Matilde Zambudiowho was Councilor for Culture during Patricia Hernández’s time as head of the Mayor’s Office and currently Councilor for Citizens in Opposition, will propose to the municipal plenary session this Friday that the City Council prepare and present, before UNESCO, the corresponding file to declare the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife as Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Along with this point, it also proposes that it be promoted a joint effort between the Development Society, the autonomous organizations of Fiestas, the University of La Laguna and representatives of the Carnival aimed at the maintenance, protection, conservation and historical dissemination of the Carnival of Santa Cruz as intangible heritage of the Canary Islands. In addition, it defends that the Casa del Carnaval –currently managed by the Sociedad de Desarrollo– be destined to be the center where that diverse archive that makes up the history of carnivals is collected.
Zambudio defends the maintenance, protection, conservation and historical dissemination
The Councilor for Citizens recalls the conference on intangible heritage that was held in November 2019, at the Museum of Fine Arts of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where the professor at the University of La Laguna Carmen Marina Barreto Vargas advocated “immaterial sustainability and tourist semiotics: the Carnival of Santa Cruz de Tenerife».
Zambudio remembers the conclusions of those days, which showed that “Carnival is the intangible heritage of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the importance of Carnival from the point of view of intangible heritage and that the history of the chicharrera festival is not protected or collected in any single site”. It was also warned that “a lot of knowledge, scripts, photos… of the Carnival are being lost”, to deepen that “the House of Carnival should be the center where that archive that makes up history is collected, with posters, anecdotes, scripts , photos videos…”.
“Because of tradition, uniqueness and spectacularity, Carnival must be recognized with this distinction that will also contribute to a greater awareness of its importance,” explains Zambudio, to which he adds that “our festival is on a par with other carnivals in the world that already have with this recognition.
The processing of this declaration, which was defended by the PP of Maribel Oñate and Ángel Llanos in 2008 and Miguel Ángel González Suárez, from the Center for Initiatives and Tourism (CIT) of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, has never been initiated, beyond the declaration of intentions that have occurred in recent decades about the opportunity and the need that it implies to give the accolade and recognize the work carried out by the town that stars in this festival, of International Tourist Interest since 1980.
