Achaman Tenerife
Achamán – Who Was the God of the Guanches?
Today, Achamán is described as the supreme god of the Guanches – the creator and the one who sustained heaven and earth. Yet when we look at the earliest sources, his identity becomes much harder to define. We do not know what he looked like, whether the Guanches depicted him in human form, or even whether Achamán was his name in the sense in which we understand a name today.
Only a handful of early accounts survive, along with different terms for the supreme being and stories that became increasingly entwined with legend over the centuries. So let us try to separate what was actually recorded about Achamán from what later stories added – without giving up either.
🌤️ Achamán – a God We Know Almost Nothing About
Type his name into a search engine and you will quickly find an answer: Achamán was the supreme god of the Guanches, creator of the world, lord of the heavens and protector of humankind. You can read that he created earth, water, fire and air, lived high in the heavens and sometimes descended to mountain peaks to look upon his creation.
The problem begins when, instead of reading more modern accounts, we start looking at the early sources.
No text written by the Guanches themselves telling us about Achamán has survived. We do not know what he looked like. No temple has been found that can unquestionably be identified as having been dedicated specifically to him. We do not even know whether the Guanches imagined him as a being with a human form.
What remains are primarily words recorded by Europeans. Achamán appears among them – but alongside other terms: Achguayaxerax, Achoron, Achuhurahan and Achahucanac. And this is where the first puzzle emerges: were these different names for the same god, titles and descriptions of him, or are we now trying to organise Guanche beliefs according to rules that the Guanches themselves never followed?
There is one thing we can say with greater confidence. Sixteenth-century authors recorded that the inhabitants of Tenerife believed in a creator and “sustainer of the world”, and associated the words Achguayaxerax, Achorom and Achaman with this supreme being. In 1594, Alonso de Espinosa explained this formula as “the sustainer of heaven and earth”. Similar accounts can also be found in the writings of Leonardo Torriani and Abreu Galindo.
That is not much for a god about whom we can read entire stories today. But that is precisely what makes Achamán so fascinating. The more we try to discover about him, the more clearly we see how little of his world was ever recorded.
And even what was recorded presents another problem: it was written down by people looking at Guanche beliefs from the outside.
📜 Source: Alonso de Espinosa, Historia de Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (1594), Book I, Chapter 5. Espinosa describes the Guanches as people who recognised the existence of a “hacedor y sustentador del mundo” – a creator and sustainer of the world – whom they referred to using the words Achguayaxerax, Achorom and Achaman.
❓ Achamán – the God’s Name or One of His Titles?
This is where one of the greatest mysteries begins. Today, we speak of Achamán as though it were obvious that this was the name of a particular god. The early sources, however, do not give us that certainty.
Alonso de Espinosa recorded that the Guanches referred to the supreme being by various “names and titles”. His text includes terms such as Achuhurahan, Achahucanac and Achguayaxerax, which he translates as “great”, “sublime” and “the one who sustains everything”. Elsewhere, he records the formula Achguayaxerax, Achorom, Achaman, translated as “the sustainer of heaven and earth”.
Leonardo Torriani wrote something similar towards the end of the sixteenth century. According to him, the Guanches referred to God using the words Achguaiaxerax and Ochoron Achaman, as well as Achuhuran Achahucanac. Abreu Galindo recorded very similar forms. This is important because it shows that we are not dealing simply with a single word noted down by one chronicler.
So what did Achamán actually mean?
We can no longer say for certain. It may have been the name of the supreme being, one of the terms used to describe it, or part of a longer religious formula whose full meaning we are now unable to reconstruct. Even linguists who have attempted to analyse the surviving Guanche vocabulary stress that the interpretation of these forms is uncertain. John Abercromby noted that Achaman appears in several recorded formulas, but he himself described his proposed explanation of the word as uncertain.
For this reason, describing Achamán as “the supreme god of the Guanches” is a useful modern shorthand. It gives us a name for the figure we are discussing, but it is worth remembering that the Guanches themselves may have understood these words very differently.
📜 Source: Alonso de Espinosa wrote that the Guanches called God by “various names and titles” (diversos nombres y apellidos) and listed several of the forms that have survived. This is one of the main reasons why we cannot be certain that Achamán was simply the god’s proper name.
🌌 The One Who Sustains Heaven and Earth
Although we cannot determine whether Achamán was a name, a title or one of the terms used for the supreme being, the early chroniclers left us a more important clue. They recorded what this being represented to the Guanches.
