The Banana Museum, Tazacorte

When I first heard there was a banana museum in Tazacorte, I laughed. But since about 40% of La Palma's population works works in the banana industry (growing, packing shipping etc.) it makes sense. Besides, bananas are the 4th most important crop in the world, (after rice, wheat and maize), and this is the only museum about European bananas in the world.



The museum contains lots of information panels in English and Spanish, all about thing like the origins and history of bananas, how they're grown, their health benefits, and the geology and history of Tazacorte. There's also a good selection of tools used for growing bananas.



Open Monday- Friday, 11 am - 1:30 pm
(Groups of visitors 10 am - 14:30 pm, but only by prior arrangement - Tel 922 480151)

To find the museum, first find the church then head downhill. The lane meanders through some lovely old houses, but if you follow your nose whenever there isn't a sign, you'll find it - the building's yellowy-green. And you can't beat the entrance price - it's free.

Beside the banana museum stands a mojo museum, almost ready to open. (Mojo is sort-of Canarian ketchup.) I gather the hold up is mostly paperwork, because they want to make mojo on the premises. That would make it far more interesting, of course, but the paperwork for anything to do with food is far more complicated.

The soon-to-be Mojo Museum next door

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La Palma's Museum

The entrance to the island's museum, beside the church of San Francisco.

The Island's Museum is in the old convent of San Francisco. The building itself is lovely. It dates from the early 16th century; work started in 1508, just fifteen years after the Spanish conquest. (Forty years ago, it was the technical school, and my husband studied there. It certainly looks better than the concrete box I studied in.) The church is still a church, and the music school stands beside the museum, so you often get music floating out over the square.

The building has two courtyards, one of which is full of orange trees, planted by the great and the good who came for the official opening of the observatory, in 1985.

The courtyard of orange trees.

The inside reminds me of a cross between an attic and the Discworld's Unseen University. There's a bit of almost everything. It's a surprisingly large museum for such a small island, and I think most of the collection was donated by people who felt they couldn't throw the Granny's old stuff out, but certainly weren't about to give it house room. Don't get me wrong: it's all nicely displayed and labled. It's just that you never know what you're going to find around the next corner. That's exactly what I loved. Besides, I wouldn't want a collection of stuff sharks heads at home either. Much better to have them here, delighting blood-thirsty 8-year-olds. (Kids will be happy to hear that some of them have serious teeth.)

Downstairs, I they have woodworking tools (lots for shipbuilding), lots of sea shells, starfish, turtles, a seal, lots of birds, tools for preparing flax, wool and silk, a loom, drinking troughs for animals, straw baskets, and probably a partridge in a pear tree and a kitchen sink.

Upstairs there's a small selection of paintings (some very old) and musical instruments.

For most of the year the museum is open from Monday-Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm, and Sundays from 10 am to 2 pm. In high summer (July August and September) they open Monday-Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm only.
Stuffed sharks and other fish.

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An Art Exhibition in Sant aCruz de la Palma

Garafian peasant, oil on canvas, by Manuel González Méndez

Santa Cruz de la Palma isn't exactly the centre of the art world, but we do pretty well for such a small town. The Island Museum currently holding an exhibition to celebrate the centenary of a local artist. Manuel González Méndez was born in Santa Cruz de la Palma in 1843, in Calle Virgen la Luz. By the time he died in Barcelona in 1909, he was perhaps the most important Canarian artist of all. I'm no art expert, but I thought the portraits were great.

The museum is on the old convent building beside San Francisco church, which is a lovely 16th century building, and worth a visit in itself, but that's a topic for another post.

The museum and exhibition are open from 10 am to 8 pm Monday to Saturday, and on Sunday mornings from 10 am to 2 pm. The exhibition will be up until January 10th, 2010. And you can't beat the price - it's free.

The Weaver, oil on canvas, by Manuel González Méndez

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La Palma's Embroidery Museum

The table cloth on the stairs

La Palma has a long tradition of gorgeous embroidery. As I mentioned in my previous post, the embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House, in Mazo. This gorgeous tablecloth in broderie anglaise is halfway up the stairs.

Assisi embroidery, a form of cross stitch. About the only thing in the museum I could see myself making.

Now I'm fairly good at cross stitch, but the stuff in here is waaaaaaaaaaay out of my league. For one thing, it's not done on aida cloth, which makes it obvious where the stitches go. This is all on fine cotton or silk, or occasionally linen.

Broderie Anglaise

The commonest kinds of embroidery here are satin stich (bordado indefinido) , and a variation of broderie anglaise called rechi or richelieu.

A fish in satin stitch

In the days before modern embroidery kits, pattens were copied onto tissue paper, and the lines marked out with lots of tiny pinholes. Then the tissue paper was laid onto the cloth, and blue dye ironed over it, so that the dye went through the pinhole and onto the fabric.

How to transfer a pattern to the cloth

A lot of the embroidery is so fine, I think you'd need young eyes and daylight to do it. So you'd spend years learning to work to that amazing standard, and then you'd have to give up by the age of forty.

