Long before the Castilian conquest, the lands of present-day Santiago del Teide were inhabited by the ancient Canarians, the Guanches. The Valley of Santiago belonged to the menceyato (kingdom) of Adeje, one of the nine aboriginal realms into which Tenerife was divided, in a sector bordering the powerful menceyato of Daute, which controlled the entire Teno massif in the far north-west of the island. From that pastoral settlement survive numerous Guanche place names that still identify the territory: Arguayo, Bilma, Cherfe, Chinyero, Chimayachi, Sámara and Tamaimo. These were lands of shepherds and high midlands, where water and the mountain set the rhythm of life.

After the conquest of Tenerife, completed in 1496, the Adelantado Alonso Fernández de Lugo distributed the land. In 1503 don Diego, the former and now baptised mencey of Adeje, received one hundred fanegas in the place then called Taxo. By the mid-16th century the Valley of Santiago was still sparsely inhabited: around 1552 it had barely a dozen residents scattered across farmsteads. Alongside incipient agriculture, the main early economic activity was the extraction of pitch (brea) from the pine forests to caulk ships, exported through the ports of Garachico and Adeje to Lisbon and Cádiz.

The great institutional milestone came in the 17th century. By royal decree of 3 July 1663, Fernando del Hoyo Solórzano obtained the Lordship (Señorío) of the Valley of Santiago, with civil and criminal jurisdiction, in exchange for serving the Crown with several thousand silver ducats. The new lord ordered the construction, between 1665 and 1668, of the Casa del Patio, the most significant historical complex in the municipality, and promoted the creation of the parish of San Fernando Rey, established on 9 September 1679 over the old hermitage dedicated to Saint James the Apostle. Around that nucleus the village consolidated, devoted to grain, potatoes and, very especially, the almond tree, which blanketed the slopes in white and became the emblem of the valley.

The episode that forever marked the collective memory was the eruption of the Chinyero volcano, which began on 18 November 1909 and lasted a little over a week. It was the last eruption recorded in Tenerife to this day and the one that emitted the least volume of lava of all known eruptions in the Canaries, yet its advance directly threatened the crops and houses of Valle de Arriba and Las Manchas. Facing the danger, the inhabitants carried the image of the Santísimo Cristo del Valle in a rogation procession and, according to a tradition deeply rooted in the village, the lava flow halted its advance, which was interpreted as a miracle that spared the town from destruction. Each year a procession commemorates those events and the collective faith that, in popular belief, stopped the lava.

In the 20th century the municipality changed its appearance. Its official name was changed from Valle de Santiago to Santiago del Teide on 2 July 1916. The island's ring road arrived around 1930, and the San Fernando water gallery, opened in 1957, secured the water that allowed crops to expand. But the real transformation came from the coast: from 1960 onwards, the touristic discovery of the imposing cliffs of Los Gigantes catalysed the development of the coastal strip. Thus arose the settlements of Los Gigantes, Puerto de Santiago and Playa de la Arena, turning an agricultural midland municipality into a first-class tourist destination.

Today Santiago del Teide lives by this double face: that of the volcanic midlands, the almond trees in blossom, the Guanche pottery of Arguayo and the trails of Chinyero and Teno, and that of a sunny coast of deep waters at the foot of the largest sea wall in the Canaries. A territory that knows how to blend aboriginal and seigneurial memory with a present open to the visitor.