The mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León, announced at the tribute to Blas Cabrera Felipe that the City Council plans the integral rehabilitation of the old Tourist Inn building to dedicate it to cultural, tourist and dissemination activities and enhancement of the illustrious sons of Arrecife, among whom is Blas Cabrera Felipe, considered 'the father' of physics in Spain, and a friend of Albert Einstein.
The idea that the City Council projects in that property - municipal property, and protected by Heritage, intends its integral restoration, for which the approval of Coasts will be mandatory as it is on land reclaimed from the sea - is to dedicate several rooms to the dissemination of illustrious sons of Arrecife, among which are Blas Cabrera Felipe, Francisco Fernández Bethencourt, and César Manrique, among others. Precisely on the ground floor of this building, inaugurated in the 50s of the last century XX as a Tourist Inn, there are several mural paintings created by César Manrique, which, together with the frescoes of the House of Culture, are the only ones on the walls of this brilliant artist in his native municipality.
The mayor detailed that the City Council already has the project for the integral rehabilitation of the José Ramírez Cerdá Park, with an investment of close to 2 million euros, and is awaiting authorization from Coasts to initiate the bidding procedure for the rehabilitation, which includes preserving the intervention of César Manrique. On one of the sides of this park, and in the accesses to the Parador building, is located the Monument to Blas Cabrera, which, since this Friday, premieres new nocturnal lighting installed by the Department of Public Works of the City Council.
About Blas Cabrera Felipe
The first mayor pointed out to the public, who attended the annual tribute to Blas Cabrera, that probably if Spain had not suffered the Civil War between 1936 and 1939, and the exile to France and Mexico of Cabrera Felipe, Arrecife, Lanzarote and the Canary Islands would have the pride of having among its illustrious sons the Nobel Prize in Physics, and advanced researcher of magnetism, in the figure of Blas Cabrera Felipe.
Blas Cabrera Felipe left as a child for Tenerife, where he completed his baccalaureate. At that time there were still no high schools in Lanzarote, as highlighted yesterday in his speech by the former director of the IES Blas Cabrera Felipe, Professor Enrique Díaz, who, with his important documentation, has recently presented the book on the history of this first institute on the island of Lanzarote, where the city of Arrecife is preparing to celebrate its first centenary.
In September 1894, Blas Cabrera traveled to Madrid to pursue higher studies at the Central University. It seems that initially he intended to pursue law studies, but soon he directed his energies towards a career in Science, influenced, as he himself acknowledged in his speech of entry into the Royal Spanish Academy (January 26, 1936), a year that would mark the history in Spain during the twentieth century, by the almost daily contact with Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the tertulia of the Café Suizo.
He began at the beginning of the 1901-1902 academic year his doctoral studies, a degree that could only be awarded by the Central University at that time. The dissertation with which he obtained the degree of doctor was titled Diurnal variation of the wind.
During the intervention, the professor and president of the Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Humanities of Lanzarote, Francisco González de Posada, stressed the importance of Blas Cabrera Felipe for physics in Spain, highlighting the publication of Cabrera Felipe dedicated to the Principle of Relativity and disseminating it in Spain, becoming the host of Albert Einstein on his trip and stay in Madrid, in 1923.
González de Posada also recalled that Cabrera Felipe participated in the VI and VII Solvay Conferences, where he made important experimental contributions on the diamagnetism and paramagnetism of matter, and became the secretary of the International Committee of Weights and Measures, in addition to being the Rector of the Central University and the International Summer University of Santander before his exile to Paris and Mexico, after the Spanish Civil War.
Yonathan de León together with Professor Enrique Díaz Herrera, the president of the Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Humanities of Lanzarote, Francisco González de Posada, several teachers and students of the IES Blas Cabrera, made a floral offering next to the monument, which has already recovered the dedicatory plaques.
The City Council of Arrecife has replaced, in those weeks, by decision of Mayor De León Machín, the plaques that were stolen more than a decade ago, and where the trajectory of this illustrious conejero was praised, one of the great scientists of Spain in recent times.
