Ermita de los Dolores (Tinajo)

The Chapel of Sorrows in the Borough of Tinajo, is a religious building whose architecture meets the guidelines of the temples island. It consists of a nave with external buttresses on both sides. To the right of the ship there are located two units currently used as a vestry, and formerly they gave shelter to people who pilgrimaged to the shrine.

Access is via a door with a half point arch framed by basalt. On it is an eye and completes the facade gable with a space for two bells, about which there is a volcanic stone pediment. The roof has a covering of a masonry fence and has a high altar, which is topped by four strands, with pendentives of volcanic rock, which converge in a skylight.

It has significant historical value, artistic, ethnographic and architectural elements exist in an area close to where the lava of volcanic eruptions stopped from 1730 to 1736.  This volcano started the devotion to the patron saint of the island, the Virgen de los Dolores or Nuestra Senora de los Volcanes, which it is named after.
The Chapel of Los Dolores, located in Mancha Blanca, belongs to the municipality of Tinajo, whose origins are characterized by the inhabitants who are pastoral people. Around 1650 people are under the domination of vicious Anne, widow of Augustine Herrera, Governor of the island.

At the beginning of September 1730, the volcanic eruptions began near the village of Chimanfaya, located in the vicinity of the mountain and the Ravens Lapa.  Early the following day, the neighborhood was scared and frightened by the devastating eruptions and burning land, houses, cisterns, etc.

Barley managed to save the pajero Ensign of July and the Perdomo Chimanfaya of Cilla, requesting the intervention of the Virgin of the Chapel of Our Lady of Candelaria, in southern Tisalaya, near the famous cave of Las Palomas. This chapel belonged to the affected villages Chimanfaya and Mancha Blanca Rodeo.   The origins of the shrine of the pain and devotion to his image are strictly linked to these volcanic phenomena.

Geological activity threatens the neighborhood of Tajaste Tinajo that had already lost some of its properties.  Also, land that was distributed at the Royal Audience Hall in Yuco, and Mancha Blanca Tinguaton for cultivation, were threatened.

It is in that area, home to the inhabitants of the destroyed village of Tingafa, who lost “all their lands, homes and all their property without having to go in or where to plant a fist or bread, which is distributed to the vicinity floor of White Spot Tingafa and would belong to at the end of Tinguaton.”

Tinajo saught the appointment of the Virgen de los Dolores as a protector against volcanic eruptions.   There is the Founding Act of the Commemoration of Our Lady of Sorrows, as well as another document that re-asks the chapel of the church of Nuestra Senora de Candelaria, destroyed by the volcano.  The Founding Act makes clear that this fact reflects the will of the people Tinajo, who represented by the Virgen de los Dolores is patron of the region and beyond Tinajo, La Graciosa and Lanzarote. These events took place on April 1^st 1735 when lava, probably from the boiler Colorada, approached Tajaste.

For this reason, the neighborhood meeting signed a motion requesting an appointment for the Virgin of Los Dolores as mediator of eruptions. Therefore, there is a procession from the chapel of San Roque de Tinajo until Guiguan, carrying a picture of the Virgen de los Dolores, which belonged to a family of Tinajo.  Virgen de Los Dolores being elected caused the procession because Pope Clement XII in 1735 granted the celebration of the festival on September 15th.