Guayaquil

Guayaquil takes its name from the lands of a chief called Guayaquile, and local tradition remembers native resistance to the Spanish conquest. The Spanish made several attempts to found a city here from 1534; Francisco de Orellana is credited with one in 1538, and after several moves and fires the city was established for good in 1547 as Santiago de Guayaquil, named after its patron saint, St James. It became the Pacific's great shipyard and a key port of the Spanish colony, and was sacked by pirates in the 17th century.

On 9 October 1820, almost without bloodshed, civilians backed by soldiers of the Granaderos de Reserva battalion arrested the Spanish authorities, and the Free Province of Guayaquil was declared, with the poet José Joaquín de Olmedo at its head. From here Antonio José de Sucre led the army that won the Battle of Pichincha, and on 26 July 1822 Bolívar and San Martín met in the city. Guayaquil was annexed to Gran Colombia and has been part of Ecuador since 1830.

The cacao boom that began in the 1770s made Guayaquil one of the world's main cacao-exporting centres, and cacao growers and merchants later founded a powerful bank there, though a fire destroyed large parts of the city in 1896. Workers striking in Guayaquil were massacred on 15 November 1922, and bananas brought a new boom to Ecuador from 1948. An urban regeneration plan rebuilt the waterfront as the Malecón 2000; the Metrovía followed in 2006, pedestrian bridges to Santay Island in 2013 and the Aerovía cable car in 2021. Since about 2021 the city has been at the centre of Ecuador's security crisis, as gangs tied to cocaine trafficking fought for control of its port and prisons.

Guayaquil was the first Ecuadorian city to win its independence from Spain for good, in 1820. The city anthem, the Song to the Ninth of October, with words by Olmedo, was officially adopted in 1898, and the independence anniversary each October is the great civic holiday.

Football is a passion. Barcelona Sporting Club, founded in 1925 by a Spanish immigrant and named after his home city, is the most popular club in Ecuador and plays at the Estadio Monumental; Emelec, founded in 1929 by George Capwell, the American head of the electric company, plays at the stadium named after him. Their matches, the Clásico del Astillero, are the only Ecuadorian derby that FourFourTwo magazine counted among the world's 34 greatest football rivalries.

The city's cultural life centres on the Malecón, with the MAAC's collections of archaeology and contemporary art, and on the universities, among them the University of Guayaquil, founded in 1867, and ESPOL. The montubio culture of the rural coast, with its cowboys and amorfino verse duels, is part of the city's wider identity.

The 2022 census counted 2,746,403 people in Guayaquil canton, and the wider conurbation, which takes in nearby cities and parishes, has about 3.6 million. It is the country's commercial capital: about 70 per cent of Ecuador's private exports leave through its port, along with bananas, shrimp and cacao from the surrounding provinces. Most commerce is in small and medium businesses, and the informal economy employs thousands.

The city is sharply divided. Most of Guayaquil's upper-class families live in the gated communities of La Puntilla in Samborondón, across the river, and many of them work in the city. The centre is a place of offices, shops and markets by day.

The dominant issue is insecurity. Since the port became a key point in the cocaine trade, rival gangs such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos have fought over it, and extortion demands on shops, buses and small businesses, curfews during states of emergency and families leaving the worst-hit neighbourhoods are part of daily life. Floods in El Niño years and earthquake risk are other concerns.

Guayaquil cooks with seafood, green plantain, coconut and peanuts. Encebollado, a fish soup of albacore tuna, cassava and pickled red onion, is eaten from early morning and is a common hangover cure. Ceviche of shrimp, fish or clams is usually served with chifles, thin plantain chips, and encocado, cooked in coconut sauce, is one of the main dishes of the coast.

Guayaquileños gather for cangrejadas, family sessions of cracking red mangrove crabs, a weekend tradition. Seco de chivo, goat stew, and arroz con menestra, rice with lentils or beans and grilled beef, are everyday dishes, and breakfast is often a bolón de verde, a ball of mashed green plantain with cheese or pork crackling, or tigrillo, mashed plantain scrambled with egg and cheese.

Pan de yuca, a bread roll made from cassava flour and eaten hot, is a popular snack, and bollos de pescado, green plantain, fish and peanuts wrapped in a banana leaf, are another coastal favourite. Urdesa, the centre and the road to Samborondón are the main areas for international restaurants.