In which Sid and Doris accidentally enrage Cesar Manrique.
Off to Lanzarote, or Lanzaro’e as we say in Wembley.
Corralejo is not large and nor is its ferry terminal. The regular ferries to Lanzarote take half an hour but are mostly pedestrian-only, and the waiting area seems to be laid out as a boat-deck-sized grid into which the staff carefully pack us, shunting the larger vans from one side to another. Very smart! Until…
… the boat arrives, we all pile on randomly, and there is bags of room. A handy information board (have we mentioned that Sid and Doris dearly love an information board) shows that some of the worries about getting a ticket may have been needless.
So, the first note on Lanzarote was “volcanic”. Tick. Although the main volcano erupted over 300 years ago, there has been lamentably little effort to sweep the place up, and honestly there is just ash and rocks everywhere. Really, do these people have no sense of civic pride?
Lanzarote has too many people who want to see or do a ‘a thing’. But when you drive up to a view point and see the sea and nearby island, what do you do with the rest of your day? Coaches and hire cars are rumbling from one place to another. Where’s the beef?
We stop off at the compulsory viewing point of El Golfo to join the queue to take this picture. To your left the volcano which has been broken into by the sea. The green water is so because it supports more seaweed than the ocean. The nearby village has about 200 people, the car park for this very small amusement holds about six coaches and maybe 80 cars.
Sid shies nervously at the offer of a camel ride to the dormant volcano crater and instead we have a deeply satisfying visit to a proper Volcano Visitor Centre (designed by Cesar Manrique, of whom more later) including some extraordinary videos of Volcanos In Action. The most recently volcanic island in this chain is actually El Hierro, as this map shows (it is worth a closer look if you have the time and internet bandwidth).
A small detour takes us to the Cesar Manrique foundation which is basically his seventies (as in 1970s) party house. It has cubic white rooms on the upper level and a series of rooms built into bubbles formed when the basalt was molten on the lower levels. It is superb and must give rise to project envy from all self-builders. There are pictures of the party room being used for parties, with lounging models straight out of central casting.
Cesar was born in Arrecife on Lanzarote in 1919. He volunteered in Franco’s artillery during the Civil War. Briefly studying architecture in La Laguna (it does start to join up) he moved to Madrid and 1945 with an art school scholarship, graduating and then teaching. In New York from 1964 to 1966 Nelson Rockefeller paid for his studio and he sold through the Viviano Gallery which will have paid for the boat home. Here, he was fortunate that his childhood friend Pepin Ramirez was president of the island.
The house in the pictures below is now the Taro de Tahiche, which is now the home of the Manrique Foundation. It is a fabulous visit that we are sharing with about 20 others. Pond with kelp or a 1968 James Bond fantasy house with pools and studios built into lava bubbles? If it had been designed by Hugh Hefner you couldn’t be surprised.
Below you can just work out that the tree goes through the roof to the outside.
A very cool pool below, and probably more Playboy than A Bigger Splash. He lived here until 1986. We will go to see the house at Haria that he built for his later years.
There are windows to floor level so that the flooring and furniture inside and outside can match. Visitors to S and D in the Barbican will recall the same effect.
The plot next door is available, by the way. Just sayin’.
The final room has a lot of information about how Cesar Manrique used his profile as a famous artist to work hard to create and enforce planning regulations to keep the whole of Lanzarote low-rise and white-painted. He was particularly scathing about the “fascist architecture” of the multi-storey hotels being built “with cut basalt blocks at the front because they think it LOOKS GOOD!” “blocking the view of the sea from everyone else”.
On the final approach to our hotel in Costa Teguise we observe a particularly horrible example, almost certainly one featured in the background of his recordings. Sid christens it Blottus Maximus.
And with that delicate touch of signposting, you will be unsurprised to learn that B.M. is going to be Adventure Headquarters for the next three days. The architecture from the road side could be described as Prison With Atrium, or as Cesar might say “We’ve got your view, what are you going to do about it”. #sorrycesar
Inside they have done their best…
… and the good news about staying in the ugliest building in town is that the view from it is much better than looking at it..
En
tertainment in these hotels seems to be compulsory and our first night finished with “Africa” gymnastics to music.
The costumes would have embarrassed the Black and White Minstrels but the circus acrobatics were stunning.
The audience had possibly been sedated with excess sangria but it was hard to wring applause out them. Most of them can’t get out of a chair without using their arms. Perhaps it was envy.