San Cristóbal de la Laguna as a Trial Colonial City Prior to the Founding of Spanish American Settlements: The Influence of Convent Life on the City-Territory

Studies on colonial grid urban planning often use the later examples of cities founded in peninsular Spain towards the end of the 15th century as a basis for understanding the principles applied in new foundations in the Americas. This study proposes that the city of San Cristóbal de la Laguna (1496) functioned as a final urban-planning experiment, an intermediate point in the Canary Islands that enriched the experiences of early colonial urban planning. This first model of a city-territory, which lacked a defensive character due to its insularity, developed a grid adapted to the terrain, organising a new social order inspired by the religious doctrine of the time, in which religious architecture, mainly convents as well as churches, hermitages and hospitals, played a central role in the origin and consolidation of the city’s urban layout. By comparing this case study with the first American examples, Santo Domingo (1502), the first island city, and Panama Viejo (1519), the first city on the mainland, which are all UNESCO World Heritage Sites, we are able to verify the influence of this intermediate urban planning model on the evolutionary process of the early colonial model and confirm the role of convent foundations as structural elements shaping the territory.