The Villa de Teguise hosted one of the most significant events of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Costa Teguise: the presentation of the Gold Medal to the César Manrique Foundation, a solemn act that featured the Lanzarote musical duo formed by Manuel Adrián Niz, on guitar, and Alexis Lemes, on the timple.
“Because César Manrique was a genius, a bright mind that was generations ahead of the marriage between art and nature, and proof of this is the endless list of his creative actions that stands out for its originality and timeless modernity,” Oswaldo Betancort declared at the beginning of his speech.
“Some scholars claim that César Manrique's artistic work followed the currents of his time, but when intervening on the Canary territory, he explored new practices and in all of them, Manrique sought an extremely respectful dialogue and integration with the natural environment, and his legacy bears witness to his genius, which can be admired throughout Lanzarote, but also in Fuerteventura, Tenerife, La Gomera, El Hierro, Madrid and beyond,” Betancort continued.
“Today we are recognizing his legacy through the role of the César Manrique Foundation, which has been and is transcendental so that the artist's work endures, so that its content is disseminated, so that its ideology is followed, so that we have the guarantee, in Lanzarote, that the figure of the architect of the surprising remains as a legacy for future generations. Therein lies its commitment, in carrying out a task that is not always understood, silent, even little recognized, but I reiterate, absolutely essential,” he continued.
In this sense, the mayor-president Oswaldo Betancort, on behalf of the entire Corporation, conveyed to the president of the FCM, the management team, the trustees, the technicians, all the staff, the gratitude of the municipality of Teguise, “trusting that this recognition granted by the corporation unanimously, will be replicated in other public administrations”. “Be certain that, if I continue in politics, wherever I may be, I will always defend to the extreme the values that César Manrique preached, and that I will support to the best of my ability the appreciation of the role of the Foundation and a chromatic landscape where white prevails over white. Lanzarote and the Canary Islands need them,” Oswaldo Betancort concluded.
For his part, José Juan Ramírez, as president of the FCM, expressed his gratitude to Teguise, “for the generous distinction that satisfies us so much for being the headquarters that hosts our foundation”. “It is an incentive to continue developing the work of disseminating César Manrique's message in an era of critical scenarios that lead us to rethink new models that are more compatible with nature and the resources it provides us,” Ramírez said.
“We trust that our contribution will help maintain the rich heritage of our municipality and that Costa Teguise, a place that César dreamed of and envisioned as the horizon of utopias, but which also suffered defending the value of singularity, of quality and not of quantity and of a true landscape without false makeup and defending a unique island in its eagerness to claim positive rigor for the development of Lanzarote's prestige.”
«We are committed to this and we have a path to follow, as Manrique said: “We have a duty to start building the utopia and I celebrate that this idea is beginning to grow in the new generations who are trying to establish other channels of coexistence supported by culture, intelligence and the defense to the extreme of the environment» (1986).
