[Gallery] The truth of walking through the Cactus Garden

For the artistic history of Lanzarote it will always be that the Cactus Garden was the last great intervention of César Manrique in the landscape of the island. Built in 1991 in Guatiza, this vegetable maze breathes from the artist’s environmentalist notion.

The old rofera, degraded, vilified and dry served Manrique as a canvas, as a test workshop for the creation of a garden of original crass and cactaceous plants throughout the world. That quarry of extraction of aggregates serves today as an example that the human can help to intervene in the landscape, putting it in value without denigrating it.

The surroundings of the center make up a green mantle of tunnels where the cochineal they produce was of extreme economic relevance during the 19th century in Lanzarote. Within the enclosure more than 4500 copies of 450 different spices brought from corners of the five continents are protected.

The green in that place has a kind of brightness that seems that what it really tries is to absorb all the sky in each plant. The rofe of reddish and jet tones plays to frame the picture. The birds that zigzag, the whistling wind, the near distance of the Chinijo Arhipielago and the peace granted by the thorns during the walk offer a plan, to tourists and locals, who will be grateful throughout the day for the mind of the visitor.

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