Barranco de Guayadeque Visitors Centre

The Guayadeque ravine is located between the municipalities of Agüimes and Ingenio, east of the island of Gran Canaria. Access to the site is via road from either town, both lead to the small nucleus of 'Montaña de Las Tierras', located inside the ravine. It is here where the asphalt road ends after having crossed the troglodyte town of 'Cueva Bermeja'.

The unique environmental and antique value that this impressive space contains have contributed to its declaration as a Natural Monument by the Law of Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands; and also as a Property of Cultural Interest, under the category of Archaeological Zone.

The survival of these natural and cultural values has been made possible by the isolation to which this space has been subjected to until relatively recently. This evolution of events has allowed maintenance of secular practices and other traditions that had already disappeared in other parts of the island.

Its journey is of roughly twenty kilometers, unfolding from the foothills of the 'Los Marteles' caldera to the vicinity of El Burrero beach. The water that flows trough it has excavated a channel that, in its middle course, forms almost vertical walls. A considerable number of endemic plants of the Canary Islands have grown in this area, near the flow. The botanical and fauna diversity is favored by the altitudinal and climatic variety held along the edges of the ravine. All the way from its headwaters in the summit area, to its mouth on the coast, passing through the areas of midlands.

The water has helped shape the stone and land. It has historically been, and continues to be today, one of the defining elements of the landscape and of the ravine's ways of life. The different springs have not only favored the development of the vegetation but have made it possible to have sufficient flow for the cultivation in adjacent lands and for the supply of nearby populations.
This natural space has seen human activity in dates that go back to the Pre-Hispanic Era, of which we have multiple testimonies. The archaeological importance of Guayadeque began to be recognized in the last decades of the 19th century, when the first explorations began to be made by the Canary Museum.

The mummies, the great burial caves, are the most recognized archaeological elements of the ravine, but they are not the only ones. Modern archeology, in addition to delving into anthropological and funerary aspects, has highlighted the presence of other equally as significant elements, such as large troglodyte settlements, granaries, paintings and cave engravings.

The documentation after the Conquest only refers to Guayadeque almost exclusively in relation to the use of its waters, both for supply and irrigation, and to move around the machinery of the different mills that have marked its course until today.

The environmental resources of Guayadeque are represented and displayed in the Interpretation Center, a building excavated on Guayadeque’s slopes, following the troglodyte traditional architecture of the area. In this center you can go on a journey, from a remote past in which erosion and volcanic activity was forming the landscape, through the aboriginal occupation and subsequent colonization, to modern times.