64 years later Manrique's words continue to challenge Lanzarote

I am not Guillermo Topham. Nor am I César Manrique. But I have before me a page from Antena dated September 4, 1962, and I feel that that interview should not remain solely in a newspaper archive.

There are conversations that belong to their time. And there are others that, when one rereads them 64 years later, seem to have been waiting precisely for this moment.

Guillermo Topham asked. César Manrique answered. And he did so without beating around the bush. He spoke of architecture, landscape, dirt, urbanism, tourism, and, above all, of a responsibility that remains difficult to evade today: how to take advantage of the future without destroying what makes an island unique.

There is no need to imagine what Manrique would think today. We cannot know. It is enough to reread what he actually said then and put those words against the Lanzarote of 2026.

In September 1962, Lanzarote was far from becoming the tourist destination we know. Tourism appeared as an extraordinary opportunity, but also as a transformation that required preparation.

Manrique did not speak like someone who wanted to stop the future. On the contrary: he saw in the island an "extraordinary tourist future." But he understood that this future could turn into success or failure depending on how it was built.

His metaphor was forceful: "A doctor cannot beat around the bush or mince words when it comes to saving a patient's life. And that is what I try to do."

That sentence summarizes a good part of his position. He did not intend to please. He intended to warn.

That is why he started with something seemingly minor: the Fishermen's Pier in Arrecife. He denounced the smells, the stagnant water, the waste, and the movement of goods that marred a space that, in his opinion, could be transformed into a viewpoint esplanade. For Manrique, these details were not secondary. They were part of the island's image that would receive the visitor.

When he spoke of white, cubic, and smooth houses, Manrique was not simply defending a color. He was proposing an idea of territory.

Popular architecture should retain its personality. The colors, he said, were provided by nature and flowers. Faced with improvisation, he demanded criteria; faced with the sum of individual decisions, a collective vision.

His concern is especially revealing today. Because the landscape does not disappear suddenly. It transforms little by little: a construction, an enclosure, a volume, a color, a sign, a road, more occupation.

What in 1962 might have seemed an aesthetic warning was, in reality, a defense of heritage and territorial identity.

It would be a mistake to reduce those statements to a romantic defense of a postcard Lanzarote. Manrique was trying to build a tourist model based precisely on what made the island different.

That is why he pointed out villages and landscapes he considered valuable and demanded that new actions be based on a common technical criterion. He did not want to prevent development. He wanted to prevent development from ending up destroying the reason why visitors had started to look towards Lanzarote.

In the interior of the island, he spoke of "aesthetic crimes" and defended peasant architecture. And he left a phrase that, six decades later, acquires an uncomfortable force: "Lanzarote is still in time to 'save itself'."

There is another passage from that interview that is surprising for its relevance: Manrique speaks of the dirtiness in El Golfo and Jameos del Agua, of debris, cans, and waste. He was not only thinking about the beauty of the place. He was thinking about the behavior of those who visited it and those who lived on the island.

That is why he called for a "firm hand" from the authorities, but also for something deeper: to create an island tourist consciousness. Tourism, for him, could not be solely an economic activity. It had to become a shared responsibility.

The idea remains essential. A tourist island is not protected solely by rules. It also needs a society that understands the value of what those rules aim to protect.

Sixty-four years later, the dimension of the tourist phenomenon is radically different. In 2025, Lanzarote received around 3.45 million tourists. The average occupancy of accommodation establishments stood at around 85.6%, and revenue from tourist accommodation exceeded one billion euros.

The tourist success that was then a promise became a reality of enormous magnitude. But success also has consequences when it is concentrated on a limited territory.

Human pressure data helps to understand it: in 2025 the resident population was around 166,878 people, while the average daily presence of tourists was estimated at about 82,217. That is to say, the island supported an average human population close to 249,095 people.

The Lanzarote of 1962 discussed how to prepare for the future. The one of 2026 has to discuss how to manage a future that has already arrived.

The question is no longer whether tourism works. It works. The question is what territorial, environmental, and social price a growth that finds no limits can have.

In recent years, debates have emerged about saturation, mobility, water, housing, pressure on certain areas, and the need to modernize tourist zones. These are different problems, but they have a common denominator: the capacity of a limited island to absorb growing demand.

And here the 1962 interview reappears. Manrique did not speak then of millions of visitors or of the current scale. But he did raise the principle that connects both moments: tourism should be organized before the territory paid the bill.

THE LANDSCAPE THAT ATTRACTS THE VISITOR IS THE SAME ONE THAT CAN END UP BEING DEPLETED

The paradox is evident. Lanzarote attracts precisely because of what cannot be reproduced indefinitely: its landscape, its traditional architecture, its volcanoes, its natural spaces, its image, and a certain way of integrating into the territory.

Various studies on the evolution of the island's territorial model have pointed out precisely this tension: the project associated with Manrique managed to differentiate Lanzarote as a destination, but subsequent growth may put at risk the conditions that made this uniqueness possible.

It is tempting to ask the question. But it would be intellectually dishonest to answer it by putting current words in his mouth.

We do not know what Manrique would have thought of the 3.45 million tourists, of the new developments, of the digital platforms, of the cruises, of the pressure on water, or of the social changes on the island.

What we do know is what he wrote and declared in 1962. And we know that his central concern was not to freeze Lanzarote, but to prevent progress from ending up destroying the landscape that gave it meaning.

That is why the comparison does not need to imagine Manrique. It needs to listen to him.

There is a historical paradox in the way we have made Manrique a symbol of Lanzarote. His image has been incorporated into the island's tourist narrative, but his critical voice runs the risk of being sidelined.

It is one thing to remember Manrique. It is another, much more demanding thing, to accept the discomfort of his questions.

Because the Manrique of that interview was not just the artist. He was also the citizen who pointed out what was wrong, who asked for decisions, who demanded planning, and who warned that the island was still on time.

Turning that warning into a postcard would be to betray precisely what made it valuable.

There are 64 years between those two dates. In that time, Lanzarote went from seeing tourism as a possibility to becoming one of the great tourist destinations in the Canary Islands.

We must not deny that success. It has generated employment, economic activity, infrastructure, and opportunities. But we must not hide its effects either. An island can gain visitors and, at the same time, lose what made it special.

The question, therefore, is not to choose between tourism or protection. The real challenge is to ensure that both can continue to exist together.

I return to that Antena page. To September 4, 1962. To the words of an artist who was not yet the universal icon he would become and to the questions of a journalist who decided to publish them when no one could know how far tourism would go in Lanzarote.

But I have that interview in front of me, and I believe that 64 years later it deserves more than to remain archived.

Because the question is no longer whether that warning was accurate. The question is how much time we have left to show that we understood it.

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64 years later Manrique's words continue to challenge Lanzarote

On September 4, 1962, as tourism began to transform the island, César Manrique warned about the landscape, the architecture, the dirt, and the need to grow without destroying