The love for Lanzarote of Agustín Pallarés

February 21 2022 (15:15 WET)
Agustín Pallarés Padilla
Agustín Pallarés Padilla

The people of Lanzarote must recognize and appreciate the immense work that Agustín Pallarés did for the island. With his death, a part of the memory of this land of dormant volcanoes is lost. Just as with his life, another enormous part of that memory was gained, which is already part of the memory of this Majorero people of the north.

His knowledge was great, as was his humility and, above all, his spirit of collaboration, teaching, and sharing. Agustín was always willing to do so, in all our work. From that campaign in 1986 in the Peña de las Cucharas, giving us on the ground, which is where he liked to teach, a master class on the flora and fauna of the Jable and the island and, above all, on toponymy, which was one of his specialties. And we put our camera to follow him and focus on each mountain, each ridge, each hollow, or each plain, in search of a name. Later, in the long work of my thesis on the territory covered by the volcanoes of the 18th century, he always provided his rigorous and documented support. And he always did so while being true to himself.

I remember the many discussions with him about some place names in which we had discrepancies. Terms that I had taken from old files of the 17th or 18th century and that he had taken from the memory of the people. In the vast majority of cases, we ended up agreeing, but when we stumbled upon Tenemozana, Tremezana, or Termesana, the discussion lengthened, and it didn't matter if it was in a crowded conference. And Agustín would also jump up with an irreducible vehemence to put the pertinent accent: it's not Tíngafa, it's Tingafa. I remember sharing with him the singular toponym of the island and La Graciosa, Los Dises. In this time of fake news and false popular traditions, such as the legend of Timanfaya, Agustín always acted with exquisite prudence, and as an example, his hypothesis about the meaning of Los Dises: from what has been said so far, it can be concluded, then, that although there are no sufficiently solid arguments to affirm categorically that the word dise means pool, small pool, or small deposit in general for water, one must admit at least a certain probability that it is so. Years later, I suggested a possible interpretation, since I located a document from the end of the 18th century, where Los Islote de los Dises near Tenésera or Tenésa, was called Islote de los Sises. And this term was enormously frequent in the past of Lanzarote before the 19th century and of Fuerteventura, alive until today, and which refers to a wall to close the cattle. Agustín liked to correct history and dismantle stereotypes, that's why it was always pleasant to listen to him. It was not Juan Estévez but Guantevén the rock that is by Los Valles; it was not Los Anamasos, but los Aramasos the toponym of the Costa de los Ajaches.

One of his most beautiful and documented works was the elaboration of the toponymy of the National Park, traveling for it all the veriles of the newly created coast, all the mountains, calderas, volcanoes and islets. Agustín had the difficult privilege before the aironman became popular on the island, to climb all its mountains and those of La Graciosa and, of course, Alegranza.

Agustín was from a well-known family on the island and always committed not only to knowledge but also to social justice, like his deceased brother Andrés, or his nephew Ginés, co-founder of El Guincho. Agustín grew up in his childhood and lived a large part of his life looking at the sea, from solitude, his father and his grandfather were lighthouse keepers and after working in the Teno lighthouse in Tenerife and in the Pechiguera lighthouse, he settled in the Alegranza lighthouse, until 1991, 35 years of lighthouse keeper in that mythical islet, the farthest of the chinijas. That solitude, shared with his family, made him a great self-taught, and there he studied, wrote, learned languages. I remember when he translated the diary of the priest of Yaiza in the work of Von Buch for my thesis in a disinterested way.

In his writings, talks and publications, such as his prolific series of history of Lanzarote in the Lancelot, or in those beautiful works that Editorial Remota has edited, Agustín has given us a good part of the memory of Lanzarote. From the silence broken by the birds, the wind and the sea, in his long stays on that island of pirates and shearwaters, he thought, reflected, observed, wrote. The mere fact of being a lighthouse keeper adds to Agustín an exceptional life, surrounded by the raw poetry of nature, without mediations. And it was pleasant to listen to him spend time with his stories, some narrated with an almost magical realism, such as the fight he witnessed in Alegranza, between an osprey and a fish of great dimensions that finally exhausted the bird and sank it forever.

It is necessary to vindicate Agustín in several topics of which he was not only passionate but a great connoisseur. Brave this self-taught conejero, by meddling in one of the most controversial topics in the history and archeology of the Canary Islands, the settlement of the islands, and while for the world of academia and false erudite science and self-promotion, these investigations made by people outside those Olympus, had no credibility, and Agustín was unfairly attacked by part of that world of ignorant, our beloved and unfortunate friend not only contributed a huge documentation and long and valuable reflections, but relying on the chronicles themselves, from Le Canarien, Abreu, or classical researchers of the Canary Islands, he defended that the islands were populated in the context of the Romanization of North Africa and this only with a few known archaeological data, such as the Roman amphoras of La Graciosa and long before our team announced the alphabetical inscriptions in Latin characters of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura (which before anyone we taught to Agustín himself), and long before the discovery of the island of Lobos, magnified in the media, which many years before Agustín defended.

And also another of his great challenges was the search for the castle of Lanceloto, which well documented located in the area of La Torre, to the east of the Castle of Santa Bárbara. That was one of the last field trips I made with Agustín, accompanied by one of his sons, also dedicated to the study of the island's past. Intense was the walk through the heights of the Cabucos and Nazareth and intense was the discussion. It was an unforgettable time to debate passionately around some rows of stones that claimed to be the foundations of the old castle of the Genoese. Shortly after I passed Agustín a document from 1733, which I located in the Historical Archive, which clearly pointed in the direction of what Agustín maintained: …Yten we declare to have two fanegadas of arable land where they say la thorre bordering the old castle that we bought from Juana Cabrera widow of Domingo Sánches

I would continue writing, because for a moment I saw myself next to him, in those endless and enriching conversations. He left us in some way, because surely when I walk through the Jable, through the house where my father was born in the Volcán de Tao, in the restless waves of Las Malvas or the Mariscadero or in the buried town of Fiquinineo, I will find him and as my grandfather did when a relative came to jewel in the Jable, tuchía the camel and I would start talking to him until dark.

José de León Hernández. Dr. in History and archaeologist

Most read