The company Paviquimia, together with the workers of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers of Lanzarote, has been in charge of rehabilitating the Monument to Fertility, or Monument to the Peasant, which, after more than 50 years since its creation and the last windstorm that hit the island in April of last year, was destroyed.
The owner of Paviquimia, Antonio Rodríguez, explained during an interview with La Voz that the rehabilitation works of the work of the multidisciplinary artist César Manrique were awarded to his company by competition before the storm that dismantled part of the structure. "It was put out to tender to do an exterior rehabilitation of the monument, without removing it, but it so happened that the project had already been awarded and those winds of 80 kilometers per hour came and when the top part fell we realized that it was really bad inside," he said.
This structure was reinforced in the 90s with a fiberglass and resin on the outside and initially Antonio Rodríguez's company had to give it the same treatment again, until the storm occurred and they saw that the sculpture was in worse condition than expected.
"It was not possible to work on it," said Rodríguez, who assured that "it was tried, but it has been many years, 55 years, that an iron structure has been exposed to the elements."
"Not many people know this, people think that it was planned from the beginning to dismantle it completely, but it was going to be worked on in situ," he stressed. As a result of this situation and after analyzing the state of the monument, "it is decided to do it again, to make an exact replica of the Monument."
To replicate three quarters of Manrique's work, with the exception of the base, which, being made of solid concrete, was not damaged, the team of welders from the CACT and the concessionaire company have done a joint work. The welders "have made the structure in four parts in an industrial warehouse that is in Playa Honda", while Paviquimia, as they were receiving the pieces of structures that replicate the monument, were putting them "exactly the same as it was": two layers of fiberglass and resin. The owner of the company has indicated that "in the end it has been finished with a white paint just as it was formerly. It has remained exactly the same, a totally exact replica."
For Rodríguez, the arrival of the wind was "a luck" because "if there had not been that storm we could not see what is inside the structure."
This Lanzarote company, located in Arrecife, has been in operation since 2001 and spends around 25,000 liters of resin a year on different projects, although not all of them are as special as this one and it is something that has been noticed among the team. Working with Manrique's work has been "a marvel" for him and his team for many reasons, among them, for "how we have been treated in the Art and Culture Centers, for their technical team and the welders themselves. It is a pleasure to work with such professional people."
To the joint work with the Centers, Rodríguez has added the pride of "restoring a work of art", even more so being a company from Lanzarote and having done it in record time between the month of September and February of this year. "Sometimes this type of works, as they know in public tender, may have the luck that they are giving it a company from outside, from the peninsula or from other islands, and then of course, for a company from Lanzarote that we were born in Lanzarote and that we have been able to collaborate in this, it has been a pride and a marvel.
To conclude, the owner of this company has highlighted the value of preserving Manrique's legacy: "It is very important, it is a pride for us that we should take this work as a diversion rather than as a job because it is something that is historical, the guys hang it every day on their networks and every progress that we are making, they are publishing it and that is because they are very proud of their work and that pleases me very much."
There are still two more pieces of the work to be placed, which was divided into four. Waiting for one of the parts to be concreted, Rodríguez estimates that the project will be completed before mid-February.
