It is not easy, dear reader, to find long-awaited occasions to applaud government work, more specifically municipal governments, such as the one corresponding to the municipality of La Matanza de Acentejo (Tenerife). Well, to the other, to barbarism such as the atilanization carried out in the Gran Canaria and capital Plaza de San Bernardo (it was the time of Doña Pepa) or to the street dirt and the abandonment of gardens according to tradition, we are already used to it. Are two more simple and tremendously expensive examples worth it?
How many tens of millions does the ostentatiously named Teldense Palace of Culture carry in its body, a withered body because it is unfinished despite its coming of age? Who controlled such apparent waste? Did someone authorize the alleged dilapidation?
More: why did the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands condemn the City Council of Santa Brígida (canariasahora, 2014) to pay thirteen million euros to the UTE (Temporary Union of Companies) “contracted to build and operate” the hypothetical shopping center with public square… in the very center of the town, the popularly called tome? (ElDiario.es was forceful: “The shell game”).
Why had there been some legal imbalance with the start of the works, now partially demolished? Why was the previous Corporation – chaired by Mr. Armengol and absolutely oblivious to the mess – forced to pay 5.6 million euros to recover the physical space, previously owned by the people of Sataut? (By the way: has the often used phrase “assumption of responsibilities” ever been conjugated?)
Faced with these realities and many others, examples of incompetence, vertical delusions (according to the poet Gerardo Diego), incorrect planning and other necessities, it is pleasantly striking that a municipality whose census does not reach ten thousand inhabitants, La Matanza de Acentejo (Tenerife), has been able not only to undertake the recovery of land, but also to fully respect and purify the environment to achieve the El Montillo natural park, “the city’s green lung”.
And since it is worth remembering the reason for the name where such a significant work is located, let’s take a basic look at history. The place name Acentejo (Centejo) comes from way back, from before the colonization of the Canary Islands. It covers the entire physical space where two battles took place between the Guanches and the Spanish with the initial victory of the former (today, La Matanza de Acentejo)… but the defeat in the second (corresponds to La Victoria de Acentejo): the aborigines succumbed to the conquering hosts arrived for the capture of slaves, obtaining land, colonial expansion… and clerical Christianization, obviously.
It is therefore an immense space located in the first Town Hall: fifty-seven thousand (57,000) square meters, in fact, respond to serene, ambitious, studied and intelligent planning of a conscientious and sensitized Corporation, whose idea is to integrate children, young and old in nature.
We are talking about nature, the same that humans have sung for centuries when they want to rediscover themselves, meet again. (Why do poets today silence words about the physical world –plants, animals, minerals, streams, seas…–, that is, referring to everything apprehended through the senses?) And, also, the painters of the Renacimiento identify with it, contemplate it and enjoy it as our poets Cairasco de Figueroa (GC) and Antonio de Viana (TFE) did, as I remembered both of them when I visited El Montillo last Sunday: He returned me to the classroom. And I rediscovered in my memory birds, rivers, ravines, winds, lands, flowers, mountains, golden sands, fresh clover, lemon balm… while my students, as a single voice or individually, recited the structures or poetic bodies that transported them to other lands , those of the 17th century, so different from those of today, sometimes almost strange or unknown…
They were not the same, of course –after all, the passage of time imposes radical changesh, but the songs of the birds of El Montillo are an exact reproduction of those painted with words by the 17th century bard from Tenerife, something like «vocingleros parajuelos» of sonorous music «which the world celebrates as canaries». And I got to walk with Mateo accompanied by silences of echoes and dreams next to «poplars, cedars, laurels and cypresses, / palms, lignaloels, oaks, pines, / mastic, barbusanos, white sticks, / viñátigos and tiles…”, as if Natura had made an effort to interweave me among plants, bushes, trees… not all of them present, but, perhaps, gathered together centuries ago on the same slopes, ravines and unevenness of El Montillo, steps and cuts of a privileged land now owned citizen.
And those who called it a “natural park” are right. At the end of the day, it is the nature-human sensibility conjunction like this, naturally, without artifices or overloads (not even frills: these are provided by the insular geography itself). From the bowels of the earth and the noble sentiments embodied in the people of Matanzas (men and women, on a par) was born for enjoyment, relaxation, learning and awareness, awareness and civilized activism. Honor to a people that looks straight ahead to the afterlife…
Well, this natural park is not just anything. Not only – far from it – garden, rose garden, orchard or parterre. But neither is it an immense children’s oasis (I counted one hundred and eleven children and some biscuits last Sunday), despite its slides, oars, pirate ships… It is more, much more than the simple distribution of paths, sidewalks, trails, amphitheater at the classic way or terreiro for the fight, canine circuit, waterfall, climbing wall, groves, plants, terraces, vines or fig trees…
El Montillo, in fact, is more, much more than the immense space dedicated to plants, trees, birds, shadows and groves combined with children’s games, wine bars, isolated tables in the middle of the paths, shady lawn to rest bodies and daydreams during hot evenings…
El Montillo becomes, due to its purity, a necessary identification between nature and rational beings or aspiring such, a school of coexistence and respect for the environment, a didactic outdoor classroom, fraternization with everything created naturally… In short , great success of a conscientious and civilized municipal Corporation.
