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    Non domo dominus,
    sed domino domus honestanda est
    “It is not in our line, but in our actions where
    we shall look for the prestige of our surname”
    – Marco Tulio Cicerón –

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    Located in the historic heart of the town of Tazacorte, on the island of San Miguel de La Palma – the most important agricultural area of the Canary Islands – the Hotel Hacienda de Abajo is the result of a careful and loving rehabilitation of an old sugar plantation’s estate of the 17th century. Hacienda de Abajo is the first hotel built in the town, and its singularity has been recognized officially through their classification as the first “Emblematic hotel” in the Canary Islands – a category that only exists in the islands marking the finest historic buildings.

    Set between lush and rich vegetation, on top of a wild coast overlooking an ocean of pure and intensely blue waters and a warm and sunny climate with lavishly starry nights, arises a set of buildings that were the center of rich trade with Flanders, Andalusia and the West Indies, and that today, with its valuable collections of artistic and splendid garden of botanical rarities, offers an enthusiastic welcome to the traveller.

    The “Casa Principal de Tazacorte” – main building of the Hotel Hacienda de Abajo – has been since its construction in the 17th century property of the House of Sotomayor Topete, a noble family that arrives to the Canary Islands in the first years of the 17th century, owners of the medieval manors of Lilloot, Berendrecht and Zuitland in the States of Flanders, that were ruled from La Palma until the end of the 18th century, being just another expression of the multiculturalism in a dynamic and educated society.

    The descendants of the first owners of the estate,  doña María del Carmen del Castillo-Olivares y Sotomayor with his nephews don Luis Ignacio López de Ayala y Aznar, XI Marqués de Villafuerte and III count of Peromoro, and don Javier López de Ayala y Aznar, and his son don Enrique Luis Larroque Castillo-Olivares,  undertake a project for the recovery of this historical heritage which, furthermore, constitutes the largest contribution of artistic heritage to La Palma since the 18th century.

    It is, in short, the effort of a family to preserve and share a refined lifestyle where hospitality is today, as always has been and always will be, an essential element, and the traveller a most welcome guest.