ABSTRACT
The Canary Islands might appear to be a subject very much on the fringes of the history of medieval Europe. Interest in the societies that existed on the islands before the arrival of Iberian conquerors has grown in strength. The first Castilian prince to aspire to rule over the Canaries was not the king but the high-born adventurer Luis de la Cerda, who was pressing his claims at the same moment as James III of Majorca's flotillas were heading towards the islands; his claims also irritated the Portuguese, now becoming active in these waters. Another small group of sources from the mid-fourteenth century sheds different light on the Canary islanders. The islands and their inhabitants appear in a text preserved by Boccaccio, consisting of a letter describing the voyage in Portuguese service in 1341 of the Genoese Captain Niccolò or Niccoloso de Recco, De Canaria et insulis reliquis ultra Ispaniam in Océano noviter repertis.
