SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 28 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Cabildo de Tenerife, through the Territory Planning and Historical Heritage area, has approved the file to submit to the Government of the Canary Islands the proposal to declare the Auto Sacramental of the Three Wise Men of Tejina, in La Lagoon.
The insular president, Pedro Martín, has affirmed that from the Cabildo they comply with a historical demand of the residents of Tejina: “From the Historical Heritage service the proposal has been worked on and we have valued that there are sufficient elements so that the file can be initiated. for its declaration of BIC by the Government of the Canary Islands”.
The declaration of BIC of the Auto Sacramental would join the other four intangible assets that already exist on the Island, three of them in the same region. These are the Liveries of Tegueste and Valle de Guerra, the Festival of the Hearts of Tejina and the carpets of the Corpus of La Orotava.
According to Pedro Martín, “the credit goes to the people of Tejina, who have been able to protect and transmit it. In addition, the Auto has always had a progressive trend of improvement and growth in terms of its complexity, capacity, participants, size of the organization, set design, staging; a circumstance that marks a differential fact with respect to other similar cars, not only from the Canary Islands but from Spain in general”.
“Over the years, the participation of hundreds of people has been achieved, as well as institutions, such as the City Council of La Laguna, and each year it has managed to bring together a greater number of people from all over the island, already being one of the appointments of long-awaited Christmas celebration,” he said.
The Auto Sacramental de los Reyes Magos de Tejina has been celebrated every January 5 and has become one of the oldest manifestations of popular theater that are preserved in the Canary Islands, with evidence of it at least since 1905.
In his organization, the insular director of Historical Heritage, Emilio Fariña, highlighted the extensive participation of the tejinero people: “Its conservation and uninterrupted celebration over the years would not have been possible without their involvement, a meeting that has always been sustained thanks to fundamentally to the effort and economic contributions of the residents of Tejina, as an event created by the community, without any kind of profit”.
“The Auto Sacramental de los Reyes Magos de Tejina is one of the most relevant Christmas theater performances in the Canary Islands, with more than a century of history, which we must protect and safeguard,” said Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, mayor of La Laguna.
“From the government team of the City Council we assume the commitment to work to guarantee its preservation, defending its declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest, and today we can celebrate the achievement of this decisive step,” said Gutiérrez.
The mayor stressed that the initiation of the file is great news for La Laguna and the tejinero town, which has been asking for recognition for its cultural and historical value for more than ten years, because it means entering the final stretch to achieve its declaration as BIC. “This could not have been possible without the joint involvement of the Department of Historical Heritage, the Cultural Association of the Three Wise Men of Tejina and the Cabildo of Tenerife,” said the mayor.
The carrier community, currently represented by the Cultural Association Followers of the Three Wise Men of Tejina, “has been requesting for decades to obtain the declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest, in recognition of numerous generations of tejineras and tejineros who have fought to safeguard this tradition. Thanks to his dedication, it is one of the oldest auto sacramentales that are currently staged in the Canary Islands and, without a doubt, the longest that has lasted uninterruptedly until our days”, clarified the insular official.
“With this action we duly comply with the mandate of the Cultural Heritage Law of the Canary Islands that requires public administrations with competence in the matter, such as the Cabildo, to carry out actions aimed at the conservation and enhancement of our historical heritage and cultural heritage, with intangible heritage being an important part, and in this sense we are taking a decisive step to comply with this premise of the Law,” Fariña said.
