Fray Alfonso de Bolaños

Alfonso de Bolaños (Burgos?, Crown of Castile - 1478, Menceyato de Güímar, island of Tenerife) was a Franciscan friar and missionary of the 15th century. He is nicknamed the "Apostle of Tenerife" because he initiated an evangelizing process on this island approximately 30 years before the conquest of it.

Later, thanks to a bull from Pope Pius II in 1462, Alfonso de Bolaños was sent along with other monks to the missions in Guinea and the Canary Islands.

Mission in Tenerife Alfonso de Bolaños was established along with two other monks, Masedo and Diego de Belmanúa, in the southeast of the island of Tenerife, in the Menceyato de Güímar in the Guanches era (ancient aborigines of the island). In this place he built a hermitage in what is now the town of Candelaria, a place where the aborigines venerated the image of the Virgin of Candelaria in the Cave of Achbinico. Although, his missionary project was not limited to the island of Tenerife but had as its main objective the African coast.

These religious lived among the Guanches, speaking their language and baptizing many of them, they had the support of the native translator Antón Guanche, which had been Christianized years ago in Lanzarote. The Pope's support for his company led to tensions with the Franciscan Vicariate and with Diego de Herrera, lord of the Canary Islands, who considered him an intruder in his domains. For in 1480, a bull revoked all the privileges granted to him and his successors, creating the so-called Franciscan Vicariate of the Canary Islands and other islands.

In any case, when the conquest of Tenerife commanded by Alonso Fernández de Lugo between 1494 and 1496 took place a few decades after his death, practically all of the south of the island was already evangelized.