The mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León, presented Mariano Rajoy, president of the Government of Spain between the years 2011 and 2018, with a book about the writer from Arrecife, Agustín de la Hoz, whose birth centenary is commemorated this year.
The former President of the Government of Spain visited Arrecife last Friday to participate in the Global South Forum Dialogues, organized by Lanzarote Media, where he made a reflection on the main geopolitical, economic, and institutional challenges that Europe and Spain face in the current international context.
At the end of this intervention, held at the San José MIAC Castle, which in 2026 celebrates half a century as an art museum after the intervention of the artist and favorite son César Manrique, the mayor of Lanzarote's capital presented Mariano Rajoy with the book 'Agustín de la Hoz, a human volcano', edited by the Arrecife City Council, and the work of the director of the Arrecife Municipal Archive and intellectual executor of the work of the Lanzarote writer, Benchomo Guadalupe Oliva. The Arrecife City Council named the House of Culture after this distinguished thinker and researcher from Lanzarote, where in 2026 the birth of his centenary is commemorated.
Guadalupe Oliva delves into 'Agustín de la Hoz, a human volcano' in the personality of De la Hoz, “a spirit ahead of his time” and in his journalistic and literary work “in pursuit of defending and unveiling the beautiful soul of a most wretched island and the identity of a people who ignored their lostness”. During the year 1962-63, De la Hoz maintained an intense epistolary relationship with César Manrique. They mutually perceive each other as possessors of the same aesthetic understanding that they express through different means, but which converge in the same words, and is reflected in this book gifted by the mayor to Mariano Rajoy.
Upon his arrival at San José Castle, packed with public to follow Mariano Rajoy's speech, he was received by the mayor of Arrecife, Yonathan de León, along with the vice-president of the Canary Islands, Manuel Domínguez, the president of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, Ángel Vázquez, counselor of the Tourist Centers of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the journalists Techy Acosta and Alberto Acosta, from Lanzarote Media, and several representatives of the collaborating and sponsoring firms of this conference.
