Lanzarote: el papel de la crisis - Fundación César Manrique

disfigured? Who sacrifices them? Whither do the extinct islands go? Do the islands alone
know or do men also know something about how they go adrift?
As the Island is reached, a vague sound can be heard or, to be more precise, if the keen
observer uses his eyes as well as his ears, then, whoever he may be, he will soon realise that
the sound is loud and clear. It is not the sound of light, despite our belief that we have
arrived at the destiny of light, for it is a known fact that the sound of light is a very quiet,
intravenous sound which creeps into the rest of our senses before making itself heard.
Indeed, we have the impression that we are standing before the sound of a beautiful body
which is yielding to the pressure of the cracks. A kind of living canvas cracking under a
sudden change in the climate, of a force which swells the cloth that is imprisoned between
the edges of the frame. The sound of cracking. A body which, before its limbs fall away, starts
to feel the effects of the erosion caused by the cracks. The sound of an island as it breaks
up. And the muttering of men and women who breathe in the air coming through the cracks,
who cause the cracks, who consent to the cracks from amid shadows of indolence, or who
denounce them and suggest that new windows be opened onto the horizon so that the
destiny of light will never fade away. Lanzarote.
II. That story, this story: the same old story
There is nothing new. If the second half of the eighties brought an expansive cycle in the
tourism and real estate sector, affecting all walks of life on the island until it produced a
scenario of risk which became a source of concern for society in general, in the early
nineties, Lanzarote underwent a major recession. Of this process, fuelled by powerful
centrifugal forces which challenged the strategies upheld by César Manrique and, more
generally, compromised the island’s territorial and social integrity, was born the need to
order and regulate both touristic activity and the occupation of the territory. In 1991, the
go-ahead was given to the Plan Insular de Ordenación del Territorio or PIOT (island plan for
the organisation of the territory), whereby, amongst other decisive regulations, the 250,000
tourist and residential accommodation places envisaged under various partial municipal
plans were reduced to a total of 112,336 beds up to the year 2000. Today, however, the
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