Alonso de Espinosa wrote that the inhabitants of Tenerife recognised the existence of a creator and sustainer of the world. Alongside the formula Achguayaxerax, Achorom, Achaman, he recorded the meaning “the sustainer of heaven and earth”. This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have when trying to understand Achamán’s place in Guanche beliefs.
This does not mean, however, that we can imagine him as a Canarian equivalent of Zeus – a god sitting somewhere high above the island and ruling over other deities. The sources have not left us such an orderly pantheon. The terms recorded by the chroniclers point instead towards a supreme power responsible for the existence and order of the world.
Espinosa also uses the word hacedor – maker, creator. Here, however, we need to be cautious. We can say that the Guanches believed in a being regarded as the creator of the world. We cannot use this alone to reconstruct an entire creation myth. No account has survived describing how Achamán created the heavens, the earth, people or animals. Popular stories today describing successive stages in the creation of the world therefore go considerably further than the sixteenth-century accounts.
The same applies to the heavens. The sources associate the supreme being with what lies above humankind, but this does not give us grounds for imagining Achamán living in a heavenly palace or descending onto mountain peaks. The early chroniclers simply did not record such details.
And perhaps that is precisely why the description “the one who sustains heaven and earth” is so fascinating. It does not tell us what Achamán looked like or where he lived. Instead, it tells us something far more important – just how significant the being behind these words was in the world of the Guanches.
Alonso de Espinosa wrote that the inhabitants of Tenerife recognised the existence of a creator and sustainer of the world. Alongside the formula Achguayaxerax, Achorom, Achaman, he recorded the meaning “the sustainer of heaven and earth”.
🏝️ Did Achamán Belong Only to Tenerife?
When speaking about Achamán, it is easy to go one step too far and call him “the supreme god of the ancient inhabitants of the Canary Islands”. Yet the surviving sources associate this term primarily with Tenerife and its inhabitants – the Guanches.
Before the European conquest, the individual Canary Islands remained isolated from one another for a long time. Their inhabitants shared North African origins, but over the centuries they developed their own communities, linguistic varieties and beliefs. As a result, the terms used for the supreme being were not the same on every island.
On Gran Canaria, chroniclers recorded the name Acorán, among others; on La Palma we find Abora, and on El Hierro – Eraorahan and Moneiba. This does not mean that each island simply had its own version of the same god. There are clear similarities between the beliefs of the archipelago’s inhabitants, but we do not know enough about their religions to construct a single shared Canarian pantheon and assign equivalent deities to each island.
Achamán is therefore particularly associated with Tenerife. And this has another linguistic consequence: strictly speaking, the term Guanches refers to the indigenous inhabitants of this particular island, rather than to all the pre-Hispanic inhabitants of the Canary Islands. So when we speak of the “god of the Guanches”, we are referring specifically to Tenerife.
What we do not know is whether a Guanche himself would have said: “I believe in a god named Achamán.” As we have already seen, this may have been one of several terms used for the supreme being. We can, however, say something important: it is in the accounts relating to Tenerife that the word Achamán has survived.
And that is precisely why, in our Tenerife guidebook, it is Achamán – rather than a deity chosen from a generalised “Canarian mythology” – who can become the voice guiding you around the island. His story belongs to this place, even if only fragments of it have survived.
🌋 When the Sun Went Dark
There is a story in which Teide ceases to be merely a volcano. It becomes the setting for a battle for light.
🌋 The Legend Tells Us…
Deep inside Echeyde lived Guayota, a powerful and fearsome being associated with the volcano. One day, he captured Magec – the Sun – and imprisoned him inside the mountain. Darkness fell over Tenerife.
Deprived of light, the Guanches turned to Achamán for help. He fought Guayota, defeated him and freed Magec. The Sun appeared over the island once again, while Guayota was imprisoned inside Echeyde. According to a popular version of the story, Achamán then sealed the volcano’s crater with a huge stone so that Guayota could not escape.
It is one of the most beautiful legends associated with Tenerife. When you stand in Las Cañadas and look towards the summit of Teide, it is not difficult to imagine people trying to make sense of a world in which the mountain could suddenly begin to tremble, spew fire and fill the sky with smoke.
But this is where the story becomes even more interesting.
📜 What Do the Earliest Sources Tell Us?
