The all-seeing eye.
The Great Architect of the Universe watches over you from a narrow street in Santa Cruz de Tenerife . The all-seeing eye peers out from a triangular lintel of cold neoclassical exuberance that tops a strange villa guarded by Egyptian effigies. the temple is abandoned and shares perspective with a modern glass building. Is about a Masonic temple, the largest in Spain and it is still miraculous that he has survived, with his math role playing game symbols , to the 40 years of Franco's dictatorship, a regime that hated and persecuted Freemasonry with inquisitorial tenacity.
Not only did he survive, but in an ironic twist unbecoming of a government with so little sense of humor, the temple was used as a dependency of the Ministry of Defense , exactly like Military Pharmacy. One imagines the victorious military man, scourge of the Reds and Freemasons, looking up at the Eye of the Great Architect of the Universe, and wondering why he has not been shot down with dynamite or, at least, smashed with a hammer, which is why we have won. war.
In 2001 the City Council bought the property for 70 million pesetas and great speeches were made and amazing plans were drawn up, but the temple remains abandoned , strange, out of place, like the papier-mâché remnants of a ruined film studio (although rehabilitation, they say, is on the way). one goes down walking down Calle del Pilar dodging passers-by with shopping bags and suddenly turns right on the San Lucas street and, well, it's not quite what one would expect to find there, but there it is, in a nice state of disrepair for the solace of travelers in search of somewhat quaint-but-not-so.
The building was built by the Society Anaza in 1902, it remained active until 1936 and during this time it was integrated into the Great Spanish Orient and assigned to the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for Spain. Nobody uses such fabulous titles anymore.
Map: See map
Address: San Clemente, 35. Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Canary Islands See map
Telephone: Santa Cruz de Tenerife Development Society: 922 533 353
Guy: Point of interest
Official Web: Go to the web
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