Calle de Agatha Christie

February 1927. Agatha Christie is 36 years old, having just endured the collapse of her marriage, the death of her mother, and a mysterious 11-day disappearance. An episode of amnesia that electrified all of England. She boards a ship in Southampton with her twelve-year-old daughter Rosalind and secretary Charlotte, and sails to Tenerife. She takes up residence at the Gran Hotel Taoro, the only proper hotel in this fishing village, opened in 1890, the same year Christie was born.

Every day she walks this very path. It used to be called Paseo de los Cipreses, a cypress avenue running along the cliff from Casa Cologan to the sea. In "The Man from the Sea", a short story written right here, she describes it so precisely that readers recognise every turn. The Cologan family house with its white shutters, the steep cliffs, the Atlantic. She sits at the hotel window dictating chapters of "The Mystery of the Blue Train" to her secretary. She sends the manuscript to the publisher. The financial crisis ends. She dislikes the novel, but it sells brilliantly.

Today the path bears her name. After renovation in March 2021, every step is painted a different colour and bears the title of one of her novels, like book spines lined up side by side. At the top, by Mirador La Paz, stands a bronze bust of the writer by Marta von Poroszlay, unveiled in 2007 during the first International Agatha Christie Festival. Puerto de la Cruz was the first city in the world to name a street after the writer.

The view from the mirador is one of the best in all of Puerto: the Martianez cliffs, Lago Martianez, the beach, the silhouette of La Palma on the horizon on clear days, and in the evenings a sunset often accompanied by a saxophone.