The sixteenth-century chroniclers did indeed leave us accounts of Guayota and Echeyde. Alonso de Espinosa wrote that the Guanches associated Teide with a place connected with evil and called it Echeyde. He also mentions Guayota, whom – viewing Guanche beliefs through a Christian understanding of the world – he identified with the devil.
What we do not find in Espinosa, however, is the story of Guayota capturing Magec, plunging the island into darkness, or Achamán fighting Guayota and freeing the Sun. These elements do not appear in this form in the earliest sources concerning Guanche beliefs.
This is an important distinction. It does not mean that the legend should be rejected or that someone simply “invented” it one day. Stories passed down orally change over time, merge with other stories and acquire new details. What we cannot prove, however, is that the complete story of the imprisoned Sun was told by the Guanches before the conquest of Tenerife.
The description of Guayota as “the devil” also needs to be treated with caution. The term comes from Christian authors attempting to describe unfamiliar beliefs using concepts from their own religion. Guayota belonged to the world of the Guanches, not to the Christian story of Satan.
And perhaps it is precisely the combination of these two layers – the early accounts and the later legend – that makes the story so fascinating. We know that Echeyde and Guayota genuinely belonged to the world of belief of Tenerife’s ancient inhabitants. What we do not know is when the story of the captured Sun and Achamán’s victory became part of it.
So we do not have to choose between history and legend. We can preserve both – while knowing which takes us back to the early sources and which belongs to a story passed down later.
And then the sentence we already have for Achamán takes on an entirely different meaning:
“There are places where the sun has its own legend.”
🙏 How Did the Guanches Address the Supreme Being?
If the Guanches believed in a supreme being, a natural question follows: did they pray to it, have temples and perform rituals similar to those we know from other religions? Once again, the sources leave us with more questions than answers.
Alonso de Espinosa claimed that the Guanches had no established rituals or words with which they worshipped the supreme being. We should remember, however, that he was describing their beliefs from the perspective of a sixteenth-century Christian cleric. What he did not recognise as a temple, prayer or religious service did not necessarily mean that religious practices did not exist.
Indeed, shortly afterwards Espinosa describes an extraordinary ritual associated with asking for rain. When drought meant there was not enough grass for the animals, the Guanches gathered their sheep in places set aside for this purpose. A spear or pole was driven into the ground, the lambs were separated from their mothers, and the sheep were left around it to bleat. According to the chronicler, it was believed that the supreme being would hear their cries, be moved by them and send the rain they needed.
Abreu Galindo left a similar account. In his version, people – men, women and children – took part in the ritual alongside sheep and goats. The people called out, the animals bleated, and the gathering waited for rain.
It is a remarkably evocative image. We do not have a written Guanche prayer that we can read today, but we do have an account of people trying to appeal to the power that controlled something absolutely fundamental to their lives – water. For a community dependent on grazing land and livestock, a lack of rain threatened not only the animals, but the people as well.
I would not, however, call this “a ritual in honour of Achamán”. At this point, the chroniclers use their own word Dios – God – and do not record that the name Achamán was specifically invoked during the ceremony. We can therefore speak of an appeal to the supreme being, but attributing the ritual directly to Achamán would already be an interpretation on our part.
📜 Source: Alonso de Espinosa, Historia de Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (1594), Book I, Chapter IV. This is a different passage from Chapter V, which we referred to earlier. Espinosa describes a ritual performed during drought and places known as baladeros de las ovejas. The original 1594 edition is available in the digital collections of the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.
⚱️ Did the Guanches Imagine Achamán as a Human Being?
We do not know the answer to this question. No image has survived that can reliably be identified as a representation of Achamán. The early chroniclers describe the supreme being and record the terms used for it, but they do not tell us what it was believed to look like. We do not even know whether the Guanches imagined it in human form.
This is important because small figurines found in the Canary Islands might suggest that the archipelago’s ancient inhabitants represented beings connected with their world of belief. On Tenerife, however, we have one particularly enigmatic example – Guatimac.
It is a small fired-clay figurine discovered in the late nineteenth century in Barranco de Herques, between Fasnia and Güímar. The surviving fragment is approximately 6 cm high. There is a hole near the neck through which a cord probably passed, suggesting that the object may have been worn as a pendant. Today, Guatimac is kept at the Museo Arqueológico del Puerto de la Cruz.
And that is essentially where what we can say with any degree of certainty comes to an end.
