the streets of The Realejos have become in recent years a great museum of urban art with free and open access. Since the irruption of Festival Six of Twelvein the year 2019, large walls of the town and the neighborhoods of this northern municipality have been filled with artistic murals, the work of local graffiti artists or those from abroad. There are already more than 42 jobs that make this town of 37,000 inhabitants a regional and national benchmark.
The bet of Municipality of Los Realejos for urban art is serious. Apart from financing the incorporation of six new murals each year, thanks to the aforementioned festival, it also promotes other murals in educational centers and public spaces; urban artistic expressions such as the stairs decorated by Adam Perez in Toscal Longuera; the bus shelters customized by graffiti artists, now converted into unique pieces; the murals of Roberto Rodríguez Ro.Ro. in the park La Gorvorana or La Cruz Santaor the works left by the last TrashLab.
The first deputy mayor and spokesman for the royal government, Adolfo Gonzalez (PP)highlights the importance of the initiative six of twelveand the role of your coordinator Victor Pacheco: «In four years this festival will leave 24 large-format murals in the municipality, to which another eight will be added inside educational centers and many others scattered around parks and public spaces in the town, such as the one that will soon be produced Matthias Matafrom Assembly Sabotagein the holy crosswhich will be a tribute to the vineyards and beautiful potatoes, in the 400th anniversary of his arrival in the Canary Islands through Icod el Alto».
The real town council gives spaces and public funding to local artists and also to invited graffiti artists, and with renown in this world, such as himself Matthias Mata; Juliet, from Valencia; Malakkaifrom Huelva, or spok, from Madrid. For Victor Pachecoartistically known as KOB, «The Realejos right now it is a benchmark within these mural projects around the world, due to the magnificent involvement of the city council to give visibility to culture, which is so necessary to live. It’s amazing how a mural can change the mood of the residents of an area.
The royal government Nor does he plan to put the brakes on, so the normal thing is that “practically every month of the year we have a mural in the process of being created,” as he explains. Adolf Gonzalez. Now the problem is something else, much more mundane: the simple and plain lack of adequate walls. Those big canvases are in short supply. “We always take the opportunity to make an appeal to the neighbors who have large walls already whitewashed, well finished and accessible by crane,” recalls the first deputy mayor.
The municipal commitment is clear and for the future: «six of twelve It is the only stable festival of urban art in the Canary Islands and for us this commitment is something permanent, not something punctual or temporary or linked to a specific event. That is why I believe that we should already be the municipality with the most murals per inhabitant in the whole Canary Islands».
Adolf Gonzalez details that the royal council works to turn these murals into a cultural and tourist attraction, so this year an application for mobile devices will be launched that, through QR codeswill offer «a guided tour of the murals of The Realejoswhich will be geolocated and will have a technical sheet for each work and artist».
«It will be one more tourist resource and an excuse to travel to practically all the neighborhoods of the municipality from Icod el Alto until the holy crosspassing by Los Barros, La Montaña, Toscal Longuera or Realejo Alto», Values González.
for KOB, The Realejos It is already «a museum worthy of admiration, full of works by renowned artists whom we have been able to see working live creating, without the need to leave the island or pay to see them. And those works have remained in the municipality. All of this is a luxury.”
The murals are outdoors, exposed to inclement weather, so it is very difficult to determine how long they will last. In the opinion of K.O.B.«since it is an open-air format, it will always have, on the one hand, the inconvenience of its deterioration, but also its charm of how time speaks about them».
TO Victor Pacheco KOB It is difficult for him to choose the most iconic works: «That is very difficult to define, since they are all great professionals and artists, some may be more iconic depending on the tastes of each one, but they all have a long history with street painting and that It is one of the key concepts of six of twelvecontact artists who come from graffiti and are still active in mural painting».
The example of the graffiti artist ‘KOB’
The graffiti artist from Porto, Víctor Pacheco KOB, is the promoter and coordinator of the Festival Seis de Doce, in Los Realejos. After living the experience in other festivals, such as the ephemeral Puerto de la Cruz Street Art, linked to Mueca, in 2019 the possibility of covering the free spaces of Los Realejos with a bit of art was raised. His career as an urban artist began much earlier, around 1999, when he painted his first graffiti under the pseudonym KOB, in Puerto de la Cruz, where part of his work is still preserved. During the years dedicated to urban art, in addition to his studies on sculpture and artistic installations, KOB has developed “an organic abstraction of graffiti typography”, which can be seen in Spanish and foreign cities, with a very different theme, “in the Surreal scenes, invented animals and reinterpreted vegetation abound.
