On September 1, 1730, between nine and ten at night, the earth opened in Timanfaya, two leagues from Yaiza... and a huge mountain rose from the bosom of the earth." This is the chronicle and testimony of the ...
On September 1, 1730, between nine and ten at night, the earth opened in Timanfaya, two leagues from Yaiza... and a huge mountain rose from the bosom of the earth." This is the chronicle and testimony of the then parish priest of Yaiza, Don Lorenzo Curbelo. The literal expression that follows this data, on several Internet pages is that "The island was completely transformed."
According to the same chronicle, nine hamlets in the southern area of Lanzarote (Yaiza and Tinajo) were buried. Tingafa, Montaña Blanca, Maretas, Santa Catalina, Jaretas, San Juan, Peña de Plomos, Testeina and Rodeos were buried under the lava. During the six years of eruptions, the lava spread through the southern area covering a quarter of the island's territory, filling the nearby meadows with volcanic ash. In addition, the Island of the Volcanoes grew, filling some square meters of sea with lava. The same website says verbatim that "since then the landscape has been transformed thanks to the agricultural techniques of cultivation on volcanic lapilli that the conejeros use to capture the humidity of the trade winds."
A simple example of how much things changed due to what happened on that date is the creation of the town of Los Valles de Santa Catalina. As I said, the hamlet of Santa Catalina was one of those buried by the eruptions. Then, its inhabitants took refuge in the fertile valley where the town of Los Valles is located today, municipality of Teguise, and as a reminder of their past they consecrated the hermitage to Santa Catalina. Everything changed for them and everything changed for Lanzarote.
Necessity sharpens ingenuity and the conejeros had no other choice. Their fields were buried, the most fertile areas were lost, but the Lanzarote farmer realized that the plants that had been partially covered with picón had a more favorable development. In this way, the idea arose of excavating in this superficial layer, of about two and a half meters, until finding the buried soil and carrying out the planting there. The myth of La Geria was born.
Regarding La Geria, I always remember a legend that Don Jesús Godoy, our Language and Literature teacher in the first year of high school, told us. According to the peculiar professor, Gereón was a species of monster that, I don't remember well how, generated the creation of La Geria.
Later, the suffering Lanzarote farmer needed to protect his worked crops from the wind and invented another architectural element: the arched stone walls. The capacity of the rofe or picón to absorb water and its ease of infiltration, in addition to its capacity to prevent erosion, created a unique landscape architecture, together with the holes more than two meters deep and the stone walls oriented to the north to protect the crops from the trade winds. Consequences of September 1, 1730 that modified the capricious photograph that the volcano had drawn in the southern half of Lanzarote.
These are relevant examples. Not the only ones of the change that Lanzarote, territory and population, suffered on September 1, 1730. It changed our way of being, of living, of acting, of thinking. Everything changed. So much so that, on that date, the possibility was born that César Manrique would later personify a new ideology of coexistence with nature in which we had to live. He captured it, assimilated it, ruminated it, practiced it, disseminated it, defended it and managed to make the people of Lanzarote, those who visit us and those who hear about Lanzarote know that this island is very different. Mythical. That needs a different heart, soul and eyes. Everything changed on September 1, 1730.
