The FCM will host a round table in the presentation of a study on Manrique's activism

The theme of the event will be tourist overcrowding and its consequences, and it will be moderated by journalists Andrea Domínguez and Saúl García

May 5 2025 (15:12 WEST)
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The César Manrique Foundation (FCM) presents the book-catalog titled Word and commitment: Power is made uncomfortable. César Manrique. ACTIVISM on next Thursday, May 8, at 8:00 p.m., in the José Saramago Room of La Plazuela, in Arrecife.

Within the framework of the presentation ceremony, a round table will be held on tourist overcrowding and its consequences, in which Jaime Coello (director of the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Foundation, naturalist, manager, disseminator and environmental activist), Alfredo Díaz (head of the FCM's Pedagogical Department), Irma Ferrer (lawyer), Natalia G. Vargas (journalist from Canarias Ahora specializing in migration and human rights) and Felipe Ravina (documentary filmmaker and graduate in Marine Sciences) will participate. The table will be moderated by journalists Andrea Domínguez and Saúl García.

The book explores —for the first time in a monographic and exhaustive way— the activist side of César Manrique, linked to the protection of the territory and the environment. The study addresses central themes in Manrique's public discourse: the promotion, by the artist, of limited and quality tourism; the defense of limits and uniqueness in terms of a tourist offer based on the culture and heritage values of the place; his open criticism of speculation, corruption, development and environmental abuses...

His public statements, made over more than forty years, as well as written documents by the artist, are taken as a central reference. The catalog is connected to the subsequent round table in which the current situation of overcrowding and tourist overflow will be discussed, with the consequent impact on the natural heritage and the quality of life of citizens, who suffer from Lanzarote and the Canary Islands.

César Manrique. ACTIVISM is the catalog of the homonymous exhibition —April 30 to June 17, 2019— organized by the FCM and curated by Fernando Gómez Aguilera, on the occasion of the commemoration of the centenary of the birth of César Manrique. This is a detailed research study poured into 600 pages, which brings together thirteen critical texts, more than 440 images, 260 pages of press with statements by Manrique, handwritten annotations and manifestos by the artist, historical series of growth and various graphic materials.

Through a very broad documentation, it is possible to appreciate the evolution of territorial, landscape, social and economic transformations, as well as the progressive overcrowding and deterioration of Lanzarote denounced and anticipated by César Manrique since the seventies. All this has led to the current situation, which is causing so much social unrest, due to hyper-tourism development and the impacts on infrastructure, heritage and quality of life of citizens.

The catalog includes critical texts written by Fernando Gómez Aguilera, curator of the exhibition; Blanca de la Torre, curator, art historian and researcher; Leopoldo Díaz, director of the Island Plan Office of the Cabildo de Lanzarote (1996-2024) and Deputy Minister of Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands (2019-2023); Alberto Santamaría, professor of Art Theory at the University of Salamanca; Mario Alberto Perdomo, economist; José María Parreño, professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University and writer; Fernando Prats, urban architect; Ana Carrasco, biologist and managing director of the Lanzarote Biosphere Reserve Office; Joaquín Araújo, naturalist and writer; Bárbara Fluxá, artist, researcher and teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Complutense University; Federico Aguilera Klink, economist; Benigno Varillas, journalist specializing in environmental communication; Saúl García, journalist; Santiago Beruete, writer. It is completed with a specific chronobiography of Manrique's activism prepared by the FCM conservator, Bisi Quevedo.

In the words of Gómez Aguilera, the exhibition that originates the book-catalog tried to show “the ecosocial dimension of the artist, an activism that evidences his most political and community profile, the critical voice of an alarmed and pioneering conscience in the defense of the territory of Lanzarote and the Islands, through his statements and claims raised in the media”. According to the curator of the exhibition, this complementary facet of the artist “cannot be separated from the rest of his material work. With his close and expressive word, he reacts against the destruction and tourist overcrowding of Lanzarote, criticizes speculation, insensitive politics given to money, the deterioration of the landscape, the increase in the automobile park, the construction of large hotels or outdated urban laws...”.

The work offers a direct tool to resume and update Manrique's attitudes and positions expressed “through his own words, without reinterpretations”. In addition, the director of the FCM affirms, a practical resource is provided “to prevent the pretensions of mixing up Manrique's thinking and behaviors. His direct words, his ecosocial thought, his acid criticisms and his rabidly current predictions are recovered, when overcrowding overwhelms us and deteriorates not only the destination and the offer, but the quality of life of citizens and the integrity of the territory and the environment, putting the future at risk and making the present uncomfortable”.

In this way, César Manrique's ideas are aligned with the demonstration Canarias tiene un Límite announced for May 18 against tourist overcrowding in the Islands, a call that the FCM supports and believes is appropriate, trusting that it will have massive support from citizens.

César Manrique. ACTIVISM has been edited by the FCM Publications Service, under the direction of Fernando Gómez Aguilera, responsible for the conception of the work, dedicated to documenting Manrique's ecosocial dimension. The graphic design and layout has been carried out by Sebastián Puiggrós, while the meticulous and exhaustive work of documentation, coordination and supervision of the catalog has been carried out by the FCM team formed by Idoya Cabrera Delgado, Carla Gómez Amat, Irene Gómez Fábregas, Consuelo Niz Cabrera, Bisi Quevedo Portillo and Paula Ramírez Luengo.

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