The Teguise City Council approved in the plenary session of this Monday, March 8, Women's Day, an institutional declaration to honor all the women of La Graciosa and their "enormous work" in the connectivity of the eighth island with Lanzarote, traveling for the exchange of products the well-known "Camino de Las Gracioseras", in the Risco de Famara.
For this task and "for the double effort made and made by the inhabitants of La Graciosa to fight for the equality of rights that the rest of the Canarians have", Teguise thus attends to the initiative of different neighbors who have proposed placing a sculpture in Caleta del Sebo in recognition of its history, and especially, the role of women.
"Since the settlement of the island of La Graciosa back in 1884, young and middle-aged women crossed El Río every day aboard sailing boats, when it was not yet dawn, to disembark on the veriles of the Risco de Famara. Loaded with baskets of fish on their heads, barefoot many times and, on some occasions, even with their young children in the quadril, they climbed the Risco to reach the towns of northern Lanzarote where they exchanged fish for field or personal products," recalls the Teguise City Council.
"At nightfall they would go down the Risco again and, once on the shore, they would light tegalas to announce to their husbands or brothers that they could go and pick them up, a task that they carried out until around 1950 that the path remained active," he adds.
Thus, "the Camino de Las Gracioseras tells the story of the effort of many women of the eighth island to contribute to the family economy and even of births that occurred during this work they did connecting La Graciosa with Lanzarote. Therefore, it is fair to recognize and pay, and more on a day like today, this well-deserved tribute to all the women of La Graciosa of that time," said the mayor of Teguise, Oswaldo Betancort.
For the councilor of La Graciosa, Alicia Páez, "it is an honor as a granddaughter and daughter of those women and many other women who climbed the Risco to feed their families, that today and always that palpable memory remains, so that future generations know the reality of a town that today is a destination for rest, but where it has been necessary to work very hard to grow as a society."