The director of DIARIO DE AVISOS, Agustin Gonzalezyesterday read an emotional and original proclamation in which, honoring his job as a journalist, of which he confessed “a passionate”, he recalled the 12 most relevant news and historical milestones that happened in La Orotava in the last 500 years, ” as if it were leafing through a newspaper of five centuries” and its direct and indirect relationship with the patron saint festivities in honor of Corpus Christi, San Isidro Labrador and Santa María de la Cabeza, which have made the municipality “an authentic heritage of the humanity”.
Actually, he spoke of twelve “plus one”, a mystery that he revealed at the end of his speech. He clarified that many important news were left out of his list, but he hoped that his selection would serve “to encourage the villeros to refresh their historical memory”, since “we are the result of our past, our culture and our customs”.
In a plenary hall packed with people, the town crier intermingled the chosen events with some memories and personal experiences. He defined himself as “half villero and half portuense”, because his father was from La Orotava and his mother, from Puerto de la Cruz. “I was born right on the border, in the Blue House, on the street that separates the two municipalities, but on the sidewalk in Porto, as a harbinger of what my life was going to be: always straddling these two neighboring towns of the Valley”.
However, La Orotava “has completely marked my life,” he added. He lived, studied, played soccer in local clubs, got married in La Concepción and his two sons “are purebred villeros”.
The director of the Dean alluded to the construction of this last church in the year 1498, around which the initial urban nucleus was established; the declaration as an Independent Villa and the foundation of the Garden of Acclimatization of La Orotava, on August 17, 1788.
He recalled how his father frequently took him and his brothers to visit him, “an adventure”, because “it transported us to a mysterious jungle, presided over by the Tarzan tree, as we called the imposing specimen that there was -and still is- right in the middle of the garden.
careful selection
In his careful selection, he included the “voracious” fire that on April 20, 1801 destroyed the convent of San Lorenzo, which, due to its sumptuousness, was known as El Escorial de Canarias; to the birth of the tradition of flower carpets in honor of Corpus Christi, and to the gale that in 1867 collapsed the Drago de Franchy.
In 1892, the most outstanding event was the merger of the San Isidro and Corpus Christi festivities, giving rise to the birth of the patron saint festivities, and in 1894, it was the arrival of public lighting, making the municipality the second in the Canary Islands. and in the first in Tenerife that entered modernity.
In tenth place was the decision of the Liceo de Taoro Cultural Society to take charge in 1936 of what is considered “the mother of all pilgrimages in the Canary Islands”, due to its antiquity, its dimensions and its special care for local character and respect to traditions. This was followed by the declaration of Teide as a national park and in 2012, that of a university town, with the establishment of the European University of the Canary Islands.
The director of the Dean pointed to a piece of news that he called “twelve plus one and not because of superstition”, but because it has not yet happened: the declaration of La Orotava as a World Heritage Site, for which all the procedures that justify the candidacy, although we will have to wait until 2027 to aspire to this recognition.
However, “with or without a UNESCO declaration, what is clear to all of us who know and love La Orotava is that this Villa is in fact a World Heritage Site, a unique place for its historical, landscape and cultural values. cultural”.
And the Corpus Christi and San Isidro festivities, as he tried to demonstrate with the chosen news, “have helped build this prosperous, beautiful and unique Orotava in which we live today, and have turned it into a true heritage of humanity”.
