Inventories are an extremely useful tool in the management of cultural heritage. They make it possible to identify, describe and locate heritage elements in order to place their existence on record, thereby allowing action to be planned on the basis of that knowledge. With this in mind, the Directorate General for Culture and Cultural Heritage has been promoting this work across all the islands, carried out by Amara Florido, an expert and Doctor in Art History
In the case of industrial heritage, this work helps to define the assets that make up this singular heritage and represents the first step towards protecting the most significant elements that form part of our identity and of the memory of work and place. Thanks to this research, important elements that had been overlooked until now, and which must be protected, have come to light.
Inventory of the Industrial Heritage of Lanzarote (2023-2024)
Continuing with the inventory work, the island of Lanzarote was covered between 2023 and 2024, in two phases. The first (2023) dealt with the municipalities of San Bartolomé de Lanzarote, Tías and Yaiza, and was completed the following year with Haría, Teguise, Tinajo and Arrecife. In total, this inventory records two hundred and thirty-nine elements of various kinds, among which windmills and hand mills, salt pans, lime kilns, lighthouses, workshops and kilns stand out.
By municipality, San Bartolomé has nineteen immovable assets and forty movable ones; Tías, fourteen immovable and seventeen movable; Yaiza, sixteen and four respectively; Haría counts eight immovable assets and twenty-two movable ones; Teguise, where the largest number of items of interest has been recorded, lists thirty-three immovable and eleven movable; Tinajo, for its part, has an industrial heritage amounting to four movable assets and fourteen immovable ones; finally, Arrecife adds up thirty immovable assets and seven movable ones.
As for movable assets, the greatest concentration is found at the Museo Etnográfico Tanit, which opened in 2000. Inside, it displays a selection of the goods and implements used by our ancestors, forming a varied and rich expression of their social, working and religious life. It holds a collection of more than 3,000 pieces of various kinds: work and everyday tools, clothing, idols and so on. Particularly notable is the room devoted to the wine industry, where pieces of extraordinary interest are preserved: grape presses, corking machines, crushers and more.
Another landmark site is the Museo del Vino, at the El Grifo winery, which opened in 1982 and is currently among the most visited museums of its kind in Spain, with close to 80,000 visitors a year. Visitors can take in an overview of the evolution of Lanzarote's traditional grape harvest through the machinery and implements used from the late 19th and early 20th centuries: presses, destemmers, corking machines, racking pumps, bottle fillers, and a broad and varied collection that has been duly recorded in the inventory.
The municipality of Teguise is where the largest number of items of interest has been recorded. The gofio mills stand out, with a total of eight units, along with salt mills (6) and lime kilns (6). The rest comprise: salt pans, wine presses, a carpentry workshop, a smithy, a bakery, a tahona (traditional flour mill) and the Alegranza lighthouse. By contrast, Lanzarote's capital has lost a good part of its industrial heritage, especially that linked to the fish canning industry, which reached its peak economic importance between 1950 and 1980.
As has happened on the other islands, in many cases action has come too late, since the scant or non-existent sensitivity shown over decades towards our material industrial legacy has taken its toll. Generally speaking, what we find are abandoned, half-ruined structures and the disappearance of significant manufacturing facilities on the island: fish canneries, gofio windmills and hand mills, tobacco factories, salt pans and so on. Movable heritage is in an even worse state, since no alternatives are offered for its use once it has lost its original function. This is a fragile, rusted, battered and wounded heritage that has been given few opportunities.
Even so, we should not forget isolated, one-off initiatives that have made it possible to restore some gofio windmills and hand mills in Teguise, and salt mills in Yaiza, Arrecife and Teguise, among others.