The history of the island must be known before discovering the travel guide to El Hierro. This place was already famous in the II century. By then, the Greek geographer and astronomer Claudio Ptolomeo traced a map of the known world. In it, the Canary Islands were located to an extreme, suposing that farther away there was a precipice that guided the ships- El Hierro being the most occidental in the Archipelago, in it the prime meridian was situated.
On another hand, until the XV century El Hierro was governed by the Bimbaches. Such town with an ethnicity close to the Berebes, lived i caves as an own Neolitical civlization. They called their island Eseró o Heró. Before 1405, Bethencourt and his mates went on an expedition and captured the indigeous Augeron, bother of the King of the island. He learned French in the Rubicon base, close to the actual Yaiza in the island of Lanzarote.
In that same year Bethencourt returned accompanied by Augeron. The hostage achieved to convince his countrymen to not resist to the occupation. The main condition was for them to respect a series of rights. However, the conqueror imprisoned many of them and sold them as slaves in the Península. El Hierro was repopulated by the French and the Castillians.
The insula was converted into a jurisdictional lordship of the Counts of La Gomera, a marriage composed by Hernán Peraza and Inés de las Casas. She was the daughter of Guillén de las Casas, which had bought Count de Niebla the rights over the islands. Since then, the management was under a Count administrator and a cabildo named by the Count. In September 16, 1493, Christopher Colombus fleet arrived at the island to pick up water and wait for auspicious winds to cross towards America. Such practice would be repeated by the multitude of travellers in the upcoming years.
Half a century later, a ship on its way to America would contribute one of the great elements to see in El Hierro and in this travel guide. Due to the persistance of the winds, the ship exhausted its supplies. After that, on January 6, 1546 they were able to get close to the coast of El Hierro. Once there, some Pastors hprovided them with supplies, food, and told them where they could find water. In gratefulness, their captain gifted them with the most valuable thing in their ship, an image of the Virgin Mary.
From that moment a favorable breeze began to blow that would help them continue on their journey, The pastors named the image “The Virgin of the Kings”. They placed the figure in the Snail Cave and posteriorly edificated a chapel and a santuary. Every 25th of April, they have a celebration of the pastors.