Group 2Natalia Czapla (Poland)Mateusz Mizera (Poland)

Claudia Arocha Domínguez (Spain)Ashley Meijvis (Spain)

Tomás Rodríguez (Spain)Jasmine (Germany)

 

The construction of the buildings started, during the time of Franco, in 1942. It was meant to be a sanatorium area for people who suffered from leprosy but it never got ready. After the civil war, one of the most serious health problems the company is unmatched at the time was leprosy, a disease considered cursed in Tenerife only counted a total of 197 patients at the time. In those days it was believed that the solution to this medical problem was the isolation of the affected places were favorable climatic conditions that were far from major population centers to prevent people's fear of contagion.

It was said Leprosy people never to have used the village. They were killed. The great work of the leper colony of Arico never received any patient. It was abandoned and began its slow decline. In the sixties was used to carry out the Falange camps that were required at the time for all graduates of the School of Education, but his most famous use was as a military cantonment for target practice. The military were located in the most finished, which would be allocated to non-patients, and we can still see the remains of circuit wire that surrounded the perimeter.

It was the post-war period when the Franco regime was imposed on the Canaries by means of militarisation of the Archipelago's economy under the military authority Economy Government. At that time it was believed that the islands could be implicated in military operations as a result of the second World War.

The area included among other buildings a lot of apartments, a hospital, a crematorium and a church. It could have been a concentration camp.

The story is that there was a house of an old woman, in the area, where supernatural things were taking place. The things in her house were moving around like there was a tornado inside the house and some representatives from the catholic church were contacted to bring back the peace into her house.

It's said they went there with a big cross telling the spirits or demons to leave, but when it didn't help the area was evacuated and set under control of the military and nobody could go there for years. One soldier died each night anyone knew why In 1960s.

The area is now open for everybody after the government has sold it to an Italian (2002), but they don't give him the permissions he needs to restart the construction work.

The huge importance of the Catholic church in Franco's regime was reflected in the enormous cross which crowned the church, expressed in the ideology of the state that historians call national-Catholicism.

. In the sixties it was used as a military camp

belonging to the Falange which was obligatory at that time for everyone, entitled la Escuela de Magisterio, but was best know as a military station for shooting practice.

Soldiers were housed in the finished buildings and remains of the wired circuit

surrounding its perimeter can still be seen.

the ghost town has been used for rallies, festivals, paintball events etc., and in 2008 it was used as background for filming some scenes of the series Plan America, the most famous being that of a cow being blown up by a mine.

Just remember, every time you pass the hermitage with its great cross at Abades, behind it lies the ghost town whose silence is broken only by the wind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RT4Y14i64A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYLde8di_n0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOoWNy6C6ns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzXA26FEA5M