The Municipality of La Laguna has drawn up, from the Environment, Rural Development and Urban Development Departments, a preliminary project for the first phase of the recovery and ecological restoration of the Cañada lagunera, which has been presented to the Government of the Canary Islands to benefit from the funds of the National Plan for Recovery, Transformation and Resilience (2021-2023). The estimated valuation of the works to be carried out in this first phase of the preliminary project amounts to 584,112.17 euros.
As explained in the document itself, the main objective “is the analysis of the recovery processes of this ethnographic heritage that is the Cañada lagunera, particularly those that refer to cattle trails, in many places disused due to the loss of their original functionality, but with the potential to receive other activities with high economic and social demand, such as: leisure activity, environmental or cultural education, hiking, sports or physical activity, economic and social development of rural areas from where the sections or itineraries depart and pass, creating an offer that would help the service sector and that would stimulate tourist activity based on the revaluation of the autochthonous and alternative tourism”.
La Cañada lagunera is an old transhumance route that runs within the municipality of La Laguna and, in some of its sections, crosses the dividing line with the municipalities of Tegueste, Santa Cruz and El Rosario. It approximately surrounds the hydrographic basin of the Vega Lagunera and Los Rodeos area. Beginning and ending in the city of La Laguna, it runs through the mountain ranges that border and protect the city. The document highlights that “the great landscape, environmental, historical and cultural value of this old cattle track and its entire environment is indisputable.”
“The recovery of the Cañada Lagunera is strategic. Opportunities for agro-environmental, educational, tourist logistics development could be generated around it, but the most important thing is to promote its main traditional use, the transit of livestock in production in harmony with nature conservation, and access to land. of cultivation and pastures”, highlights in this regard the Councilor for Rural Development, Aitor López.
In this line, the mayor of the Environment, José Luis Hernández, emphasizes that for the area the recovery of the Cañada lagoon “is one of those projects that we consider nuclear”. “We are very committed to recovering the network of trails in La Laguna, and specifically La Cañada, which is the most emblematic”, he values.
Likewise, the preliminary draft recalls the work promoted by the Amigos de la Cañada mountaineers association, “through allegations presented to the initial approval document of the revision of the current PGO of this municipality, who have proposed its integral recovery and highlight the cultural value of the Cañada as an old livestock route that was initially generated around the limits of the delimited pasture in the post-conquest era and that evolved over time, but whose memory still lingers in the collective subconscious of the population , in the great toponymic legacy of the area and in many other vestiges that prove its existence”.
In this sense, the document also highlights that “the oral tradition of the people related to the livestock trade testifies not only to the remote existence of the Cañada lagunera, but also to its detailed definition today and declares its use until the second half of the 20th century”. In addition, it is highlighted that “a green corridor could be generated on its slopes in this livestock route, starting from the Anaga forests, due to its important biological value.”
For all these reasons, the document values that “this green infrastructure would constitute an invaluable tool to achieve an integration between the natural, the urban and the rural, and would bring the population and tourism closer to areas of great environmental, historical and cultural value. . With a network of itineraries or sections that would help preserve cultural heritage and local identity”.
In this sense, a network of itineraries has been proposed that “will generate an important environmental, social and economic stimulus in its area of influence, positioning the municipality as a center for hiking and other mountain activities, taking advantage of its location as a point of confluence of all the networks, whether from the north, south, center or northeast of the Island”.
The divisions of the itineraries have been made “according to criteria of proportional distribution of length of route since in the places of beginning and end of these sections there is easy access, public transport and catering services and small businesses”.
The document acknowledges that “dealing with a project of these characteristics and scope is not an easy task”, since, “today, many sections do not have the necessary public ownership to be able to carry out actions by the administration , and where it is counted, there are a multitude of agents involved that make coordination difficult to carry out actions in the short term”.
Therefore, it is proposed to subdivide the actions into two phases. Thus, in the first of them, which is the object of this preliminary project, all those initiatives for the dissemination and promotion of the Cañada Lagunera will be addressed, as well as the actions on the path itself, which can be carried out within a year, in those sections of the route where there is the corresponding municipal public ownership or that of other administrations, provided that this does not require excessive procedures that delay its execution. In addition, they must form functionally complete paths or links.
performances
As for the actions planned to execute this Phase 1, they start with an in-depth analysis of the historical aspect of the Cañada lagunera and the associated ethnographic and heritage elements, as well as the creation of an identifying institutional image, a mobile application and a web page, with the catalog of all the points of interest along the route, their technical characteristics, indications of the public services available nearby, among other data, and the possibility of developing a query of the route in 3D is proposed.
Regarding the improvement actions on the road, it is noted that “the works are very diverse and can vary from the complete recovery of the route in areas where it does not currently exist, to simple signaling and cleaning work in already defined areas, which which implies the need to define the working lengths of each type of track”.
In general terms, the preliminary draft indicates that conditioning factors will be taken into account for the actions, such as guaranteeing security conditions compatible with public use and that all actions are compatible with the transit of cattle and/or draft animals; no section of trail will be paved, except for those whose slope requires it to preserve the firmness; design the infrastructures associated with the path in such a way that they adapt to the environment, ensuring landscape integration, or ensure the use of natural materials in accordance with those present in the area, among many others.
“In addition, in the stretch between Anaga and the Corona Forestal, from Mesa Mota to El Púlpito, the vegetation and flora of the area must be recovered and, consequently, the different associated native forage species. This not only has the landscape effect, it also has the recovery of biodiversity and soil, and favors the recharge of the aquifer. Extensive livestock activity or grazing in this section should not be at odds with the recovery of biodiversity, on the contrary,” says councilor Aitor López.
520 years
Meanwhile, the president of the Amigos de la Cañada association, Miguel Pérez Carballo, values that “la Cañada is not just a road, the most important thing is that it is a crucial element for the planning of the surroundings of La Laguna” and highlights that “the Cañada is the base of all the structuring roads of the Island”, so, in his opinion, “the most important thing is to see another way of understanding the territory, and our idea is to achieve this with the green corridors, that is to say , unite Anaga with the rest of the Island with a forest cordon”.
As for there being a new proposal to recover La Cañada, Pérez Carballo affirms that it is “commendable and interesting”, but points out that “we have had many promises for many years and the only way for this to work is for there to be a concrete decision with a budget and with a date. In this sense, he recalls that in 2025 it will be 520 years since on February 3, 1505 the Adelantado “delimited the pasture of La Laguna”, by whose edge “is where the Cañada went”, explains the president of the association . A commemoration that he considers perfect “to inaugurate the Cañada”.
They propose a network of itineraries that would be executed between two phases
The network of itineraries proposed in the preliminary project has been divided into three sections, with two subsections each. Specifically, the first section would comprise La Laguna-Las Mercedes (8.35 km), with sub-sections La Laguna-Monte Canino (4.28 km) and Monte Canino-Las Mercedes (4.07 km). The second section would run through Las Mercedes-Guamasa (12.45 km), with the subsections: Las Mercedes-Las Peñuelas (6.32 km) and Las Peñuelas-Guamasa (6.12 km). The last section would be Guamasa-La Laguna (10.01 km), with sub-sections Guamasa-La Mina (5.67 km) and La Mina-La Laguna (4.34 km). The sections will be executed in two phases, acting in a first in those of municipal public ownership or of other public administrations if it does not require excessive processing, with the aim of executing them as soon as possible.
