The Teguise City Council intends to pay tribute to Los Novios del Mojón and the sport of handball. For this reason, it will take to the next Commission of Honors and Distinctions the proposal of the Sociocultural Center of El Mojón and the handball clubs of Teguise so that both cultural traditions have a sculpture in the municipality.
Once the bases have been approved by the Governing Board, the Culture area of the Teguise City Council will announce the respective competitions for the realization of the sculptures, which will join the works that are already part of the "open-air museum of the municipality", as defined by the Consistory. Among them are the figures of the Rancho de Pascua, "Elegua" of Los Diabletes and "El Tela", in the historic center of La Villa, and the sculpture "La Levantada", built in honor of the Canarian fight in Tao.
"Attending to this type of neighborhood proposals, we promote the cultural tradition of our municipality," said the Councilor for Culture, Olivia Duque, who assured that they are working "to disseminate and perpetuate our customs and our history among today's society."
For his part, the mayor, Oswaldo Betancort, has stated that he will contribute to ensuring that each of these symbols that "narrate and build the history and idiosyncrasy of Teguise survive over time." In addition, he has defended that the best way to do it is by giving it a space in the streets of Teguise so that they can be publicly recognized and form part of the historical complex.
Los Novios, an "identity mark"
From the City Council they wanted to highlight that "Los Novios de tierra caliza" are "an identity mark of Teguise" and represents the tradition of "one of the pottery centers with the greatest identity on the island of Lanzarote." "There are no other documentary records than the pieces of primitive pottery collected in the museums of the Canary archipelago. The earthenware produced is of mixed origin, fusing aboriginal features with forms and techniques typical of North African ceramics," they explained from the Consistory.
The work of the potters of El Mojón remained anonymous until, at the beginning of the 20th century, the mother of Dorotea de Armas Curbelo, the last link in the family pottery tradition, went to the neighboring town of Muñique. In the last quarter of the 20th century, supported by tourism and national awareness at a personal and municipal level, students and followers of "Cha Dorotea" recovered the pottery tradition in El Mojón.
Among the most veteran in this tradition are Marcial de León Barrios and Teresa Morales Robayna or the Brito family and María Rosario Armas, from their workshops in Arrecife.
Although as a whole, the work process and the traditional pieces are similar to what is produced in the rest of the Canary archipelago, some aspects of the elaboration procedure are unique. Thus, for example, the use of a slip based on tegue, a calcareous earth that gives the surface of the piece a creamy tone, on which a restricted repertoire of floral and geometric motifs are then painted with almagre.
As an example of this primitive pottery, there are the popular figures of Los Novios de El Mojón, of great symbolic value and with a great tradition in the municipality of Teguise, which also gives its name to the literary contest Cartas de Amor y Desamor Los Novios de El Mojón, which the City Council has been convening for nine years.
Handball, an "autochthonous" sport with a street in La Villa
On the other hand, from the Consistory they have also highlighted handball as one of the autochthonous games of the island, whose presence and practice in Teguise is documented from the 17th century.
The origin of the game is not clear, although there is a long series of hypotheses. The safest seems to be the one that refers to the slaves who moved to America from Africa, who had a ball game with some things in common and who left their influence in the Canary Islands, a mandatory place of passage between the two continents.
Teguise has perpetuated this sport by keeping it on its streets, since not in vain one of its streets served as a court for the entertainment of the young people of the place.
