The Way We Were

This previous image, looking down the Esteban de Ponte street in Garachico was taken from the same spot where the children in this photo are waiting.

This old photo that hangs in the former Franciscan Convent (now a museum), was taken around 100 years ago and in it, we can see two of the houses that run up the side of the Plaza de Juan González de la Torre, which are still there today.

The inscription under the old photo reads: Plaza de la Fuente (Fountain Place) "Surrounded by magnificent houses, the small Plaza de Abajo (Lower Place) or Plaza de la Fuente (Fountain Place) was renamed in 1917 after the mayor who had remodelled it: Don Juan González de la Torre. The gas lamp dominates one corner of the picture and stands opposite two houses which were built on land belonging to the Marquis of Mondéjar. The house on the left later became the headquarters of the Mail Service, as is evident by the letterbox which can be seen in the wall next to the window; and the other was the Doña Gregoria Boarding House, the most important establishment of its kind in the municipality which provided accommodation to traders and temporary workers as well as the odd tourist from England. And on the corner, children are waiting for the bus, which stopped nearby. The benches seem to be the same as the ones which still stand today, as if nothing had changed over the intervening years."

The first of those houses no longer has the letterbox, but it does still have the niche, which contains a religious icon, that you can see between the two upstairs windows. Today, the Doña Gregoria Boarding House is a grocery shop, but otherwise, both houses remain almost completely unaltered. And yes, those benches and lamps do still seem to be exactly the same, apart from the fact that the latter have now been converted to electricity. I like the way they say "odd tourist from England". Is there any other type? :) See where this picture was taken. [?]