We do not know who or what Guatimac represented. Its highly simplified form has been interpreted as anthropomorphic, although there have also been attempts to see an animal or supernatural being in it. We do not know the precise archaeological context in which it was found either, making interpretation even more difficult. Researcher Marian Montesdeoca goes so far as to point out that Guatimac cannot be used as evidence for an elaborate form of “Guanche idolatry”, as it was sometimes presented in the past.
There is one connection we have no grounds for making: Guatimac is not a known representation of Achamán. There is no evidence that it depicted the supreme being or that it was an object specifically associated with his worship.
📜 Source: An interesting study is Marian Montesdeoca’s article La religión de arena: una revisión de la idolatría guanche a la luz de las fuentes históricas. The author examines Guatimac and shows just how little reliable information we have that would allow us to assign a specific meaning to it.
The elderly, lean man with a weathered face, greying hair and a short beard, dressed in an animal-hide garment, is not a historical reconstruction of the appearance of a Guanche god. We simply do not know what such a figure might have looked like. This is my artistic personification of Achamán – a character created so that he could become a guide to Tenerife.
The small figurine hanging around his neck is an equally deliberate choice. I based it on Guatimac, a genuine artefact of Guanche culture, but not because we know of any connection between it and Achamán. We do not. Instead, Guatimac became for me a symbol of the world from which my guide comes – a world that has left behind few objects and even more unanswered questions.
💡 Achamán: his appearance and the Guatimac around his neck are an artistic creation by Zwiedzo-Maniacy, not an archaeological reconstruction. I based the character on what we know about the Guanches, but where the sources remain silent, I do not pretend to know the answer.
✝️ When Two Worlds Met in Güímar
One of the most fascinating encounters between the ancient beliefs of the Guanches and Christianity is said to have taken place even before the conquest of Tenerife. It began with a mysterious figure of a woman holding a child, found by the Guanches on the coast of the menceyato of Güímar, near Chimisay. According to Alonso de Espinosa’s account, the figure was taken to Chinguaro – the residence of the mencey of Güímar – where it remained for many years.
The Guanches could not have known that it represented the Christian Virgin Mary. That changed with the arrival of a man who already knew both worlds.
His name was Antón Guanche. As a young man, he had lived among Europeans, learnt their language and religion, and later returned to Tenerife. Espinosa tells us that when he reached Güímar and saw the figure kept there, he recognised it as an image of the Virgin Mary. He knelt before it and then began to explain to the assembled Guanches who, according to Christian belief, the woman represented.
And it is at this point that the source records words that are particularly important to our story of Achamán:
Achmayex, Guayaxerax, Achoron, Achaman.
Espinosa tells us that Antón used these words to explain to the Guanches that the woman represented by the figure was the mother of “the sustainer of heaven and earth”. He is then said to have told them that through her they would come to know the true God – Guayaxerax, whom they already worshipped.
It is an extraordinary moment, but one that needs to be approached with caution. It is not proof that the Christian God and Achamán were the same being to the Guanches. We are reading an account written by a Christian author many years later. What it does show, however, is something very interesting: an attempt to explain a new religion using concepts that the Guanches already knew.
They were not simply told: “your god does not exist; here is another one.” At least in Espinosa’s account, a kind of bridge appears: the Christian God is explained through the concept of the supreme being already known to the inhabitants of Tenerife.
The story did not end there. Antón believed that the figure should not remain in the mencey’s inhabited cave. He proposed moving it to a separate place – the cave of Achbinico on the coast, later known to Christians as the Cueva de San Blas. Espinosa also describes gatherings, dances, competitions and celebrations held at the new place of worship.
Within the relatively small area of present-day Güímar and Candelaria, we can therefore trace an extraordinary journey: Chimisay → Chinguaro → Achbinico → Candelaria. This is not merely the story of a single figure. These are places where the surviving account allows us to glimpse the moment when two religious worlds came into contact.
📜 Source: Alonso de Espinosa, Historia de Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (1594), describes the return of Antón Guanche, his encounter with the figure at Chinguaro and the words Achmayex, Guayaxerax, Achoron, Achaman. Particularly valuable is a publication by the Ayuntamiento de Candelaria, which reproduces this passage from Espinosa together with the account of the figure’s later transfer to Achbinico.
👀 Where Can You Find Traces of This Story Today?
You will not find a temple of Achamán on Tenerife, nor a statue that we could point to and say: this is how the Guanches depicted their god. The traces of this story are far less obvious. You have to look for them in caves, ancient places of worship, archaeological finds and a landscape that held a very different meaning for the Guanches than it does for us.
