Photos: Sergio Betancort
Every corner of the César Manrique Foundation became a party on Wednesday night to commemorate the artist's "one hundred years of life". "Return to César Manrique the joy, the tumultuous splendor and the waste of life that he overflowed within these walls," asked the director of the FCM, Fernando Gómez Aguilera, at the beginning of the event, who invited to celebrate this centenary remembering one of César's main messages: "That life is a second that must be taken advantage of in the most vital and positive way, realizing that it is not worth living with terror, with bitterness, but creating love and joy around us, with honesty and kindness, because being a simply good person is the most important thing".
Precisely in that vital facet of Manrique was what both the director and the president of the Foundation, José Juan Ramírez, emphasized, who invited the people of Lanzarote to participate in the program of events that they have organized and that will extend throughout the year. "Let's make the centenary a celebration in memory and gratitude of who gave us so much. The centenary begins and begins in the way that César would have liked, with a party", Ramírez highlighted, who thanked the relatives, the friends, the people who worked with Manrique and "the admirers" who attended this party, apologizing to the people who could not attend because the capacity was full. And the meeting, divided into a pass from 7:00 p.m. and another from 9:30 p.m., packed the facilities with citizens who had previously come to pick up tickets, as well as representatives of civil and political society, including the former President of the Government of Spain, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
"César would be leading this party today, inviting you to enjoy every moment. Raising joy to an imperative argument, to turn this afternoon night into an unalterable memory. Commemorate his hundred years celebrating life, your own lives. With pleasure, with the joy of commendable occasions. Enjoy the corners of his house that he has opened for you. Sit in his magical bubbles. Fill the corridors with respectful and sensitive joy with the heritage that welcomes you. Have a drink in his pool, share his gardens, talk effusively about beauty, about the overwhelming force of love and friendship," invited Gómez Aguilera, encouraging attendees to rediscover "a home that has amazed the world for decades."
"Shared wealth to improve everyone's life"
In their speeches to inaugurate this event, both the director and the president of the Foundation highlighted the true essence of Manrique, beyond the artist, "although some interested parties try to show him only that way." And for this they remembered what was his "utopian dream", as he himself defined it: to create "collective happiness" and "bring well-being to people, create shared wealth that would serve to improve the lives of all, change the sign of the island's economy", which until then had been "associated with hardships and uncertainties".
However, as José Juan Ramírez recalled, that "was not always appreciated in his time" and Manrique "was forced to raise his voice to protect his utopian project for Lanzarote, when he saw that the selfishness of some compromised the future of all of us. When he warned that the interests and economic ambitions spoiled the island and deformed the foundations of the project that was intended to be promoted, for which both he and those who accompanied him had worked".
The sustainable tourism model that Manrique was betting on was already seen in his time in danger due to the increase in construction and speculation, causing "alarms to go off". Then, "César's enthusiasm turned into concern", "into denunciation and a cry for help". A "cry" that the Foundation also launched again this Wednesday, which he entrusted to watch over his work and his message, which recalled that "Cesar Manrique, his word, his work and his ideas are still alive" and that they are "more necessary than ever to face our present", because "César's art and nature overflows with life and conscience, with responsibility with the present and with the future".
Need to "protect" the Centers from "alterations" and "artificial additions"
José Juan Ramírez - whom Manrique defined in life as a son - referred precisely to that legacy, who stressed that the people of Lanzarote have a "contract" with César that includes "a clause of enjoyment and a clause of protection". For this reason, he asked that in this year of the centenary "we enjoy, but we also join the demand for protection of his public works, a heritage asset of the Canary Islands and not only of our islands, a heritage of humanity".
The president of the Foundation referred to the Centers of Art, Culture and Tourism designed and promoted by Manrique, pointing out that it is necessary to "protect them" from "unwanted alterations, from massive uses, from conceptions that put profitability above conservation, from artificial additions that have nothing to do with the original project, with the historical project of the Cabildo and César", questioning in this way the management of the CACT that is being done at present from the Island Corporation. "César's works in the island's landscape constitute the greatest contemporary heritage asset we have in Lanzarote. And its future. They are our cathedrals and cathedrals are preserved, not transformed", he warned.
For his part, Fernando Goméz Aguilera stressed that today "we need the determined courage" and the "drive" of Manrique to achieve "another way of being human and of inhabiting our planet", and recalled some of César's phrases, who advocated the need to "return to the great truth of the balance of nature", to put aside "materialism" and to understand that "profitability is the profitability of the spirit". "We are behaving like vandals and not like responsible and sensitive beings," warned César Manrique decades ago, who warned that "we are committing suicide" and that "nature is reaching its limits."
Today, when one hundred years of his birth are celebrated, the Foundation he created to preserve his legacy has once again put these messages on the table, and will continue to do so with a program that will extend for a year and that, according to Ramírez, will be "a festival of art, culture and nature", but also "a festival of freedom and independence. Of that privilege and that inalienable citizen right that represents the critical autonomy of civil society against the unbearable arrogance of tainted power."
