 It is from this mission that the various paintings and statues of the Virgin Mary that are currently venerated in the island were preserved.European disembarkations of Genovese, Castilian and Portuguese missionaries and pirates on Canarian shores became relatively common and the prehispanic populations experienced a long and ongoing process of Westernisation before formal colonization took place.A variety of theories regarding the origins of pre-colonial Canarians explain them by the hypothesis of a more recent immigration.