The City Hall of La Lagunafrom the Environment Area, will recover the celebration of the tree party the next 24 and 25 March, also coinciding with the commemoration that week of the International Day of Forests.
To this end, the area works on awareness-raising, dissemination, recreational and reforestation activities with which the “essence” of a celebration that took place in the municipality and others on the Island at the beginning of the last century and which was very participatory, but which ended up being lost and which the Mesa del Árbol proposed to the City Council to recover.
Specifically, as explained by the councilor responsible for the Environment, José Luis Hernández, the forecast is to carry out, on the 24th, “a reforestation in which between 100 and 150 children from schools throughout the municipality in Mesa Mota will participate, together with the collaboration of the Group of Mountaineers of Tenerife and the Environmental Protection Unit”. “And we are thinking that each one of the schools, in the area where they plant their crops, will be given a plaque,” he added.
In addition, there will be other parallel activities, such as the release of birds from the La Tahonilla Recovery Center, an exhibition by Brifor “and that day we also want a mural that contemplates aspects of environmental awareness. The idea is that the artists do it and inaugurate that day and that a part is left for the students to participate in reforestation, ”he explained.
Meanwhile, the next day, the Camino Largo will host, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, a series of booths “with an exhibition on the evolution of the Mesa Mota in the last century, of what was the Festival of the Tree, they will go to invite nurseries to hold exhibitions and sell plants, and with the collaboration of La Cañada Lagunera, we wanted to give away the prizes for a photo and writing contest that they do every year with high school students,” said José Luis Hernández.
This is to be combined with “musical groups that can do parades, since we know from historical documentation that when the Tree Festival began to be celebrated, one of the central acts were parades and musical activities with groups and bands from La Laguna” , pointed out the mayor.
Music sheet
In fact, the imprint of the Fiesta del Árbol was so important that the Canarian composer based in La Laguna Francisco Delgado Herrera composed the pasodoble La Fiesta del Árbol. In this sense, José Luis Hernández announced that “we have contacted the Orfeón La Paz to see if they have that score in their archives, and the idea would then be to interpret it again”.
Even so, the mayor pointed out that the program is still open to contributions from the rest of the Government areas and from the producer contracted to organize the event, in which the IES Forest Management and Natural Environment training cycle will also collaborate. Sobradillo and the Royal Economic Society, he pointed out. “Since the Mesa del Árbol raised it with us, we were quite excited, because it is also recovering a cultural heritage from La Laguna,” he said.