🏞️ Chinguaro – Where Two Religions Met
In the ravine above Güímar lies the Cueva de Chinguaro, traditionally regarded as the cave residence of the mencey of Güímar. According to the surviving account, this is where the mysterious figure found by the Guanches on the coast was taken. Chinguaro is therefore one of the most fascinating places to visit if you want to see a setting connected with the story in which the words Achmayex, Guayaxerax, Achoron, Achaman later appear. Today, the site has the status of a Sitio Histórico and retains its archaeological significance.
🕯️ Achbinico – the Cave That Became a Christian Sanctuary
Just a short walk from today’s basilica in Candelaria is the Cueva de Achbinico, also known as the Cueva de San Blas. It was here, on the advice of Antón Guanche, that the figure previously kept at Chinguaro is said to have been moved. Archaeological research indicates that the cave itself was already in use during the Guanche period, probably also for practices of a ritual nature. After the conquest, it was incorporated into the Christian world and became the first Marian sanctuary in Candelaria.
👑 Candelaria – the Guanches Still Stand Beside the Ocean
In front of the basilica, you will see nine monumental figures of the menceyes – the rulers of the nine territories into which Tenerife was divided. They are, of course, modern sculptures rather than artefacts from the Guanche period. It is worth leaving the square and walking towards Achbinico. Only then does Candelaria cease to be solely a place associated with devotion to the Virgin Mary and begin to tell the story of the transition from the Guanche world to the Christian one. Today, Candelaria’s official historical route connects the square with the menceyes, the basilica and the cave of Achbinico.
🌋 Teide – the Echeyde of the Ancient Stories
The greatest trace cannot be enclosed in a museum display case. It is Teide itself. Echeyde and Guayota appear in early accounts, while later legend placed here the story of the imprisoned Sun and Achamán’s battle with Guayota. So when you look at the crater, the solidified lava flows and the vast Las Cañadas caldera, you are looking at a landscape around which the island’s inhabitants have woven stories for centuries.
🏺 MUNA – the World of the Guanches Preserved in Objects
If you want to see not the legend, but what genuinely remains of the Guanches, the most important place is the Museo de Naturaleza y Arqueología in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Pottery, tools, ornaments and human remains allow you to glimpse the people who lived in the world of Achamán, Guayota and Echeyde. The museum also presents burial practices and archaeological evidence relating to beliefs surrounding death.
None of these places will answer the question of exactly who Achamán was. Together, however, they allow us to glimpse the world in which his name – or one of the terms used for the supreme being – was recorded.
And perhaps this is the best way to look for Achamán on Tenerife today: not by searching for his statue, but by learning to recognise the places where fragments of the Guanche world have survived.
📖 Why Did Achamán Become a Guide to Tenerife?
I could have chosen a guide about whom we know far more. A historical figure with a name, a face and a well-documented biography. Instead, I chose Achamán – a god we hardly know at all.
And that is precisely why.
The Tenerife I want to show you does not begin with the arrival of the Spanish. Its history is much older. It includes the Guanches, caves hidden in ravines, shepherds leading their flocks through the mountains, Echeyde inspiring fear and awe, the mysterious Guatimac, and beliefs of which only fragments have survived to the present day.
Achamán belongs to this oldest world of Tenerife.
He will not, however, pretend to remember events that we can no longer reconstruct today. Our Achamán is a literary character inspired by Guanche beliefs, not an attempt to reconstruct their religion. I created his appearance myself, and the small Guatimac hanging around his neck is a deliberate part of that creation – I am not claiming that the historical Achamán was ever depicted in this way.
So why him?
Because he can guide you around Tenerife a little differently. Not merely tell you where to turn and what to see, but make you stop for a moment and explain what you are actually looking at. At Teide, he can tell you about Echeyde and Guayota. In Güímar, he will recall the world of the menceyes. In Chinamada, he will show you why people lived in caves on the island for centuries. And when you stand before yet another layer of solidified lava, he will try to make sure it does not become just another black rock in a photograph.
Sometimes he will tell you a story supported by archaeology. Sometimes he will quote the account of an early chronicler. And sometimes he will sit with you beside a legend that no one today can completely separate from the imagination of the generations that came after.
Because Tenerife is built not only from lava. It is also built from the stories of the people who tried to understand this island.
👉 See: Tenerife with Achamán