The story of our Ethnographic Park and Los Telares begin in 1969. That was the first year when the ferrys connecting La Gomera with Tenerife made daily roundtrips. Finally, tourists staying in Tenerife, a well-developed touristic destination, could also glimpse La Gomera on a daily bus tour.
The agencies went on then looking not only for landscapes, but other type of locations to take their visitors to. They asked Maruca, who was at the time teaching not only adult reading classes, but also handicrafts, if she was aware of any place in La Gomera where they could take their visitors to see and buy local handicrafts. There was none. But Doña Maruca grasped the opportunity it supposed, and gathered artisans to set up her first touristic shop.
Photo of our founder, Doña Maruca, in the exhibit area of her name inside the Park.
Thus she created in 1970 Los Telares. A shop where visitors could see women in hand-operated wooden looms and buy these fabrics or some other handicrafts available at the shop (embroidery, pottery, decorative figures…).
She contacted many artisans and women throughout the island: potters from El Cercado, basket makers, wood carvers… In an island where farming was basically the only job positions available (obviously for men) women had, finally, found their place.
The rest is history: years of hard work, of seeing the first tourists stay on La Gomera, of enlarging and improving the shop… 50 years in which the seed of an idea and the joint effort of a family have achieved what it is nowadays, The Ethnographic Park of La Gomera.