The other “Christopher Columbus”.

The other “Christopher Columbus”. The enigmatic Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello.

Genoese navigator Lancelotto Malocello is credited with the rediscovery of the Canary Islands in 1312. In 1339, Majorcan Angelino Dulcert drew the first map of the Canaries, labeling one of the islands “Lanzarote”.

The Canary Islands were known to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. However, the Phoenician sources do not mention the aborigines of the islands, if not to say that the discoverers committed all kinds of atrocities against the primitive Guanches.

The Carthaginian navigators knew about the most diverse cultures: people from the Near East, Bamites, Greeks, Celts, ancient Iberians, and a large number of sub-Saharan Africans; and therefore they must not have been very surprised to find a blond, blue-eyed, cave-dwelling people living in the islands.

Apparently on a voyage in search of the Genoese brothers Ugolino Vivaldi and Vadino Vivaldi, who in 1291 had set out on a voyage in which they tried to reach India by sailing around Africa, with a stopover on the islands (although it is not clear how they would have informed their compatriots of the discovery and stopover).

It is known that in 1312, captaining a vessel, it reached the coast of Lanzarote Island (Canary Islands). Landed on the island, he ordered the construction of Guanapay castle, a small fortress on an elevated hill overlooking the Guanche village of Teguise, of which no safe remains are known, although when Jean de Bettencourt arrived there in 1402 there still existed.

He was expelled from the island some 20 years later by an uprising of the Guanche peoples. Although little information is known about this uprising and the subsequent abandonment of the island, Malocello’s stay on the island is attested to by several sources, including the chronicle of the conquest of the island by the Europeans captained by the Norman Jean de Bettencourt almost a century later. This chronicle refers to the finding of a fort built by him in the vicinity of Teguise, on Guanapay Mountain.

It is only known that in 1336 an armada left Lisbon under the command of Lancelotto Malocello, probably in an attempt to recover the island after his expulsion around 1332.

When Malocello arrived on the island, named Tite-Roy-Gatra by its aboriginal inhabitants, the Guanche peoples living there were ruled by a king named Zonzamas, whose consort was Queen Fayna. They had two sons: Tigufaya, heir to the throne, but who was deported from the island in 1393 with his wife and other important personalities of the community; and Guanarame, who would succeed him to the throne.

It is said that the noble bishop Martin Ruiz de Avendaño, who landed on the island in 1377, was conceived with Queen Fayna as an illegitimate daughter, named Ico, who then married Guanarame and had a son, Guardafía (later named Luis de Guardafía). Guardafia was the sovereign who attended the arrival of Jean de Bettencourt’s expedition in 1402.

His daughter, called Teguise and whose name is linked to the town of the same name today, married Maciot de Bettencourt, Jean de Bettencourt’s nephew.

The few sources of information along with incomplete reports add to the mystery of the navigator Genovese Lanzarotto Malocello.

Article By: José Azuaje-Fidalgo.