The Realejos has taken this week a key step to save the historic Casona de La Gorvorana, in Toscal Longuera, a seventeenth century building that is included in the Red List of Spanish Cultural Heritage, produced by Hispania Nostra, due to its advanced state of deterioration and the effects of years of looting and vandalism. The City Council has just announced the recent award of the drafting of the farm rehabilitation project to the architect Fernando Arocha Ferreiro, for an amount of 101,650 euros, financed by the Cabildo of Tenerife and the northern Town Hall.
In your file of the Red List of Spanish Cultural Heritage It stands out that the house is “in the process of ruin”, and that “the hacienda has become a crowded place for vandals and unscrupulous people who have destroyed all this historic property dating from the seventeenth century, where small fires”. To end this abandonment, after years of neighborhood complaints and municipal procedures, the Consistory it sets in motion an old desire: to rehabilitate the house so that it becomes a key part of the future auditorium.
80% of the investment necessary for the drafting of this document will come from the funds of the Artistic Heritage Plan of the island corporation, and 20% will be provided by the City Council. The municipal contracting area, directed by the councilor Noelia González (PP), has already finalized the procedures for the signing of the contract that will take place in the next few days. From the Municipal Management of Urbanism, which directs Laura Lima, it is planned to hold different meetings with the architect team, in which the first deputy mayor will also be present, Adolfo Gonzalez, in order to coordinate the first visits to the property, once the contract is signed, in order to “thus begin the meticulous work of drafting the project.”
According Adolfo Gonzalez, «After a long negotiation process in which we have achieved co-financing with the Cabildo of Tenerife, at last the objective of recovering this very important property for our municipality begins to materialize, already established with the team of professionals who will immediately begin to create the project, which is an exciting starting point ».
The tender for the drafting of the comprehensive reform project of the Casona de La Gorvorana It alluded to the necessary intervention for the rehabilitation, conservation, consolidation and restoration of this heritage building, which already envisaged “the integration of a cafeteria open to the courtyard, toilets, ticket office and cloakroom, an administrative area of offices, an exhibition hall and multipurpose , conference room with capacity for up to one hundred people, classrooms for training, space for overnight stays in short periods for a maximum of 8 people with common toilet and small rooms for study or different cultural uses ».
The project will also offer a more accurate diagnosis of the current state of conservation and a proposal for immediate intervention, with special attention to the techniques and materials to be used and their impact on the values to be protected. Obtaining the financing for its execution will be the next challenge for Los Realejos. According to the technical specifications, “the services will be located in such a way as to cover the future auditorium that it intends to develop on adjoining land, reserving the central open-air space of the house for the development of cultural events.” This auditorium will have a capacity for a thousand people and will occupy a plot of 4,326 square meters.
More than 2000 square meters
La Casona de La Gorvorana, which occupies an area of about 2,025 square meters, was the main building of the mayorazgo that bears his name, which was owned, at different times, by the Marquis of Azialcazar, Mejorada del Campo and La Breña. In the 19th century it changed hands again until, at the end of the 20th century, it became a property of the Los Realejos City Council. Despite being a municipal asset, its state of conservation is very poor and to date no rehabilitation works have been carried out. It has a patio with corridors on pillars, old wineries and gañanías and a space with three frescoes by the Canarian watercolor painter Francisco Bonnín, dated in 1897, badly damaged by acts of vandalism. The property has a cadastral value that exceeds 860,000 euros.
