The photographer Imanol Zuaznabar has the habit of showing us what he calls “the good face” from the Canary Islands; that is, those natural landscapes that are capable of making anyone fall in love. However, today he describes with words and images a very different reality, the one he finds every time he opens the door of his house, located in the municipality of Guimarand take a walk around.
What you see arekilos and kilos of shit“, summarizes in one sentence the Biscayan living on the Island for approximately two years. He assures that at least since then the presence of organic waste has spread throughout the entire municipality and points out that the situation is more visible in specific points, such as El Puertito, whose “parking area is in a disgusting state”, the Polígono Industrial and, above all, the upper part of Chacona, which is located about 300 meters from the Pyramids.
Is “rubbish” causes Imanol to “boil his blood”, a feeling shared with other neighbors, according to what he tells us. “It’s a general problem, both of people’s education and of passivity on the part of the institutions,” he reflects. “It cannot be that there are zones of containers that are never disinfected or streets that are cleaned ‘once a year’, when there are processions”, he criticizes.
The geographer also lives in the area of Las Pirámides, a place that, as he relates, “was urbanized but ended up being abandoned, now being an area of drug retailof bottle during the weekends and where there are many kilos of garbage that have not been collected for years”. An added problem is that all this would be happening on streets where neighbors take their dogs for a walk.
“Rats are quite common in the town and many cockroaches at night too. Here in Chaconne there is a rat that is so big that any day it eats a cat“, sentence Imanol.