Throughout history, the farmers and agricultural workers of Lanzarote were forced to devise different techniques to make the most of the little rain that fell. On the island, where water was and is a precious commodity due to its scarcity, the so-called 'nateros' were used to make the most of it and prevent it from carrying the soil towards the sea.
This type of infrastructure is usually typical of dryland areas and, according to Jesús Manuel Cáceres, a historian expert in the management of water and the cultural landscape of dry stone, "its function is to retain the mud that comes down from the slopes of the mountains with the rains".
This system "is very similar to the gavias, but in the case of the nateros they are found in the ravines that, when they were flooded, could be planted in them just like in a gavia", explains Ignacio Romero, writer and founder of the initiative Senderismo Lanzarote.
In islands like La Gomera, due to its orography, a similar structure called terraces is usually used, which "allowed to better use the land in the mountain", says the historian. In the case of the nateros, "they are usually built at the end of the ravine bed and an area where they can be seen very well is in the Montaña de Guanapay, which were restored in the 90s and you can see perfectly how they work, since they have a dry stone wall where all the soil dragged by the rain remains", declares Cáceres. In addition, after these nateros, all the accumulated soil is collected to fill sandbanks.
This prevented the soil dragged by the rains in the ravines from ending up in the sea as happened recently with the torrential rains of last Saturday, April 12, which filled the streets and roads of Costa Teguise and Arrecife with soil and, in addition, also the Playa de Las Cucharas. In fact, to this day you can still see the brown water due to the mud and sediments dragged by the water.
A possible solution to torrential rains
The last episode of heavy rainfall that took place in Lanzarote has highlighted the deficiency of the infrastructures and, in addition, has put on the table the need to take measures in the ravines as the ancient farmers of the island did. The maretas and the nateros are two examples of a possible solution that mitigates the impact of torrential rains.
Most of the nateros are currently disused. "In the area of Teseguite, El Mojón, Guatiza and the La Horca ravine in Teguise there are some that are maintained", indicates Romero
"Right now, with how it rains, quite important ravines are generated, such as in the Barranco de Mulión, whose water should not reach the ravine, but would stay in the Mareta de las Mares but it is unusable, which makes the water pick up a lot of speed and affects Costa Teguise a lot", says the expert.
In this aspect, Cáceres assures that "the water passages have been completely neglected with the construction of new roads, houses and others", something that is reflected when floods occur. "Arrecife is one of the critical points, areas such as the Cabildo or Cuatro Esquinas, the water sweeps everything away because that hydraulic work has been lost", he points out.
One of the great maretas that the capital had was the one located in the Altavista neighborhood, but it no longer exists currently, which creates problems with heavy rains. "As that mareta is not there, all the water goes down to León y Castillo street in the capital", he explains.
Recovery of the maretas
One of the projects in which Jesús Manuel Cáceres worked in 2020 together with the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage was to recover the maretas of Teguise because "it is the correct way that has been used in Lanzarote in what refers to water management", indicates the historian. Since pre-Hispanic times, the aborigines already used certain areas of the land to take advantage of the water from a ravine through a hole with stones around it. The tegue was the soil that was used for this because it was quite impermeable.
"Only in the municipality there are around seven maretas that could collect rainwater through small interventions in the arrangement of ravine beds and cleaning", he continues.
Another of the infrastructures that was built at the time with the hope of helping farmers was the Mala dam. However, this project failed miserably and was never taken advantage of since its construction due, among other things, to the soil where it is located. "The soil is not impermeable, that is why it has never been used, and it could be recovered by deeply intervening the dam but it is more profitable to recover the maretas for, for example, agriculture", he explains.
The recovery and conservation of traditional water is one of the steps that must be taken to, in the words of Cáceres, "prevent the cultivated lands from being lost in the sea when they are dragged by the rains".
The hydraulic infrastructure that our ancestors used in Lanzarote, gave way to the desalination plants that guaranteed the supply to the entire island. However, time has proved the wisest farmers and agricultural workers right because Lanzarote lives daily with cuts in the supply that endanger daily consumption and crops.
Likewise, the abandonment of the cisterns, the maretas, the eras, the gavias and the nateros has caused the damage caused by torrential rains, which, due to climate change, will be more and more frequent, to worsen even more.
