Being so isolated, it is hard to know who arrived at Galapagos first. It is widely thought that the Spanish were responsible for the discovery of the Islands, but other theories do exist.

The Incas

Some academics believe that it was the Incas who discovered Galapagos first over 500 years ago. They were led by Tupac Yupanqui, the Emperor of the Incas between 1471 and 1493. The Incan Empire was centred in modern-day Peru and was the largest empire in the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish. However, there are no written records or ruins as evidence to confirm the theory that the Incas arrived first. 

Tupac Yupanqui, the Eleventh Inca © Brooklyn Museum Collection

Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian adventurer who visited the Islands in 1953, proposed that even before the Incas, people would travel to and from the islands, but there is still very little evidence for this. 

Official discovery

A Statue of Tomás de Berlanga in Soria, Spain

In 1535, the Islands were officially discovered by Fray Tomás de Berlanga (the Bishop of Panama at the time). He was ordered to sail to Peru by Charles V to provide a report on activities there. He set sail from Panama on 23 February 1535. The strong ocean current carried him out to the Galapagos Islands.

When the winds died down he stumbled upon the islands by accident on March 10 1535. They decided to land in order to search for water but initially found none. They had to squeeze water from cactus pads to survive. They later found water on a second island. 

The Islands were considered by Berlanga to be an ugly barren place. Where “God…had rained stones” and the land so infertile that it had not “even the power of raising a little grass.” But he did note the populations of different animals. There were large populations of seals, tortoises, iguanas and ‘many birds like those in Spain, but so silly that they do not know how to flee and many were caught in hand’. 

In 1546 there was a second visit to the Galapagos Islands by Captain Diego de Rivadeneira who set sail after a defeat in the south of Peru. He was famous for naming the islands ‘Las Islas Encantadas’ which means ‘Enchanted or Bewitched Islands’. They were given this name because it was difficult to navigate around the islands due to strong currents and frequent patches of fog. Sailors thought the islands were bewitched and Rivadeneira thought the Galapagos Islands were just floating in the ocean.

The Orbis Terrarum, created by Abraham Ortelius in 1570

In 1570 the Galapagos Islands were included in a world atlas by a Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius. He named the islands ‘Insulae de los de Galapagos’. The shells of the giant tortoises reminded the visitors of horse saddles, and Galapagos comes from the Spanish word for saddle. The Galapagos name remained even after the islands were named ‘Achipelago del Ecuador’ when they were annexed in 1832.  

What do you do with isolated volcanic islands, 1,000 km from land, often shrouded in fog, with little water, little soil and the odd volcanic explosion? Well, like Alcatraz and St Helena (and indeed Australia), what would be better than using them as a place to deposit individuals no longer welcome in mainstream society. In a way, the most secure prisons on Earth!

The Galapagos prison

In 1832, on the annexation of Galapagos by Ecuador (when Galapagos became a province and a part of the country of Ecuador), Colonel Ignacio Henandez recommended Galapagos for just that purpose. The first prisons, or to be exact, penal colonies (which are more like open air prisons – after all, with strong currents, weak winds and shark infested waters around Galapagos there was no way off) were established on the islands of Floreana and San Cristobal.

The first occupants of these colonies were exiled soldiers (sent away from their homes on the mainland) for their failed coup attempt on the mainland, followed by a settlement/guard party of some eighty people.

From 1837 onwards, with awful living conditions for the prisoners, the first of a number of revolts (an uprising against the guards/authorities) led to the entire settlement of prisoners and guards failing and by 1852 nothing was left.

The Wall of Tears on Isabela , built by prisoners between 1945 and 1959 © Andy Hares

A number of attempts were made to settle in Galapagos but none were successful. Then in 1944, as the Second World War was reaching its end in Europe, the Ecuadorian government established a third prison, this time on the island of Isabela.

In 1946, 300 prisoners and 30 wardens landed at the southern end of Isabela, again living in abject (very poor housing and food) conditions and the prisoners were tasked with constructing the “Wall of Tears”. As there was little else to do, this building task was done purely to fill the time of day and keep the men out of trouble.

The remains of this futile effort can still be seen close to Puerto Villamil today. Ultimately, the endless moving of rocks and with conditions so poor, in 1958 there was a rebellion leading to the guards being killed and many prisoners dying. The Ecuadorian authorities closed the Isabela penal colony a year later.

So, 127 years after the Ecuadorian government sent the first political prisoners to Floreana, the use of Galapagos as a prison came to an end. Ultimately it was the scientists and those in the tourist trade who were able to successfully colonise the Islands.