The Heritage Service of the Cabildo of Lanzarote has filed a complaint for the mural painted by a tourist in an 18th-century house. This action has been carried out after several messages received through social networks, where the author herself uploaded the work.
During the morning of this Monday, the author visited the Cabildo of Lanzarote and held a meeting with the president after he expressed on his Instagram and Facebook accounts his total opposition to the artistic intervention carried out on a heritage asset. “Art does have a place on our island, but integrating and respecting the island's heritage and culture,” said Oswaldo Betancort, who urged the artist to restore the facade of the property that has "indisputable heritage values."
After this meeting, the Heritage Service proceeded, first of all, to identify itself and, subsequently, to verify if she had authorization to carry out such action, "to which she responded that she did not and that she did not know the owners either," according to the Cabildo. Given this situation, she was informed that the facts could be constitutive of a minor offense, so she was asked for her personal data in order to notify her of the corresponding complaint, with Vanessa Alice, of French origin and resident in Barcelona, agreeing to such a request.
The action described, in the opinion of the Island Inspection, constitutes a visual aggression to the property, considerably distorting the appearance and aesthetics of this type of building, especially when it is one of the few examples that is still preserved of this type of property that resolves its facade with a frontis walled with a beveled wall.
Therefore, the Island Inspection, an area coordinated by Councilor Ascensión Toledo, considers that “the described facts have generated a minor visual damage to the property, so they could be subject to a minor offense, with a fine of up to 3,000 euros.”
The object and reason for the complaint
The action subject to complaint consists of making a drawing in which the bust of an anthropomorphic figure with horns on its head, red hair, a green tunic covering the shoulders and with its face covered with a kind of mask that evokes the beak of a bird, also green.
The mural is located on the frontis of the building that corresponds to a rural house that belonged to the 18th century. It is a one-story building with flat and gabled roofs. It has a frontis with a lintelled door, being one of the few examples that are preserved on the island with this typology. There is also a basalt pile on the left side and a cistern with a staircase and curb.
The interior distribution revolves around a central courtyard on which the rooms pivot. It is an architectural complex typical of the rural life of the island, where the building complex presented a series of volumes with a very clear functional and architectural hierarchy. In each space, a set of specific activities of daily life were developed, in addition to being a building whose meaning is based on its connection with its immediate environment where agricultural tasks were carried out.
Therefore, both the building and the adjacent land must be understood as a unit regardless of the formal protection it has in the municipal catalog, since it would be difficult to understand the building and its conception if not in direct relation to the contiguous fields, since the economic activity that takes place in them conditions the very physiognomy of the building. Therefore, it is an architectural complex with very important heritage values, fundamentally of an ethnographic nature, which are telling us about past ways of life, now disappeared.
Given the important heritage values it meets -protected by Law 11/2019, of April 25, on Cultural Heritage of the Canary Islands- the property is included in the Architectural Catalog of Teguise, in its file no. 6, with a degree of environmental protection, allowing conservation, restoration, consolidation and rehabilitation actions.
Obligation to repair
Infractions that cause damage to the cultural heritage of the Canary Islands will be accompanied by a resolution imposing the corresponding sanction, where the Administration may order the offender to repair the damage caused, through execution orders, to restore the affected property to its previous state. In the case of real estate, in no case may greater buildability be obtained than that of the affected property.
Failure to comply with this obligation to repair will empower the Administration to act in a subsidiary manner, carrying out the necessary works and actions at the expense of the offender and using, where appropriate, the coercive procedure to recover its cost.
The obligation of repair and restitution of the assets to their original state will be imprescriptible. In this sense, it is reported that it is not known that the person responsible for the actions has a history of infractions in matters of Cultural Heritage in this Cabildo.
The Heritage of Lanzarote, an asset for all
The protection and dissemination of Historical Heritage covers a wide range of tasks. The Archaeological Heritage is made up of the Sites of Fiquinineo, Peña de las Cucharas and Zonzamas. The Ethnographic Heritage, by definition, is the set of traditional manifestations and ways of life, material or immaterial, that define the characteristics of the different groups that make up a community; Project presented: recovery of cisterns and maretas for rainwater harvesting. The Architectural Heritage is made up of those buildings and architectural complexes that, due to their historical, cultural and emblematic values, are significant for the society that grants them the character of legacy.
