SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, September 22 (EUROPA PRESS) –
This Thursday afternoon, the Cabildo of Tenerife presented the Gold Medal of the island of Tenerife to Juan de la Cruz Rodríguez in recognition of his tireless work and defense of traditional crafts and, especially, traditional Canarian clothing.
The event was attended by the president of the Cabildo, Rosa Dávila; the vice president, Lope Afonso; the Minister of Culture and Museums, José Carlos Acha and the Minister of Employment and Education, Efraín Medina.
Rosa Dávila indicated that the Gold Medal comes to recognize the professional and personal career of Juan de la Cruz in Tenerife and the Canary Islands in maintaining identity.
“Their work and their research and dissemination work have allowed us to preserve our traditional clothing and promote respect for who we are and the legacy we receive, in this as in other areas, from our elders,” he comments.
Along these lines, he stressed that “the island of Tenerife, with its Cabildo at the helm, shows its deep gratitude to the task that Juan de la Cruz has carried out in the last 40 years, recovering the tradition in weaving has also meant the recovery of other crafts that allow the creation of costumes”.
According to the president, “De la Cruz Rodríguez is a reference beyond our borders for his committed and hard work in Tenerife and other islands to recover from the artisan weavers all their knowledge and wisdom and to return the essence to one of the manifestations most important aspects of our identity, such as clothing.
For his part, Juan de la Cruz thanked him for the distinction and, visibly moved, remembered his grandmother, who showed him the art of weaving for the first time.
He assured that he does not believe he deserves this distinction because what he has done is work on what he likes “and that does not have much merit.”
“I was lucky to work on my hobby and, although in these years I had some disagreements, I have been lucky to have numerous satisfactions throughout my career. In fact, I am still linked to my work and I am part of the Sector Council of the Traditional Clothing of Tenerife. I am very grateful for this recognition to all the people who have made it possible,” he stressed.
Born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1949), Juan de la Cruz has worked as a textile and clothing technician at the Museum of History and Anthropology of Tenerife from 1986 until his retirement in 2014, as well as as a handloom weaver.
His arduous field work, ethnographic research and dissemination of the traditional clothing of the Islands over the last 40 years endorse him as the greatest expert in traditional clothing of the Canary Islands and one of the voices with the greatest judgment at the national level.
Currently, it is part of the Sectoral Council of Traditional Clothing of Tenerife with an educational and informative activity that is absolutely necessary and important.
He has been an advisor in the creation of museums, exhibitions and displays, film and theater projects, advertising and awareness campaigns and all types of activities that convey the way of dressing of the Canary Islands throughout the centuries, one of the defining features of the culture and personal and collective identity of any people.
Juan de la Cruz rebelled at the end of the 70s against the falsification and distortion of popular costume, facing, almost alone, the social and institutional effort to make old and traditional what never was, denatured, contemporary and invented typical costumes. In some cases, paradoxically accepted unconsciously and thoughtlessly by the population, the Cabildo points out.
Faced with this nonconformity, he revolutionized the concept of ‘dressing as a magician’ when the groups still dressed almost exclusively with two models of traditional costumes.
The recreation at that time, initially by the group Los Majuelos, of the patterns found in documentation from the 18th century onwards, represented a radical conceptual and aesthetic change, first in the groups and little by little in the image of pilgrimages, dances of magicians and other manifestations, recovering the true identity of historical costumes, which had been disfigured during the 20th century by political, social and tourist phenomena.
Faced with the equality of the attire used massively until that moment, Juan de la Cruz showed an authentic and rigorous collection, with a wide variety of typologies, variants by area, materials, manufacturing techniques and social uses of clothing, globally contrasted, although not exempt from distrust on the part of some.
From then on, a series of linked phenomena emerged that contributed to giving value to traditional garments: society began to seek awareness, give importance to their knowledge and preservation; The groups incorporated clothing as one of their primary objectives; Demand arose for publications and teaching materials such as calendars, bookbinding sheets, patterns, children’s teaching materials, cut-outs and other initiatives.
In addition, some traditional trades that had almost disappeared and were now necessary for making suits were reactivated; Greater attention was paid to traditional costume in beauty pageants and in the external image of the islands; Nativity scenes began to be made and marketed with traditional models and institutions began to address the issue, to subsidize the making of new models and to carry out campaigns to dignify the magician’s costume.
