Technical data
- Title: TIMANFAYA: FORBIDDEN LOVE
- Year: 1972
- Production: Films Zodíaco.
- Country: Spain.
- Direction: José Antonio de la Loma.
- Cast: Frank Braña, Eduardo Calvo, Manuel de Blas, Nadiuska, Christian Roberts, Fernando Sancho, Patty Shepard.
Description and synopsis
Although this film is interesting for being very typical of Spain during the late Franco era, it’s also true that it’s a minor film that will not go down in the history of cinema. Despite this, we want to highlight it because it has very interesting locations, as well as being filmed mostly on the island and bearing the name of our iconic national park in the title: Timanfaya.
Alongside the island’s well-known natural and cultural sites (Montañas del Fuego (Fire Mountains), Jameos del Agua, La Geria…), Timanfaya: Amor Pohibido has the curiosity of delving into one of the treasures of the island’s architectural heritage: the castles. After the Castilian conquest in the 14th century and the discovery of America, the Canary Islands became a focus of interest for Atlantic pirates and corsairs. This dangerous dynamic especially affected Lanzarote because its proximity to Africa meant that the island’s lords used to go on raids to capture North African slaves, with a reciprocal response from the corsairs on the island’s coasts; in fact, in 1618 the island suffered the largest pirate attack in the history of the Canary Islands in terms of the number of captives. It is estimated that around 900 island prisoners were captured, equivalent to around 20-25% of the island population at the time.
In an attempt to alleviate this situation, several castles were erected, including Santa Bárbara or Guanapay, located next to the town of Teguise, which at that time was the capital of the island. Teguise has one of the best-preserved historic centres in the Canary Islands, housing large mansions, palaces, churches, convents, cobbled streets and more modest domestic dwellings from several centuries ago, as well as the Castle of Santa Bárbara itself, which now houses the Museum of Piracy.
