The Igueste de San Andrés Semaphore, the only facility of its kind in the Canary Islands, of vital importance in the past to guide ships sailing off the coast of Tenerife, is, since yesterday, the responsibility of the Government of the Canary Islands, once The State has agreed to the request to transfer ownership of the property. Yesterday, the Official State Gazette (BOE) published this assignment for 15 years, extendable for another 15, in favor of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage, attached to the Vice-Ministry of Culture and Heritage of the Government of the Canary Islands, to proceed with its rehabilitation and change of use.
In this way, when the structure turns 127, the tender for the existing rehabilitation project is unblocked. A procedure this last one that, they remember from the Semáforo la Atalaya Collective, is intended to be addressed before the end of the year or the beginning of the next, as the general director of Heritage, Nona Perera, advanced a few days ago, who was waiting for it to be confirm the assignment.
Precisely last week, during the commemoration of those 127 years, the author of the project, the architect Carlos Pallés, offered a conference with some brushstrokes on what they want to do, admitting that “it has been reduced to the minimum expression”. , given the numerous conditions that have been placed on it by the different administrations. The architect explained that the roofs are going to be removed and the walls rehabilitated to prevent “they continue to degrade and end up disappearing.” Among the conditions are the obligation of the company that carries out the work to have an ornithologist, who makes sure that the shearwaters that nest on the cliff are not damaged during the execution of the work.
In addition, the materials will have to be brought up by helicopter, a transport that costs about 3,000 euros per day, in addition to the fact that the contractor will have to go up and down every day to the Traffic Light since overnight stays will not be allowed. “Therefore, what we are going to do is urgently save the walls of the building, remove the roof, and what I will be able to raise is the mast,” Pallés pointed out at the conference. From the Semáforo la Atalaya collective, Miguel Ángel Noriega explained to DIARIO DE AVISOS that “the transfer is good news”, but they would have preferred it to be longer. Although, “as explained by Carlos Pallés, it does not imply that the rehabilitation of the space, in which a weather station with a webcam will be placed, is immediately addressed, after rehabilitating the walls. It’s the only thing that can be done.”
Noriega, who is also a member of the Gathering Friends of July 25, points out that “what we do want, and this is how the residents of Igueste have conveyed it to us, is that they believe in the town, the Interpretation Center that cannot be do in the Watchtower. It will be a way of attracting visitors to the town and explaining the history of this traffic light, the only one in the Canary Islands”.
