This week three years have passed since that fateful October 4, 2019, in which a fire affected the headquarters of the Ateneo de La Laguna, in the historic center of the city and a jewel of the island’s cultural heritage. Today, the entity continues to work intensely to rehabilitate the property, which remains vacant and with its cultural activities outsourced, and reopen its doors. For this, they have a project that they have recently presented to the La Laguna Town Planning Department to obtain the building license and thus try to qualify for new aid and obtain the funds they still need for the work, valued at around one million euros.
This was stated by the president of the entity, Claudio Marrero, who explained that at this time “the first thing that was done, and also immediately, was to replace the roof and put a provisional cover that the City Council placed in a precautionary and subsidiary manner. That debt has already been collected and we do not owe the City Council anything.” Also, “the state of the building has been consolidated, with the underpinning of part of the property, which had more to do with the debris removal process than with the structure being affected, because the entire roof fell onto a wooden floor and in its moment it was shored up to be able to clear debris, it does not have a structural function”, he continued explaining.
“And then the pandemic came and it was impossible to speed up anything, and it was this year when we started working,” added Marrero.
Project
Specifically, the entity has been working with a team of architects who have already presented the basic project to the Planning Department “and we are waiting for them to give us the license,” he said. A project that contemplates the rehabilitation of the property, conserving the spaces of the historic building and tidying up those in the back because “in the back there are a series of rooms that were built later and all of that was quite messy, from a architectural view. So, all the improvements go in the sense of organizing that, giving it meaning”, explained the president of the entity. In addition to adapting the property to current regulations, incorporating, for example, an elevator and accessible toilets, among others.
Although, Marrero pointed out, “there is an issue that is confusing us and it is that in the Urban Planning Department they force us to put a second staircase in parallel to the one we have, the team of architects considers that it is not necessary, so we have made a he consults the technical code and we estimate that he agrees with us, but we will have to meet with management and see if we are able to remove this second ladder”.
The president of the entity pointed out that the total budget for the work “is around one million euros”, in order to reopen the doors of the emblematic headquarters of the Ateneo in La Laguna.
The fire took place on October 4, 2019. F. P
The fire caused the collapse of the tea wood roof. VET
“Of that million, today we have 475,000 euros, 75,000 euros from the Cabildo and 400,000 from the Government of the Canary Islands”, from the 2020 and 2021 budgets, he added, and to get the missing amount they need to obtain the building license to to be able to try to manage other aid and subsidies from the regional government for 2023, he explains.
The execution period of the elaborated project is about 12-18 months. “The rehabilitation of the building takes some processes that right now is not in our hands to speed them up,” said the president of the Athenaeum.
So, “we are in a bit of a hurry because of a calendar issue because if the Government’s budgets for 2023 are approved before we have the license, we will not be able to enter next year’s budgets,” he emphasized.
At the same time, Claudio Marrero added that they have also been working on carrying out preliminary tastings inside the building “to see how the subsoils, the walls are… that allow us to go from the basic project to the execution”. Some work that just finished a few days ago, and, although, “the exact results we do not yet have, in principle nothing has been seen in the process of carrying out the tastings, we have not found any surprises, it seems that everything It’s in its place,” he said.
The fire originated around 3:30 p.m. on October 4, 2019 and caused the building’s tea wood roof to fall, thus destroying the top floor of this historic building. Luckily, the fire did not affect the rest of the floors of the building, leaving the structure safe, nor did it spread to the surrounding buildings, which were evicted, and, above all, there were no personal injuries.
artistic programming
Even so, Claudio Marrero appreciated that the artistic programming of the Ateneo has not stopped in all this time. “We are carrying out all the cultural activities, we have outsourced them, we collaborate with the University of La Laguna, Mapfre, the Orfeón… We have taken our activities outside. And we have also started to publish books, edit records, hold international contests… that do not need a physical space, and during the pandemic we put things together, especially on social networks, ”he explained.
Likewise, all the artistic works that the entity treasured at its headquarters and that were rescued from the fire still remain in the Provincial Historical Archive of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. “The Government of the Canary Islands, from minute one, collected the works from us and they are in the Provincial Archives, where they are perfectly preserved,” emphasized the president of the Athenaeum.
