La conquista de las Canarias: un ensayo bélico para América (1402-1501).

The conquest of the Canary Islands could be thought as a kind of essay of the later struggle for America, in which the Conquistadores, groups of merchants, adventurers and religious, agreed between them and with their kings their economic contributions and rights over the plunder and land as a commercial company. His rivals, the primitive Guanches, opposed a heroic and unexpected resistance to the Castilian conquest, which could only triumph after 100 years of fighting, thanks to the skills of men like Bethencourt, Rejón, Vera or Lugo, models for Cortés or Pizarro. This study will focus on the purely military aspects of the conflict, describing the campaigns with a certain level of detail to better understand the tactics and strategies applied that decided the outcome of the war, emphasizing, among other aspects, in a scientific approach to the numerical strengths of the armies at stake, especially on the part of the Guanches. Thus, the natives counted on superior numbers to the Castilians, but not of the size mentioned by the chronicles. Based on population estimates and the number of warriors mobilized in the smaller islands (easier to count reliably by the chroniclers), around a 5-10% of the population would act as warriors. This percentage has been applied to the larger islands, also reducing proportionally these figures based on the total number of kingdoms that opposed the Castilians, since not all of them did so. Therefore, their figures would not exceed 1,000 o 2,000 warriors, so twice or one and a half times more than the Spanish, at most. With this smaller disproportion and thanks to the superior technology and the support of Guanches like Guanarteme, the Conquistadores would eventually prevail in 1501-1506. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]