Miguel de Unamuno House Museum
The Casa Museo Miguel de Unamuno is located in the heart of Puerto del Rosario, opposite the parish church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario and one side of the Cabildo of Fuerteventura. The building that now houses this cultural space was once the former Hotel Fuerteventura, where the writer and thinker Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo stayed during his exile on the island.
On February 20, 1924, the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera decreed the suspension of the chair of Greek that Unamuno held in Salamanca, as well as his dismissal as rector of the university and his banishment to Fuerteventura. Along with him, the Republican politician and journalist Rodrigo Soriano was also confined. What initially seemed a harsh punishment became, for Unamuno, a vital and philosophical experience of great depth.
The writer arrived on the island on March 12, 1924. During his stay, Fuerteventura became a place of reflection and inspiration. The arid landscape, the badlands, the fauna, the flora and the constant presence of the sea became part of his aesthetic and metaphysical thinking, reinforcing his vision of an essential and quixotic Spain. Although he left the island on July 9 of that same year, fleeing to Paris, the mark that Fuerteventura left in his work lasted for years.
Unamuno took up residence in Puerto de Cabras, historical name of the current capital, staying at the Hotel Fuerteventura, run by Paco Medina, whom the writer affectionately referred to as “his innkeeper”. He soon became friends with several neighbors and important people of the island, among them the civil servant Francisco López, the fisherman Antonio Hormiga, the parish priest Víctor San Martín and, especially, Ramón Castañeyra, an outstanding figure of the local cultural life, with whom he shared long gatherings and a close intellectual relationship.
The group gathered around Castañeyra’s house to talk, criticize the military regime and contemplate the sunset over the ocean. After the departure of Unamuno and Soriano aboard the brigantine-schooner L’Aiglon, renamed Libertad for the occasion, the two maintained an affectionate correspondence. In gratitude, Unamuno dedicated to Castañeyra his work From Fuerteventura to Paris.
During his stay, the writer traveled through inland villages, got to know rural life, tasted gofio and Majorero cheese, read Canarian authors and wrote numerous articles that were published in the Spanish press -under censorship-, French and American. He also began the series of sonnets that would later form part of his poetic production. In his writings he left evidence of his admiration for the climate and austerity of the island, even stating that Fuerteventura helped him to “digest” both the gofio and the history of Spain.
Decades after his death in Salamanca, Puerto del Rosario began to pay tribute to him. In 1964, Ramón Castañeyra offered his testimony about the writer’s stay in the Casino “El Porvenir”. In 1980, a monument was inaugurated in Montaña Quemada in his honor, with parallel acts in other cities. Finally, in 1983, the Cabildo of Fuerteventura acquired the building of the old hotel and, after a long administrative process, in May 1995 the Miguel de Unamuno House Museum was officially inaugurated and opened to the public.
The museum recreates the atmosphere of a house from the 1920s. Its rooms preserve furniture such as the office table and the bed used by Unamuno, as well as photographic material and panels where the written word of the philosopher becomes the axis of the exhibition. The typology of the building responds to the Canarian domestic architecture of the early twentieth century, with entrance hall, rooms organized around a central courtyard and a cistern for collecting rainwater.
The House Museum Miguel de Unamuno is dedicated to disseminate the work that the author produced during his stay in Fuerteventura, a brief period in time but decisive in his thinking. Visiting this space allows a better understanding of the relationship between the writer and the island, and is an essential stop to approach the cultural and intellectual history of Puerto del Rosario.
