The Canary Islanders

The plan behind the voyage was far larger than the result. In 1719 the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo proposed bringing 400 families from the Canaries, Galicia or Havana to people Texas. By June 1730 twenty-five families had reached Cuba before orders from Spain halted the movement. The newcomers joined a community that had existed since 1718, and their arrival disrupted it, especially over land and water rights. Over time Canary Islander descent became a point of pride; María Rosa Padrón was the first baby of known Islander descent born in San Antonio.

What the plaque says

The Canary Islanders Earliest civilian colonists of San Antonio, this nucleus of pioneers from the Canary Islands formed the first organized civil government in Texas and founded the village of San Fernando de Bexar in 1731. Following a sea and land voyage of over a year, these weary travelers arrived at the Presidio (Fort) of San Antonio early on March 9, 1731. Totaling 56 persons, they had emigrated to Texas from the Spanish Canary Islands near Africa, by order of King Philip V. On July 2, they began to lay out a villa (village), choosing a site on the west side of the Plaza de las Islas (present Main Plaza) for the church and a site on the east side for the Casa Reales (government building). On July 9, the captain of the Presidio, Juan Antonio De Almazan, read to the islanders the decee of the viceroy naming them and their descendants "Hijos Dalgos", persons of nobility. The heads of the 16 families who settled in San Antonio were: Juan Leal Goraz, Juan Curbelo, Juan Leal, Antonio Santos, Jose Padron, Manuel De Nis, Vicente Alvarez Travieso, Salvador Rodriguez, Jose Leal, Juan Delgado, Jose Cabrera, Juan Rodriguez Grandillo, Francisco De Arocha, Antonio Rodriguez, Lorenzo and Martin De Armas, and Felipe and Jose Antonio Perez. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Fernando Cathedral — steps away
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — steps away
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 0.2 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.3 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Vicinity of the Storming of Bexar — steps away
• San Antonio Mutual Aid Association — steps away
• The Casas Reales — steps away
• T. C. Frost and the Frost Bank — steps away