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La Voz Canaria

The Telephone: 150 Years of History and Its Arrival in the Canary Islands

From its invention to inter-island and peninsular connection in 1931, the telephone transformed life and commerce in the archipelago.

Image of an old rotary telephone on a wooden desk, with blurred maps of the Canary Islands in the background.
IA

Image of an old rotary telephone on a wooden desk, with blurred maps of the Canary Islands in the background.

The telephone, a key invention of the 19th century, reached the Canary Islands in the last quarter of that century, driven by commercial bourgeoisie and export agriculture, although connection with the Peninsula and the rest of the world was not achieved until 1931.

Although popularly attributed to Alexander Graham Bell, the invention of the telephone has been a subject of debate, with figures like Antonio Meucci and Elisha Gray also in contention. However, it was Bell's patent in 1876 that prevailed, marking a milestone with the first call on March 10, 1876, to his assistant Thomas Watson in Boston, United States.
The telephone's arrival in the Canary Islands was early, as highlighted by Rafael Pérez Jiménez, a specialist in the history of telecommunications in the archipelago. Initially, its implementation was linked to the interests of the commercial bourgeoisie and concentrated in the capitals of the most populated islands, later extending to export agriculture areas.
The early adoption of telephony in the islands is evidenced by facts such as the presence of a Bell model telephone at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Canarias in La Laguna in 1879, the first telephone link in La Palma in 1883, and the installation of the first private line in Tenerife in 1888. The first conventional telephone network was inaugurated in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in March 1891, driven by British capital.
In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the Sociedad de Teléfonos de Tenerife was established in 1894, with its network operational from May 25, 1895. Despite economic difficulties and poor service quality, telephony expanded, reaching La Laguna in August 1901 and Santa Brígida with its first public telephone in 1902.
The First World War (1914-1918) significantly hindered telephone expansion in the islands due to the naval blockade and material shortages. After the conflict, the situation slowly improved, and by 1921, the number of terminals per inhabitant in the Canary Islands matched the national average, although service quality remained poor.
The arrival of the Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España (CTNE) in 1924, which obtained the service monopoly, marked a turning point. CTNE took over existing networks and, despite an initial decline in users due to line conditions and tariff increases, pushed for modernization. A crucial milestone was the inter-island and peninsular connection, a technical challenge resolved by laying a submarine cable between Tenerife and Gran Canaria in September 1929.
Finally, on January 22, 1931, the radiotelephone connection linking the Canary Islands with the Peninsula and international networks was put into service, marking the end of the archipelago's isolation in telecommunications and ushering in a new era of communication for its inhabitants.

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