There was one Lanzarote that could be seen from the surface and another, much more unknown, that began precisely when the light disappeared. On September 24, 1963, as the island was slowly emerging into a new era marked by tourism and the first major transformations of its landscape, a group of young people from Haría decided to look down. And they descended to where it seemed impossible to reach at the time: 85 meters underground.
The news was reported that same day by the weekly newspaper Antena. Issue 524, corresponding to September 24, 1963, dedicated its page 5 to recounting the exploration of some caves in Tinajo that the publication described as "unfathomable." The reason had something of legend and something of vertigo. Stones thrown inside produced a sound that lasted for a while before disappearing into the depths. Historical documentation preserved identifies Nicolás Reyes, Francisco Reyes, Juan Pablo de León, and Hermelindo Navarro among the protagonists. They were young amateur speleologists from Haría who managed to descend with difficulty to 85 meters.
An island that was also explored downwards
The feat of 1963 did not appear out of nowhere. During the preceding years, enthusiasts and scholars from Haría had developed intense activity around the underground world of Lanzarote. In 1961, two young Catalan speleologists had traveled about four and a half kilometers through the volcanic gallery of the Cueva de los Verdes. The exploration was then presented as a world record in volcanic cavities.
In April 1962, an expedition from the Club Montañés Barcelonés arrived in Lanzarote. Their work focused on the galleries and the crater of the La Corona volcano. Joaquín Montoriol, Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Barcelona, was part of the team, along with Lanzaroteños Nicolás Reyes and Óscar Torres. The press of the time presented that exploration as a record in volcanic cavities.
The young people from Haría did not limit themselves to accompanying scientists from outside. In May 1962, a group consisting of Nicolás Reyes, Óscar Torres, Francisco Rosa, Juan Hernández, Alejandro Acosta, and Domingo Socas discovered two underground volcanic lakes near the Cueva de los Verdes. Historical documentation from the time estimated an approximate length of 70 meters for one of them and about 170 for the second.
In January 1963, a few months before that exploration of Tinajo, another group of amateur speleologists from Haría located a new gallery in the vicinity of Cueva de los Verdes. The preserved historical documentation then placed the maximum depth at 250 meters. Those episodes show that the 85 meters reached in September were part of a much larger story. It was the story of a generation of young Lanzaroteans who began to scientifically explore the interior of the island when there was still a great deal of territory to discover.
When a stone took a long time to stop making noise
There is something especially powerful in the description left by Antena. There were no drones. There were no mobile phones. There were no modern systems capable of immediately providing a three-dimensional map of the subsoil. There was darkness, volcanic rock, knowledge acquired on the ground, and a fundamental question: how far did that hole go.
The journalistic description itself explains why those caves were considered "unfathomable." The stones thrown inside produced a sound that lingered before disappearing. In a Lanzarote where a good part of the population still lived tied to agriculture, fishing, and an economy very different from today's, that image must have seemed extraordinary. Young people from Haría descended into a volcanic cavity located in Tinajo while trying to find out what was on the other side of the darkness.
Nicolás Reyes, a name linked to the subsoil of Lanzarote
Among those explorers appears a particularly significant name: Nicolás Reyes. Decades later, local memory would remember him as one of the great connoisseurs of the caves, ravines, peaks, and cliffs of Lanzarote. The preserved biographical documentation about Reyes explains that, when Cueva de los Verdes was not yet open to the public, he entered it with other speleologists and participated in the creation of one of its first topographic maps.
His career helps to understand that the 1963 exploration was not an isolated adventure. It was part of a passion for physically knowing an island that until then had been observed much more from its roads and crops than from its depths.
A Lanzarote that was yet to be discovered
The extraordinary thing is that all this was happening at a time of accelerated change. That same summer of 1963, teams linked to Televisión Española and Radio Nacional had traveled through Lanzarote to make reports and had recorded images in places like the Montañas del Fuego and the Cueva de los Verdes. The landscape was beginning to become an image. The island was beginning to become a destination. And, at the same time, some of its inhabitants were discovering that this landscape did not end where the surface ended.
A few weeks after the exploration by the young people from Haría, scientific research would continue to advance. In December 1963, the Canarian geologist Telesforo Bravo would visit Lanzarote to study the Cueva de los Verdes. The historical documentation from Antena records that he even defined it as "the largest volcanic tube in the world," although the figures transmitted by that publication must be understood within the scientific knowledge available at that time.
The succession of events allows us to better understand what was happening. Lanzarote was beginning to awaken simultaneously as a tourist territory, an artistic landscape, and a natural laboratory.
The mystery that remains
There is, however, a part of that story that remains in the dark. The historical reference preserved identifies the cavities only as some caves in Tinajo. The located documentation does not allow us to determine with certainty what their current name was or where exactly they are located. Nor is it prudent to turn the 85 meters into a supposed world or island record. The source accredits the descent to that depth, but does not establish that it was a record.
And precisely there lies part of the attraction of the story. We know the names of some of those young people. We know the depth reached. We know when it happened. We know that the news was published on September 24, 1963. But the cavity remains partially hidden behind the words of an old chronicle.
Sixty-three years later, the news retains the ability to provoke the same question that those boys probably asked themselves: what was below?
September 24, 1963: when Lanzarote looked into its depths
The episode deserves to be recovered not only as a curiosity of Lanzarotean speleology. Also as a chapter in the island's scientific and social history. That September 24, several young people from Haría became linked to an exploration that took them up to 85 meters deep in some caves in Tinajo. Among the documented names are Nicolás Reyes, Francisco Reyes, Juan Pablo de León, and Hermelindo Navarro.
Today Lanzarote has tourist centers, marked trails, geological studies, cartographic technology, and infinitely superior scientific knowledge to that of that time. But there was a time when knowing the island also meant daring to enter a darkness that did not appear on maps.
While Lanzarote was beginning to be discovered by tourists, those young people were trying to discover it from within. At 85 meters underground, they found a part of the island that until then belonged almost to the realm of legend. A Lanzarote that had been there for thousands of years. A Lanzarote that no one saw. A Lanzarote beneath Lanzarote.
Sources
• Antena, nº 524, September 24, 1963, p. 5, reference preserved in Memoria de Lanzarote. • Memoria de Lanzarote, historical documentation on science, territory, and sport.
• Historical documentation on the speleological explorations of Haría and Cueva de los Verdes. • History of Haría, biographical documentation of Nicolás Reyes Espino.
• References from Antena corresponding to explorations carried out in Lanzarote between 1961 and 1963.
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