SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, June 20 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The director of the National Geographic Institute (IGN), María José Blanco, retires this Tuesday after a 33-year career in public service in which she has managed, among other crises, the submarine volcanic eruption in El Hierro in 2011 and more recently, in 2021, the eruption of Cumbre Vieja on La Palma.
The announcement has been revealed through Twitter by the volcanologist Rubén López who has highlighted the “leadership” of Blanco so that the Canary Islands finally have their “long-awaited” National Center of Volcanology claimed throughout the 20th century.
Blanco passed the exam for Geographical Engineering in 1990 and was assigned to Tenerife, being at that time “the only woman in a field dominated by men with much more experience than her,” López details.
On the island, in a service with “few means and very far from where resources were decided,” she says, she was appointed regional head and also continued her scientific role, published her doctoral thesis in Seismology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
As a sign of the development of the IGN in the archipelago, the number of volcanic monitoring stations has grown exponentially in recent years, going from not having one per island to having more than 100.
“Demanding, attentive, generous and feminist, staunch defender of the public service and its regional services. Now it’s time for those who stole it to dedicate it to us,” summarizes López by way of conclusion.
