And now two years closed!

April 18 2022 (09:48 WEST)

In Arrecife there has always been an Island Chess Center, or "Chess Club" as we have popularly known it. In it, when it was in the basements of the Caja Insular de Ahorros building, on the corner of the "mouth of the dock", at the beginning of Calle Real de Arrecife, I learned to play chess, together with my high school classmates in the early 70s of the last century.

Then, in the early 70s, when the Caja Insular de Ahorros de Canarias began its great school campaigns to promote chess throughout the province, and with Don Antonio López Suárez as Delegate of La Caja in Lanzarote and head of the Island Chess Delegation of Lanzarote; in the bank's facilities, the Lanzarote Chess Club was created, which later, when the Cabildo de Lanzarote took over its management in 1995, became known as the Island Chess Center. 

Then, in that 1995, the still Caja Insular de Ahorros de Canarias, ceded to the Cabildo the use of its property next to its facilities on Calle México. 

Thus, after the pertinent adaptation works, the president of the Cabildo, the great chess player Enrique Pérez Parrilla, inaugurated the modern facilities on April 15, 1995 in the company of the world champion Anatoly Karpov and his sports councilor, Lorenzo Lemaur.

A few dates before, the Cabildo and La Caja had signed a 25-year agreement by which the first Island Institution received the facilities for chess on the island.

In 2020 those 25 years were completed and since March 14 the Island Chess Center has remained closed. 

The Covid-19 pandemic and the insufficient management capacity of those who since then until today have had the responsibility of managing sports on the island, together with the insufficient arguments that those responsible for chess in Lanzarote have been able to convey to the Island Institution; mean that, HISTORICALLY, Lanzarote has been without a public "Chess Club" for two years. 

WHAT A SHAME!! If you allow me; WHAT A SHAME!!

BORROWED

During all the time of the strict restrictions due to Covid-19 and even today, Lanzarote Chess has had to go borrowed. Some chess clubs have had to resort to private premises lent by their owners, to the classrooms of some schools (which is certainly good) or to the facilities of the Sociedad Democracia Arrecife to continue teaching and practicing a sport, an activity, recognized as of great pedagogical, therapeutic and social value. 

As I said: What a shame!! What a shame!!

But it doesn't end there. As of today, the head of Sports of the Cabildo de Lanzarote does not give a date for the reopening of the Island Chess Center, and what is worse, neither does an alternative. 

Is Chess so unimportant for Lanzarote?

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