They are hunting the lost wells of the first European town in the Canaries — and that town is here

In 1402, when Jean de Béthencourt's Normans landed on Lanzarote, they founded a town and called it San Marcial del Rubicón. It was the first European settlement in the Canary Islands: before Las Palmas, before Santa Cruz, before all the rest. Then it vanished.

For seven years a team of archaeologists has been digging to put it back together. This year they are after one thing in particular: water.

The wells that may be there

Four wells are known on the site. But written sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries hint at more, and oral testimony collected on the island speaks of six or seven. The ravine under investigation was heavily worked in those centuries.

This year's campaign is there to confirm or rule them out: they are looking for structures associated with the use of water. On an island with no water of its own, knowing where the first European town in the Canaries got hers is not a detail: it is the reason that town could stand at all.

Who is digging

The team is multidisciplinary, led by the archaeologists María del Cristo González, Esther Chávez, Nona Perera, Luis Alejandro García and Miguel Ángel Hervás. With them, the firm Baraka Arqueólogos and students from both Canarian universities, Las Palmas and La Laguna.

Four bodies stand behind it: the Canary Islands government, the two public universities and Yaiza council. Four signatures on one dig, seven years running, is not a common sight.

What they are really after

Not museum pieces. They are after how people lived: where they came from, what they did all day, how they got on together. That is the difference between a plaque on a wall and a town you can understand.

This week the mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, the heritage councillor Silvia Santana and councillor Rubén Arca visited the site and thanked those working on it.

The town's name survives in a white church at Femés, still called San Marcial de Rubicón. The rest is underground, and they are bringing it up one bucket at a time.