A municipality at the southern tip of La Palma, in the territory of the old pre-Hispanic canton of Abenguareme. It takes its name from the Fuente Santa, a thermal spring buried by lava in the 17th century, and was constituted in 1837 when it separated from Villa de Mazo.
legend: arrival around 1500; documented on the island 1555; San Antonio volcano 1677The Malvasía that sprang from the San Antonio volcano
Oral tradition has it that Malvasía vines came to La Palma from Madeira around 1500; the papers that might prove it burned in 1553, when the French corsair Peg Leg set fire to the notaries' offices of Santa Cruz. What is on record is a notarial contract of 1555 leasing a vineyard with Malvasía on the island, and the testimony of the English merchant Thomas Nichols, who in 1557 praised the wines of La Palma. In the south, the eruption of the San Antonio volcano in 1677 covered Fuencaliente's rye fields with black ash; on that picón, in the area of Los Llanos Negros, the Malvasía that today yields the island's most celebrated sweet wine became acclimatised.
Alive today: Fuencaliente is home to the Regulatory Council of the DO La Palma and holds the great majority of the island's Malvasía, in Los Llanos Negros. Since 1947 the Llanovid cooperative has made the Teneguía wines, named after the volcano that erupted in 1971 next to its vineyards, and there are family bodegas such as Carballo.