Cave of Achbinico

Cueva de Achbinico, also called cave of San Blas (cueva de Achbinico) is a Roman Catholic church and cave located in Candelaria, Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spain). After the conquest of the Canary Islands it was the first Christian sanctuary of religious significance. It was also the first sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the Canary Islands, where the Virgin of Candelaria, the patron saint of the Canary islands, was worshipped. The cave is located on the coast, just behind the basilica of Our Lady of Candelaria. It is elongated and deep, with a ceiling shaped as a dome. It is 14 meters long by 6 meters wide and 5 meters high. A small chapel was built just outside of it, covering and including within its walls the entrance of the cave. Inside the cave is a bronze replica of the Virgin of Candelaria. Her statue is most venerated on the island, and has turned the cave into the most important pilgrimage centre in the Canaries for the past five centuries. It is still visited by pilgrims, who commonly take and leave flushed candles and do requests to the Virgin. The Achbinico cave has a great importance, not only religious but also historic and prehistoric.

Various archaeological excavations have proved that the cave was a place of worship long before the Guanches placed the statue of the Virgin in it. According to recent excavations, the layers of ashes found there and subjected to carbon-14 dating indicate an age of more than 3000 years. In this cave a permanent fire had been maintained, such as in the vestal temples of Antique Rome. This sacred character held from very ancient times would explain that after the conquest the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands placed the Virgin precisely in this cave and nowhere else.

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).