  We discuss the peculiar planning of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna,
in the Canary Island of Tenerife (Spain), when compared to the nearby and
essentially contemporary Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which served as a maritime
port of the former city. For this we review our previous study of the exact
spatial orientation of twenty-one historic Christian churches currently
existing in the old part of La Laguna, which we compare with the analysis of
six similar buildings located in Santa Cruz, and presented here for the first
time. In both cities, we take the spatial orientation of historic churches as
good indicators of the original layout of the respective urban lattices.
Although we find a clear orientation pattern for La Laguna, which singles out
an absolute-value astronomical declination slightly below 20 degrees, pointing
to a preferred date close to the July 25th feast-day of San Cristobal de Licia,
in the case of Santa Cruz this trend is not followed. On the contrary, the
pattern we find for Santa Cruz, within the uncertainties due to the low
statistics, and apart from one equinoctial and one solstitial oriented
churches, is consistent with an orographic orientation within the canonic
limits of sunrise. This result highlights the uniqueness of the city of La
Laguna, and supports the idea suggesting its deliberate planning in the early
16th century.
