de Güímar road, then take a local bus covering the remaining 3–4 km to the centre. Lines 035 and 037 link Güímar with Granadilla de Abona and Arico. The town centre is walkable; the ethnographic park is about ten minutes uphill.

Parking in Puertito de Güímar is difficult. Locally produced aloe vera products — soaps, shampoos, other hygiene items, and aloe-based drinks — are sold at Finca Canarias. Restaurants in the historic centre keep limited hours; almost nothing is open Sunday evenings, and many also close on Mondays.

The coastal area has more restaurants and taverns, many with sea views, later hours, and better weekend availability.