  The orientation of Christian churches is a well-known distinctive feature of
their architecture. There is a general tendency to align their apses in the
solar range, favoring orientations close to the east (astronomical equinox),
although the alignments in the opposite direction, namely, with the apse
towards the west, are not unusual. The case of the churches built in northwest
Africa before the arrival of Islam is paradigmatic in this regard, and may
reflect earlier traditions. The Canary Islands is the western end of this North
African cultural koine, so we thought it would be relevant to study a compact
set of old churches in one of the islands of the archipelago, choosing to start
our project with Lanzarote. We have measured the orientation of a total of 30
churches built prior to 1810, as well as a few buildings of later times, nearly
a complete sample of all the island Christian sanctuaries. The analysis of this
sample indicates that a definite orientation pattern was followed on the island
but, unlike the standard one often found in most of the Christian world, this
prototype is twofold. On the one hand, the representative orientation to the
east (or west) is present. However, the sample has also a marked orientation
towards the north-northeast, which is as far as we know a pattern exclusive of
Lanzarote. We analyze the reasons for this rule and suggest that one possible
explanation could be a rather prosaic one, namely, that sometimes earthly needs
are more relevant than religious beliefs.
