What remains of that Lanzarote?

There are places that change with the passage of time. It is something natural. Societies evolve, generations succeed each other, and islands, like any territory, receive new people, new customs, and new ways of understanding life. Lanzarote cannot remain oblivious to this process either. 

However, one thing is to evolve and quite another is to run the risk of losing what made us different. 

Those of us who have known another Lanzarote remember an island with a very marked personality. A land where traditions, customs, ways of relating, popular festivals, gastronomy, speech, architecture, and even the way of understanding the landscape were part of a collective identity that had been built over generations. 

Today, that Lanzarote is changing at a speed that invites, at least, to stop and reflect. 

Demographic growth, the arrival of new residents from different parts of the world, the transformation of the residential market, and economic and tourist development have profoundly modified our daily reality. It is not about pointing fingers at those who arrive. Every person who comes to Lanzarote has the right to build their life here and to feel part of this land. 

But those who were already here also have the right to ask themselves what we want to preserve. 

Because integrating does not mean substituting. And living together should not mean that one culture has to disappear for others to be incorporated. 

Lanzarote has always known how to receive. Its history is full of exchanges, of people who arrived and ended up becoming part of the island society. Precisely for this reason, perhaps we should talk more about integration and less about simple population growth. 

Integration must be a two-way street: those who arrive know and respect the customs of the place that welcomes them, and those who already live there open their doors to those who come with the will to form

part of the community. 

The problem arises when we stop transmitting our own. 

When our children and young people know less and less about the traditions of their elders. When certain expressions, festivals, games, trades, songs, or customs are relegated to memory. When new generations can easily recognize cultural references coming from outside, but have difficulty identifying those that are part of the history of their own island. 

That is where we should focus. 

It is not about building a Lanzarote closed off to the world. It would be absurd and contrary to its own history. Lanzarote has always been connected to other lands and other cultures. 

It is about ensuring that this openness to the outside does not make us forget who we are. 

An island can be modern, cosmopolitan, and open without renouncing its identity. It can receive new neighbors without ceasing to teach its children where they come from. It can coexist with different cultures and, at the same time, protect its own traditions. 

Perhaps the question should not be how many people arrive in Lanzarote, but what we are doing so that, upon joining our society, they also get to know the land they have chosen to live in. 

Because a cultural identity does not disappear overnight. It is lost little by little, when we stop valuing it, teaching it, and transmitting it. 

And perhaps that is our real challenge. 

That in twenty, thirty, or fifty years we can continue to speak of a different Lanzarote, recognizable, proud of its history and traditions, but also open, plural, and welcoming. 

A Lanzarote capable of incorporating new realities without erasing previous ones. 

A Lanzarote in which no one has to feel like a foreigner, but in which its own inhabitants do not end up feeling like strangers in their own land. 

Because preserving our identity does not mean rejecting those who arrive. 

It means remembering, together, that to build the future we also need to know what we want to carry forward from the past.

And that is, perhaps, the question we should ask ourselves: 

WHAT REMAINS OF THAT LANZAROTE AND WHAT DO WE WANT TO REMAIN OF IT?