I joined as director-conservator of the Timanfaya National Park in 2021, during the pandemic. During the first months of work, I was lucky enough to walk through the park empty of visitors, listening only to the sounds of nature, perhaps listening to the voice of the Volcano: the wind speaks differently in the corded lavas than in the badlands, in the caves than in the jameos, it tells us different stories in each crack, when summiting the rocky cones or when combing the extensive fields of lapilli.
I was amazed by the richness of the shapes, textures and colors that continuously change with the passing of the hours and the shadows of the clouds. I was moved to see how life makes its way in every gap: lichens that give way to small vascular plants that feed insects and these in turn, to lizards, shrews and birds.
Timanfaya above all provokes a sensation: we believe we are the first to have been there, on that pristine landscape where no traces of human beings are observed in hundreds of hectares. Perhaps this is what distinguishes Timanfaya from the rest of the volcanoes of Lanzarote and even the Canary Islands, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
In my first incursions they taught me to walk without leaving a trace, to always follow the same path, at first sight impossible to guess, and I was infected by the affection, respect, enthusiasm and curiosity with which the people of the park do their work. Not only them, but also the locals, the tourist guides, the workers of the Art, Culture and Tourism Centers of Lanzarote, the researchers and technicians of different disciplines and countries of the world. It is incredible the admiration and fascination that everyone feels for this place.
I immediately understood that the main capital of the park is the human one, that Timanfaya is what it is, thanks to all the people who guarded, protected, cared for and studied it for not only fifty, but two hundred years, since it was October 25, 1824 when the eruptions of the Mountains of Fire ceased.
The following one hundred and fifty years after the last eruption, until the declaration of national park, are an example of resistance and adaptation of the conejera population to extreme conditions for the survival of the human being. They did it in such a way that they managed to conserve all the values that make Timanfaya a territory worthy of that declaration.
We are heirs of the culture and respect that runs through the veins of the descendants of those men and women, and that today we can enjoy in the form of songs, crafts, camel rides, crops in socos, gastronomy and other traditions that are part of the intangible heritage of Timanfaya.
The sensations transmitted by the volcano are not the result of chance. They are due to its declaration of 1974, to its conservation norms of 1991, to the often thankless management and surveillance work to ensure that the norms are met, to the subsequent restoration and maintenance work when we do not achieve it, and to the tireless enthusiasm with which the quality and fragility of its heritage is interpreted and made known, because only what is respected is conserved and only what is known is respected.
Curiosity is the greatest source of knowledge. One of the main works that we have carried out in recent years has been to organize and digitize the extensive archive of the park to realize the enormous quantity and quality of work that has been done and that we are obliged to put at the service of society. Not only studies related to the conservation of geodiversity, biodiversity and cultural values of the park, but also others that allow us to understand how volcanoes work -and thus be able to predict and warn the population in time against possible new eruptions-, how clean energy is obtained from the heat of the subsoil or what life could be like on other planets. Not only astronauts have passed through Timanfaya, but also other researchers and scientists of the first line worldwide.
I leave for the end what was the beginning of the Timanfaya National Park: the vision of César Manrique, Jesús Soto and all the people who worked with them, visionaries and ahead of their time, who with sensitivity, passion and ingenuity built the El Diablo restaurant, capable of using and dissipating the heat of the subsoil, and the Route of the Volcanoes that is perhaps the best landscape-integrated road that has been built in Spain.
With all this wealth we could not settle for a celebration of a single day and we have launched to publicize and value for a whole year the great quality of natural resources, sensations, traditions, culture and knowledge that make up today the Timanfaya National Park.
I hope you enjoy this 50th anniversary.
