The Villa y Puerto de Garachico, on the north-western coast of Tenerife, was born shortly after the island's conquest (completed in 1496), when the Genoese banker Cristóbal de Ponte (Genoa, 1447 - Tenerife, 1532) promoted the founding of its settlement and, above all, of its port. De Ponte had been one of the Italian financiers who funded the Castilian conquest led by Alonso Fernández de Lugo, and in return he received generous land grants in the fertile region of Daute. The place name comes from the Guanche root «gara» ('rock' or 'hill'), joined to the element «-ico», whose meaning is unknown; this «-ico» does not derive from the Castilian word «chico» ('small').

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Garachico lived its golden age and became the main commercial port of Tenerife. Its wide, sheltered cove led the engineer Leonardo Torriani, at the end of the 16th century, to consider it the island's finest anchorage. From its quays sailed ships laden with malvasía wine and sugar bound for the markets of Europe and America. The sweet, aromatic Canary malvasía became so famous that it was even celebrated in the European literature of the day.

The wealth generated by that maritime trade transformed the town. Garachico filled with great warehouses, merchants' houses, palaces and seigneurial estates. Several convents and monasteries were built —among them the Franciscans and the Poor Clares— along with a remarkable parish church dedicated to Saint Anne and a hospital, in a town that rivalled in prestige the leading cities of the archipelago. To defend such prosperity from the raids of corsairs and pirates who plagued the Atlantic coasts, the Castle of San Miguel was built between 1575 and 1577 to guard the entrance to the harbour.

All that splendour was cut short in the early hours of 5 May 1706. On the uplands the eruption of the Trevejo volcano —also known as Montaña Negra or Arenas Negras— opened up, and its lava flows rushed down the slopes towards the sea. Several arms of lava crossed the town, devastated much of the built-up area and, above all, completely blocked the harbour that had been the engine of its economy. The eruption lasted around forty days and buried beneath the burning rock what had been one of the most active ports of the Atlantic.

With the port sealed off, maritime trade shifted permanently to nearby Puerto de la Cruz, which inherited the island's commercial leadership. Garachico, by contrast, had to reinvent itself: its people rebuilt the town on the solidified lava itself and learned to live with the new volcanic shoreline. Where there had once been quays and moorings, the petrified pools and flows now form the famous natural pools of El Caletón, one of the area's great attractions.

Despite the catastrophe, much of its heritage survived. The grid of cobbled streets, the mansions with Canary-pine balconies, the churches and convents and the imposing Castle of San Miguel preserve the atmosphere of that seigneurial town of the 16th and 17th centuries. For this reason Garachico is listed as a Historic-Artistic Site and is regarded as one of the most beautiful villages in Spain, a place where the memory of the volcano and of the former port splendour can be felt in every corner.