After forty years of work at the Santa María de los Volcanes School, the Dominican mothers are leaving Lanzarote to continue their work in other places where they are needed. During their teaching stage, they offered the island a different educational style, integrating activities that were pioneers at the time. Mountaineering, music, ballet, gymnastics and painting became their subjects when no other school taught them.
When they look back, the overall assessment they make of these years is quite satisfactory, as they feel very loved by Lanzarote. "I have felt at home and it has been worth it," says Mother Teresa, still the school's principal. "Lanzarote has something special, although today's society is very different from the one I knew in the eighties, it is still a place very dear to the congregation and to us," she says.
Many of her students wanted to give them the farewell they deserve, with an emotional goodbye at a party at the school itself, as well as at a Eucharist that took place in the Church of San Ginés.
Students, parents, friends and anyone who wanted to join, attended a "normal Eucharist", according to Mother Teresa, which ended with an emotional "thanksgiving to the Lord for these forty years", which one of the religious read.
The Santa María de los Volcanes school will from now on be "in very good hands", according to the Dominicans, since the Congregation of Nazareth will take care of it, which already has educational experience in La Palma and Tenerife.
When the month of July ends and they have to leave, each of the religious will arrive at a different place, to continue the work they started in Lanzarote and that will continue wherever it is needed.