Fine satin stitch on a cuff


You know, I have mixed feeling about it. These are real works of art, and I'm always glad to see beauty created. But the vast majority of it was only created because some people could afford to buy a year of someone else's time. For example, these embroidered sheets and pillow case for a cradle are absolutely beautiful, but it's really not practical. I don't want to get too graphic here, but 19th century nappies can't have been leak-proof, and babies' cute little faces aren't leak-proof either. Much as I coo over tiny people, I wouldn't put one down on embroidered silk.

A cradle full of embroidered silk.

And this towel is far too lovely to dry your behind on, unless you were fairly contemptuous of the person who made it.

Satin stitch towel. Imagine drying your bum on that!

The museum is signposted from the main road through Mazo, and in any case, it's a pretty distinctive building. It costs 2€ to get in (1.50€ for residents) for both the embroidery museum and the Corpus Christi museum. It's open from 10 am to 2 pm Monday to Friday, and 11 am - 6 pm on Saturdays. Phone 922 428 587


Satin stitch on a priest's vestments

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The Red House in Mazo

The Red House, Mazo

La Palma's embroidery museum is upstairs in the Red House in Mazo. (I'll write about that in my next post.) Downstairs is a museum about the fiesta of Corpus Christi in Mazo. If you're on La Palma for June 3rd next year, for goodness' sake go and see it. If not, I strongly recommend the museum.


Some of the things used to make the Corpus Christi archways, and a block for chopping them up.

The fiesta is in honour of the Eucharist -- the body of Christ. Every year since the 1950s, they've decorate the streets with spectacular archways and carpets covered with flowers, seeds and leaves, and small parts of these archways are in the museum. Well, when I say "small", they're a small percentage of the whole. The cross below is about four feet high, but the biggest archway is about ten metres (33ft) high.


Corpus Christi Cross

And below, you can see the details of the cross. It makes me wonder how many hours it took to do the whole thing.

Detail of the cross

The museum is signposted from the main road through Mazo, and in any case, it's a pretty distinctive building. It costs 2€ to get in (1.50€ for residents) and it's open from 10 am to 2 pm Monday to Friday, and 11 am - 6 pm on Saturdays. Phone 922 428 587

A fish used to decorate an archway.

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El Paso's Silk Museum

La Palma has a long history of silk production, going back to the 16th century. In fact, at one time, silk was made in all the Canary Islands, but since the 19th century, El Paso, in the centre of La Palma, is the only place which still produces it.

They use an old fashioned, labour-intensive technique, the only place in Europe which still does so. You can see most of the process at the silk museum in El Paso, where the staff will talk you through the process in Spanish, English or German. The only parts they don't do on the premises are those involving boiling water.

First, you have to care for the silk worms. They eat mulberry leaves, but you can't just leave them on the mulberry tree or the birds will eat them. You have to keep them in a box, and collect leaves for them, and clean the box out. They have silk worms on view at the museum in the spring, but there are none available at this time of year.

Eventually, of course, they make themselves cocoons.

Silk cocoons.

If you let the silk moths hatch naturally, they chew through the threads to get out, and you're left with a bunch of short threads, instead of one long one. So they put the cocoons into boiling water, which softens the natural glue holding the cocoon together, and pull out the threads in groups of about 15. Amazingly, you get about 1 km of thread from each cocoon.

Once the threads are out of the water, the glue hardens again, and the sticks the individual threads into one. At that point, it doesn't feel like silk. It's much rougher, something like linen.

The threads are wound onto a drum, with thicker sections separated from thinner ones. From there, they're wound onto bobbins, and then two or three threads are wound together onto another bobbin, to make a thicker thread. (The thickness of the thread depends on what it will be used for. Ties, for example, are generally made of three-ply silk.) These threads are then twisted together by hand, working one section at a time, from the bobbin at the right of the picture to the one at the left.


Spinning the silk.

Then the silk is wound into skeins again, so that it can be boiled with soap, to remove the natural glue. This gives the silk gets its delightful, soft texture, and allows it to be dyed.



Plant dyes and the colours they give to silk.


Only natural dyes are used. Most of them are plants, like eucalyptus leaves, marigold petals, almond shells and onion skins, but cochineal beetles and lichen (Roccella canariensis) are also used.

The silk comes out with beautiful, glowing colours.


Skeins of dyed silk.

And then it has to be wound onto bobbins yet again, and finally woven. The museum contains three looms, with the oldest dating from 1860.

All this hard work makes the final product distinctly pricey. A tie costs about 150 € and a scarf costs about 210 €, and both are on sale in the shop, along with smaller, cheaper items.

The museum is in the centre of El Paso, Calle Manuel Taño 6
Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m., also Tuesday and Thursday, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Entrance fee: 2.50 €

Winding silk onto bobbins and weaving silk.

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The Molino Museum

A collection of old weights

As well as the workshop making replica ceramics, the windmill at Mazo houses a small museum. Entry is free, but there are a couple of places you can make a donation. Upstairs is mostly a collection of old tools: an old Singer sewing machine, combs for flax, knife grinders, braziers...


Oil lamps

... the millers glasses, shepherd's poles, long handled pallets for putting bread in a large oven. To be honest, it's all crammed in rather haphazardly, but it's almost all labelled, and it's rather fun.



But the best bit is downstairs. Much of the bottom of the windmill is still there. You can see the main flywheel and the gears, and hoppers for the grain.



Best of all, you can still turn some of the mechanism by hand. Of course young boys love this.


The brake and the bread kneader

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