Urbanities,
Vol. 3
·
No 2
·
November 2013
© 2013
Urbanities
22
Tourism in Lanzarote, sustainable tourism had been taking place on the Island for at least 25
years.
The
Plan Insular de Ordenación del Territorio
(PIOT)
Another aspect of the connection between Manrique’s work and local tourism are the
regulations that stem from his aesthetic ideals. The introduction of the Island’s Development
Plan (PIOT), with its many reviews, led to the selection of certain architectural and cultural
elements present in Lanzarote that he believed were endangered by the increasingly faster
development of tourism facilities. These elements, which had been created as an answer to the
hard climatic conditions on the Island, and that were strictly linked to culture and everyday
life, were extrapolated from their usual context and turned into a model for the future. It was
to some extent an arbitrary choice, since Manrique in the book
Lanzarote. Arquitectura
Inedita
(published in 1974) made a collection of signs that he believed to be relevant to his
vision. This choice projected an homogeneous look to the Island and also ‘froze’ Lanzarote at
a certain moment in time, that is the period between the 1950s and the 1970s. The normal and
natural architectural development of the island has been regulated by the PIOT and, through
it, natural evolution was impeded. The only part of the island which followed a non-regulated
pattern of development was the capital Arrecife. Although it is not possible to maintain its
current appearance , the capital has greater appeal for tourists than the rest of the land in that it
offers a more vibrant and “real” atmosphere, which is otherwise lacking elsewhere.
The PIOT’s –
Plan Insular de Ordenación del Territorio
(Development Plans) – lists
the binding regulations on building in Lanzarote, what it should look like, as well as other
aspects, i.e. the number of hotel accommodations to be allowed per year. More generally, they
regulate the Island’s architecture, as well as how town and country planners should maintain
the Island’s authenticity through the different phases of tourism development. The original
PIOT underwent many revisions, the last of which was published in 2010, and all of them
tried to comply with the aesthetic ideal created by Manrique from the 1960s on.
As Idoya Cabrera Delgado
1
stated, the book
Lanzarote. Arquitectura Inedita
constituted an ideal visual standard because people would see pictures of their houses in it and
think ‘Wow, my house is important! It’s in a book!’, leading to a positive effect on their self-
esteem and on the awareness that preserving what was “real” and authentic would be a way to
keep under some kind of control all the issues related to the environment and the impact that
tourism was having on their lives.
Having been isolated for many years, the sudden development of tourism on the Island
was perceived from the beginning as traumatizing and invasive, especially in the early phases
where large discrepancies existed between what the tourists were expecting to find on the
Island and what was actually there on offer, especially in terms of facilities, but also of water
supplies, food and electricity.
It was not until the approval of the
Plan Insular de Ordenación del territorio
in 1991,
however, that any concrete steps were taken. According to the PIOT, any new structure (either
1
Of the Department of Territory and Environment, Fundación César Manrique, Lanzarote.
