The Governing Board of the City Council of La Laguna has decided to entrust the public company Gesplan with the drafting of the basic project and execution of the El Becerril Interpretation Center, through which all the details of the future building will be specified to disseminate the legacy Guanche located in this area of La Cuesta. Along with this commission, the municipal body has also approved to release 70,511.17 euros to pay for the technical assistance service necessary for the preparation of both documents.
The Councilor for Historical Heritage, Elvira Jorge, celebrates these two agreements adopted in the session this Tuesday, because they imply “entering the final stretch of the administrative procedure to be able to subsequently tender the works”, while “allowing us to advance in the fulfillment of the motion approved in the February plenary session ”. At the proposal of the mayor herself, the initiative contemplated a dozen actions “to promote, in general, the knowledge of the pre-Hispanic archaeological cultural heritage among the citizens, the dissemination, awareness and enhancement of the aboriginal remains found by Luis Diego Cuscoy in 1944 in the Cave of El Becerril, one of the necropolis with the largest number of bodies found in the entire municipality ”.
Among the strategic lines established to protect this place, stands out the instance to the Cabildo de Tenerife to declare the burials located between the ravines of Santos, Tabares and Montaña de Guerra, as well as the request to the Government of the Canary Islands to help to pay for archaeological surveys in the area, since Elvira Jorge affirms that, “according to distinguished historians, there could be other burial caves in that area.” Added to these is the construction of the El Becerril Archaeological Interpretation Center (CIAB), a process in which the area has been working “intensely in recent months”.
The councilor specifies that the preliminary project for the future installation already includes some of the details of the building, such as its location in the core of Salud Alto-El Rocío. However, these characteristics, which will be officially presented on November 22, will be “fully developed and defined with the basic and execution project,” for which a six-month execution period has been established.
The mayor thanked “the effort made” to the staff of Historical Heritage and those of the areas that have intervened so that the Governing Board could approve the expenditure and carry out the commission of the drafting of the basic project and the execution of the CIAB. This work also “has allowed us to already have the preliminary draft, prepared by the architect Joaquín Galera, who will be responsible for the control and monitoring of the provision of the commissioned service and to grant its approval.”
Likewise, he thanks the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands for their involvement and commitment to carrying out archaeological surveys in the area, “the interest shown by the section and service headquarters of the Historical Heritage of the Cabildo de Tenerife and the collaboration and support of the MUNA staff, with whom they have been working in a coordinated manner to effectively comply with the entire motion approved in February ”.
“The recovery and protection of the memory of the aboriginal population who lived, died and he buried himself in the area of El Becerril and its surroundings, which must be made visible and which must continue to be studied in depth with the inter-administrative collaboration that we have begun for months and that will undoubtedly bear fruit ”, concludes Elvira Jorge.
