The project driven from Lanzarote to protect and ensure the future of Los Buches de Arrecife is advancing towards its final development phase, after completing the pilot stage of research, testing, and technical definition. The objective is to produce facsimiles (highly faithful replicas) that allow the tradition to remain alive in the street, with guarantees, without depending on increasingly fragile and difficult-to-maintain antique pieces.
The initiative, conceived and promoted by the artist, cultural manager, and researcher David Machado, has the backing of the Presidency of the Cabildo de Lanzarote, chaired by Oswaldo Betancort García, and with shared financing at 50% by the Centers of Art, Culture, and Tourism (CACT) and the Society for External Promotion Tourism Lanzarote. This alliance places Lanzarote on a rare plane of heritage innovation: that of territories applying advanced technology to the service of a living, community-based cultural practice with intergenerational transmission.
In the words of David Machado: "this project represents a systematic advance in the protection of the most genuine cultural samples of the Canary Islands, uniting technology, fine arts, and anthropological research. We are being pioneers worldwide."
Production is carried out in Madrid with Factum Arte and the Factum Foundation, entities recognized for their international work in high-resolution digital recording and the production of facsimiles for conservation. The team is led by Adam Lowe, director of Factum Arte and founder of the Factum Foundation, a key figure at the intersection of arts, technology, and heritage preservation.
Within the technical team, specialized profiles such as Otto Lowe, linked to photogrammetry and three-dimensional capture processes, and Sol Costales Doulton, responsible for project coordination and management within the Factum environment, have been involved. This work allows for the precise recording of the object's "skin," its volume, its reliefs, and marks, so that the replica is not a mere likeness, but a functional and faithful piece.
The president of the Parranda Marinera de Buches, Juan Antonio Machado Santana, a veteran buchero, attended a project follow-up meeting, emphasizing the cultural scope of the process: "this project not only means the salvation of Los Buches, but it also places us on the map as a pioneering society in the use of technology to safeguard one of the most important manifestations of the Canary Islands".
After leaving the research phase behind, the project enters the formal and material development stage through design and three-dimensional modeling. Artist Irene Gaumé, trained in Fine Arts in Antwerp and a specialist in 3D modeling at the Factum team, is involved in this stage, working with information obtained from scanning large-format historical "buches" preserved at the entity's headquarters. From this data, a process of digital reconstruction and "inflation" is carried out to approximate the texture and shape to the organic qualities of traditional "buches," incorporating fine details such as veins, capillaries, and roughness with millimeter precision.
The planned facsimiles, approximately 75 cm in size, will allow for the production of 35 buches intended for use in festive contexts. The intention is not to turn tradition into a showcase, but to reinforce its real continuity: that the entrudo (traditional carnival) can continue to be celebrated with strength, care, and joy, without a shortage of buches compromising the practice
The association highlights that the budget has been entirely allocated to the execution of the project and expressly thanks the institutional support of the Presidency of the Cabildo de Lanzarote (Oswaldo Betancort García) and the involvement of the CEO of CACT, Ángel Vázquez Álvarez, for making viable an intervention that protects a tradition and, at the same time, promotes Lanzarote in international circuits where technology is at the service of collective memory and living heritage.
