The Jameos del Agua auditorium hosted this Wednesday the institutional event organized by the Cabildo to commemorate the date on which one hundred years of the birth of César Manrique are celebrated. "We legitimately celebrate the centenary", defended the president of the Island Corporation, Pedro San Ginés, who has been questioned by both the opposition and the César Manrique Foundation for not having sought consensus in order to commemorate this date.
In fact, there have been notable absences at the event, not only from political parties, but also from people who were linked to Manrique, including the Foundation in which he deposited his legacy and entrusted it to ensure the conservation of his work and his message. Who has been present has been the president of the Government of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, who has also intervened with a speech that, like the rest of the event, has been broadcast live by the Canarian Television.
"A sad day in September 1992 a volcano went out in Lanzarote. César Manrique died in an absurd car accident and it seemed that all the Canary Islands, for a moment, was left without breath. Later we have learned to live without César, in Lanzarote and in the Canary Islands, because, in a certain sense, César was and is too strong to disappear", Clavijo began by saying.
"Some urban planning errors have occurred"
For his part, Pedro San Ginés has alluded to the criticisms that both he and his party, Coalición Canaria, have received for "politicizing" this centenary and for distancing this event from the true message of Manrique, whose main mark was not only in his art and in his transformation of the island, but in his battle against urban speculation and in the social conscience that he contributed to create in defense of the territory.
"It is true that not everything was a path of understanding and collaboration, and that he had bitter political confrontations with those who did not understand his message, but none was (because it is impossible, since he died more than 26 years ago) with those who today have the maximum political responsibility, although some try in vain to assimilate us", said San Ginés.
Then, he has "admitted" that "some urban planning errors have occurred", although he added that they were "difficult to contain" due to "the change in the economic scale of the island, the arrival of large capitals with speculative eagerness and the lack of local institutional zeal in some of the cases". In addition, he has defended that those urban planning "errors" "also took place long before reaching the honor that we have today who are at the head of the island government, although some insist on the same and vain attempt to make it look like something else". Thus, he has referred again to the criticisms he has received, among other things, for his position on illegal urban development and on businessmen such as Juan Francisco Rosa, who has been accused of trying to benefit by even approving plans to legalize some of the illegal constructions, such as the Stratvs winery.
"Lanzarote continues to be a jewel saved by those who preceded us and more than salvageable from now on", added San Ginés, who has repeated a message that he has been launching in recent months, within his confrontation with the FCM. "Manrique belongs to everyone", repeated the president at the institutional event for the centenary of his birth. In addition, ignoring the differences that the artist had in life with some politicians, precisely for trying to avoid the paths that have continued to be imposed later on the island, San Ginés has defended that "this institution, the Cabildo, and its different political leaders, have shown off Manrique and his work in every place and moment, without exception".
Drawings in the sand, memories and music
The gala, which began with a visual spectacle by Felipe Megías, who with his hands drew landscapes of Lanzarote on sand, also included the projection of videos of Manrique, in which some of his words were remembered, such as "I am interested in progress as goodness and honesty. What condemns and enriches a people is culture, a people without culture is condemned to ruin"; "You have to have the talent to know how to live, the art of living", "People say that Lanzarote only has camels and stones and it was the ugliest island in the archipelago", to show everyone that it was not like that; and "All the influence I have is from the deep observation of nature, the enormous beauty of a stone or a peasant plowing the land".
In the act also intervened remembering some anecdotes of César one of his nephews, Eduardo Manrique, to whom Pedro San Ginés gave later a replica of the Monument to the Fertility. The Swiss photographer Linus G. Jauslin, who met Manrique in the mid-70s and followed him closely until his death, also gave him the original plates of the first known photos of César with his twin sister.
In addition, the professor of Art History, Fernando Castro Borrego, the artist and collaborator of César Ildefonso Aguiar, the friend and gallery owner Carmensa de la Hoz, the first director of the Centers of Art and Tourism, Marcial Martín Bermúdez, and one of his collaborators, Antonio Ramos, as well as the singer Beni Ferrer, also took the floor.
For her part, the Lanzarote singer Rosana also took the stage to perform two songs, alone on guitar, while in the background were seen everyday images of Manrique. "Thank you for making me part of this celebration, of these hundred years of someone who has always taken us so far, to so many places in the world. Wherever you are, congratulations", she said, blowing a kiss to the sky. Finally, the event also closed with the music of Alexis Lemes on the timple and Adrián Niz on the guitar, together with the musicians of the Lanzarote Ensemble formation, who performed one of his favorite songs 'What a wonderful world'.