Page 234 - Lanzarotto Malocello from Italy to the Canary Islands

234 from Italy to the Canary Islands

Edition 1957, p. 11); the text Conquista y colonización published by Cen-
tro de la cultura popular Canaria, p. 23, by Josè Juan Suarez Acosta, Feliz
Rodriguez Lorenzi and Carmelo Quintero Padron; Demetrio Castro Alfin
Historia de la islas Canarias, published by Editora Nacional Cultura y
Sociedad (p. 50); the proceedings of the Conference held from 19 to 24
February 2007 by the Asociación Viera y Clavijo “Estudio del Medio Nat-
ural y arquelogico en Lanzarote y archipelago Chinino”; and the study by
Fundación Cesar Manrique Majos. La primitiva poblacion de Lanzarote
by Josè Cabrera Perez, Antonia Perera Betancor, Antonio Tejera Gaspar
(p. 30).
The very old text by Florentino Perez Embid “Los descubrimientos
en el Atlantico y la rivalidad castellano – portoguesa hasta el tratado de
tordesillas”, Sevilla 1948, in reporting the 1312 date, adds that Lanzarotto
would not have discovered the Island as a coincidence, while searching
for the Vivaldi brothers, but because he would have learnt of the existence
of “some island” by some sailors from Cherbourg who had been hit by a
storm in the Atlantic and dragged to the shores of the undiscovered Lan-
zarote, where they would have found shelter, timber, and a way back (p.
60).
The episode of the Cherbourg sailors who supposedly told Lanzarotto
about being shipwrecked onto the Island was also taken up later by Dem-
etrio Castro Alfin in his Historia de las islas Canarias-De la preistoria
al descubrimiento, published by Editora Nacional Cultura y Sociedad (p.
51) and in the subsequent text by Francisco Pérez Saavedra Lanzarote, su
historia, su paisaje, sus gentes, published by Centro de Cultura Popular
Canaria, who reports the date of 1312 and adds as a source the local histo-
th
rian D. Josè de Viera y Clavijo, who lived in the 18 century and wrote the
following, “celebre Lancelot Maloisel, y que de este personaje tomò la isla
el nombre de Lanzarote”.
The work by Maria Josè Vazquez de Parga y Chueca Redescubrimiento
y conquista de las Afortunadas, published by Calles Dece in 2003, de-
serves a thorough analysis because it devotes a whole eighteen-page chap-
ter to Lanzarotto, opening it with the letter we already mentioned by Ab-
bot Paulmier to Francois Duchesne, royal historian, which was written in
Rouen on 19 April 1659, and is now kept at the National Library in Paris.
th