Timanfaya National Park, managed by the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Energy of the Government of the Canary Islands, has launched Volcano Memories, a project aimed at the population to recover Lanzarote's intangible heritage: knowledge, trades, and traditional uses linked to the volcanic territory.
During the morning of this Tuesday, June 23, the first activity of the project was carried out in collaboration with the Social Dynamization department of the Yaiza City Council. A group of sixty elderly people from the southern municipality took an interpretive route that began at the Echadero de los Camellos, crossed El Chinero, Montaña Rajada, and concluded at Islote de Hilario with a snack at the El Diablo restaurant, courtesy of the Art, Culture, and Tourism Centers of the Cabildo de Lanzarote.
Along the route, the participants contemplated the Chinero volcanic tube, discussed the traditional uses of camels, and shared a conversation about different elements: old photographs, goat horns used ancestrally for fishing, and rush and palm baskets where figs used to be collected.
The salt from the pools formed on the coast of the protected area, eggs boiled with the heat of the volcano, the collection and drying of fruit, legends, and games played under the shade of centenary fig trees… Every square meter of Timanfaya National Park holds exceptional value for its geology and biodiversity, but also for its cultural and ethnographic value.
“This project was born because we want to recover the link with the citizens, so that the population feels the national park as their own and becomes an ally in the collective task of conserving Timanfaya,” explains Pascual Gil, director-conservator of the National Park.
During the month of July, a new interpretive route will be carried out with a group of elderly people from Tinajo, the other Lanzarote municipality through which the park extends.
Developed by the awareness team of Timanfaya National Park, the Volcano Memories project will organize intergenerational workshops and discussions in which young people from Lanzarote will also participate to connect the historical memory of the elders with the curiosity and perspective of the new generations.
In addition to recovering traditional knowledge thanks to the older population, the project wants to give an active role to youth by creating bidirectional communication between both worlds. In this way, that recovered collective memory will connect with the challenges that young people face today.
The project, which begins this Tuesday, will allow for the construction of an oral and audiovisual memory archive that will bring together traditional knowledge and documents linking the families of Lanzarote with the volcanic landscape created by the eruptions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Historical memory, interpretation of the volcanic territory, and community building: three fundamental tasks that the Timanfaya National Park undertakes in 2026 within its awareness mission.