majorero
majorero
Spanish
“Fuerteventura's ancient goat cheese carries the name of the island's first people.”
The Majos were the indigenous Berber people who settled Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the Canary Islands before Spanish conquest. Spanish colonists arriving in the early 15th century called them Majos or Majoreros, a term whose most accepted etymology comes from the Guanche word maho, meaning a sandal made of goat or pig skin. The Majos wore these sandals as a distinctive cultural marker, and the Spanish used the sandal name to name the people. The inhabitants of Fuerteventura are still called majoreros today, 600 years after the conquest that named them.
Goats were central to Majo culture before the Norman-Spanish expedition under Jean de Béthencourt landed in 1402. The island of Fuerteventura, close to the African coast and semi-arid in climate, supported large goat herds on sparse scrub vegetation. Cheese-making from goat milk was already established when the conquest began, and early colonial records document the Majo practice in detail. The cheese the Majos made was the direct predecessor of what is now protected under the PDO as majorero.
After conquest, Spanish settlers adopted and continued Majo cheese production, integrating it into the colonial economy of the Canary Islands. The indigenous goat breed, now called the Majorera goat, was selectively maintained because of its milk richness and adaptation to the island's conditions. By the 18th century, majorero cheese was exported from the Canary Islands to the Spanish mainland and to the Americas. In 1996, the EU granted it PDO status, requiring production exclusively in Fuerteventura from Majorera goat milk.
The PDO rules allow for three finishes: natural rind, coated with pimentón (smoked paprika), and coated with gofio (roasted grain flour). The gofio coating is itself a Guanche survival: gofio was the staple food of the pre-conquest Canary Islands, and it remains a daily ingredient in the Canarian diet. The pimentón-coated wheel, orange-red on the outside and ivory within, is the most internationally recognized form. Majorero's name contains a complete colonial history: a Guanche word for a sandal, applied to a people, applied to their cheese.
Related Words
Today
Fuerteventura is the oldest of the Canary Islands geologically, the closest to the African coast, and the most arid. The Majorera goat is adapted to this severity: small, sure-footed, able to extract nutrition from sparse scrub. The cheese it produces carries the island's character in concentrated form, and the name on the label is the oldest layer of the island's recorded history.
The name majorero has survived conquest, colonization, and five centuries of Spanish administration because Majo culture was not entirely erased. It persisted in the goat, in the cheese, in the gofio coating, in the place names of Fuerteventura. The Majos are in the milk.
Explore more words