Santa María de Betancuria was founded around 1404 by Norman conquerors during the European invasion of Fuerteventura. The town took its name from Jean de Béthencourt and occupied an inland valley chosen for water, cultivable land, vegetation, and some protection from coastal attack. It became one of the earliest European towns in the Canary Islands after conquest. That foundation cannot be separated from the defeat, conversion, displacement, and incorporation of the island's Indigenous Majoreros into a new colonial and seigneurial society.

Early structures included a defensive tower and chapel, neither of which survives. After conquest, Betancuria became Fuerteventura's political, religious, and administrative center. European settlers and surviving Indigenous residents developed cereal farming, goat herding, orchilla gathering, craft production, and trade. Territorial lords, the island council, clergy, soldiers, tenants, laborers, and enslaved people occupied unequal positions within the new order. The church of Santa María rose around 1410, and Franciscans established the convent of San Buenaventura in 1416.

Pope Martin V created a short-lived Diocese of Fuerteventura in 1424, with jurisdiction over most of the Canaries, but it was suppressed in 1430. Betancuria nevertheless remained the island's main parish and governmental seat for centuries. Its inland location did not guarantee safety. In 1593 forces led by Xabán Arráez attacked Fuerteventura, reached the town, and burned or looted major buildings, including Santa María. Rebuilding introduced later Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque features into a settlement whose fabric already recorded conquest and religious expansion.

Agriculture and goat raising depended on irregular rainfall. Productive years supported local consumption and export, while drought brought hunger, demographic loss, and emigration. During the eighteenth century population and authority shifted toward other settlements, and military and ecclesiastical functions became decentralized. Betancuria remained the island capital until the nineteenth century, when new municipal structures and Puerto de Cabras, now Puerto del Rosario, assumed greater importance. Political decline helped preserve the small-scale historic landscape but also reflected changing economic geography.

Betancuria was protected as a historic ensemble in the late twentieth century and remains a living municipal center. Stone, plaster, timber, drainage, wildfire, drought, traffic, tourism, and incompatible alterations require continual management. Conservation should include ordinary houses, agricultural terraces, churches, convent ruins, archaeological deposits, and Indigenous history rather than presenting only a picturesque colonial town. Betancuria is significant because the Canary conquest, cultural transformation, religious institutions, piracy, environmental limits, migration, and the long adaptation of an island community remain visible within its valley setting.