White houses, green doors and windows

By Bruno Perera There is a popular belief in Lanzarote, instilled in tourism, which says: CesarManrique was the first to spread and impose the idea that in order for the conejeros towns to look beautiful and match with ...

June 14 2009 (00:30 WEST)
By Bruno Perera
There is a popular belief in Lanzarote, instilled in tourism, which says: CesarManrique was the first to spread and impose the idea that in order for the conejeros towns to look beautiful and match with ...

There is a popular belief in Lanzarote, instilled in tourism, which says: Cesar

Manrique was the first to spread and impose the idea that in order for the

conejeros towns to look beautiful and match the nature of our

volcanoes and soil, we should paint the houses white and their doors and windows

green. (This statement is not true).

If we go back to the past years,

more or less, 1430-1850; in Lanzarote there were no hardware stores, but there were warehouses where

construction materials (imported) were sold, such as wood, tar, nails,

hinges, latches, locks, lime, brooms, porrones, hand tools, etc.,

rudimentary.

From the beginning of the era of making shore wafers

and fishing sailboats, approx. year 1888, time when other utensils were needed

for the construction of boats, he started the hardware store business. The ships

that were made in Lanzarote for small or deep-sea fishing were all painted

with almost the same paints and the same colors: white was used and is still used,

more than others, green, more than others, black, blue and yellow;

also dark varnish. (Lime was used to whitewash the exteriors and interiors of

the houses, and plastic paint arrived in Lanzarote in approx. 1965.

With

these few classes of oil paints available for sale, when a boat arrived

from the African coast, after a fishing period of three or six months, the

sailors beached it on a beach, repaired it and gave it a coat or two of

paint.

Once in a while, or several times, the fishermen (called "coastal")

while they were painting, they stole a brush and some paint to paint

the doors and windows of their houses, other times when they had money they bought them.

That's how, due to what was available in the market and due to lack of money, the doors and

windows of the houses in Lanzarote became mostly painted green.

Another point to remember: the doors and windows of the houses in our land,

were rarely painted with pure paint, most were covered with half petroleum

mixed with half paint, that is why the old doors have

lasted so many years; cause: paint with petroleum, does not shell, it seeps into

the wood and protects it from parasites.

P.D. Cesar Manrique did not impose a painting rule

of the houses, but he did say several times, and very clearly: We must build a model

of tourist infrastructure based on a human-nature symbiosis.

Hats off to you friend Cesar, for the Great Work you left us.

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