{"id":1021,"date":"2020-02-24T09:02:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-24T09:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2020-02-24T09:02:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-24T09:02:13","slug":"in-praise-of-the-poets-victor-fernandez-gopar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2020\/02\/24\/in-praise-of-the-poets-victor-fernandez-gopar\/","title":{"rendered":"IN PRAISE OF THE POETS: Victor Fernandez Gopar"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

STATUE STANDS STILL AND DIGNIFIED AGAINST STORM<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
new statue
stands proudly against the storm<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Victor Fernandez Gopar often celebrated the importance of salt to this island, writing wonderful poetry about it, and many of those poems have been adapted into glorious songs by Lanzarote Folk Lore Groups. Today, there was an unveiling of a statue of the poet with the working name, long ago adopted by the island\u00b4s biggest theatre, in Arrecife, of El Salinero. Some of his descendants had been invited to today\u00b4s ceremony that took place in the town square of Las Brenas, where he was born in 1844. The square looks down, over a distance of a couple of miles, to the section of coastline on which Salinas de Janubio salt fields stand.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have visited this working community many times, and have even undertaken guided tours by a young lady we call Sara Of The Salinas, who is keen to preserve the industry as it stands today and perhaps to steer it back towards some of its former glory. See our archives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So why did four new residents (ie who have come over\nto retire from the UK or other parts of Europe) attend such a localised event\nas a statue being unveiled in a small town up in the mountains? There are\nseveral reasons. Three or four of those reasons might be beer tents, crepe\ncaravans and paella platters and tapas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another reason might be to see the almost unique\nmixture of fun and reverence the islanders manage to bring to these events in\nequal measure. Even the worst calima (effectively a sandstorm) for decades\ncould not get in the way, and about twenty of us simply rolled up our sleeves\nand relocated all the food, an array of tapas that would have fed the five\nthousand, and chairs out of the open air square and into the community hall.\nThe bands quickly rewired all their instruments and the table microphones for\nthe invited speakers were set up and sound check, checked one, two, three all\nover again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that by time an audience of about two\nhundred and fifty people had gathered, with all of the ladies still managing to\nlook elegant even as the sky was the colour of poison and the palm trees were\nbending double to slap visitors in the face, we were all directed into the hall\nwhere the ceremonies would take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sculptor Cintia Manchim
unveiling Gopar statue<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The wonderful town of Las Brenas still made everyone welcome, even under an Armageddon sky and we were all sitting comfortably when the speeches began. I can\u00b4t tell you, I am afraid, who was the mistress of ceremonies, but she did a superb job in keeping everything light and informal as she introduced speakers that included family members and descendants of the feted poet, as well as The President Of The Island, the Minister of Culture and the Mayor of Yaiza Municipality of which Las Brenas is a part. The MC had things running like clockwork, too, as she first organised the presentation of a plaque and mementoes to the family. She then led us all outside into the tempest of one hundred miles per hour gusts of hot, sand filled air to see the official unveiling of the statue created by Cintia Machim and to then all partake in a photo shoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The statue remained dignified (and upright) throughout<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also a reading (in Spanish admittedly) of\nsome of Gopar\u00b4s pieces and there was a music group or two with timples and\nguitars playing the songs of the salt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in some ways an event very redolent of the\nopening of the statue of Gracie Fields that has stood on The Butts in Rochdale\ntown centre for the last four or five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To receptive and open minded English speaking new\nresidents who have an interest in the arts on Lanzarate, this monument to Gopar\nmight lead to an awakened interest in other poets and writers and artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These could include authors like Jose Saramago, winner\nof the Nobel Prize for Literature and Cesar Manrique, the island\u00b4s most revered\nartist and even toother sculptors like Cyntia, (who has other statues\ndecorating the island) or Rigoberto Camacho, who also has several statues\nsituated around the island, and an exhibition of his work showing at Cic El\nAlmacen in Arrecife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening, even in a foreign language, to commemorative\nspeeches and a brief history of the salt industry might lead some new residents\ndown to take one of Sara\u00b4s guided walks of the glorious, peaceful and timeless,\nand strangely silent salt fields at Janubio. That would all seem fair reward\nfor attending a free event, I think. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STATUE STANDS STILL AND DIGNIFIED AGAINST STORM Victor Fernandez Gopar often celebrated the importance of salt to this island, writing wonderful poetry about it, and many of those poems have been adapted into glorious songs by Lanzarote Folk Lore Groups. Today, there was an unveiling of a statue of the poet with the working name, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}