Friday, March 29

La Laguna, the Canarian city that served as a model for the cities of America, is also not immune to gentrification


In 1999, San Cristóbal de La Laguna was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for having been the first non-fortified Spanish colonial city and serving as a model for the layout of the cities founded by the Spanish in America. More than two decades later, some researchers consider that the municipality is losing its residential function due to the “fierce commercial activity that has taken place”, motivating the expulsion of the local population and causing foreigners and residents to act in its space. way.

La Laguna will preside over the Group of World Heritage Cities from January

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A little Article, published in October in the magazine of the Andalusian Institute of Historical Heritage, makes a critical reflection on the “transformation” that La Laguna is undergoing towards a more touristic identity, which is “preventing the growth of the memory of those who lived (…) by hiding it under a patina that does not stop increasing its thickness”. The text joins another, also disseminated a few years ago at the III International Congress of Good Practices in World Heritagewhich emphasizes how in the city (and in many others with the same qualification) neither tourists nor locals know the names of its main squares and religious sites, in a clear example of parallel cities.

“What happens in San Cristóbal de La Laguna and in other places declared World Heritage is that the opening of franchises and other businesses that increase prices and rents, has an impact on the local population. A gentrification process takes place, as the residents leave the center and go to the outskirts,” says Elena Pérez González, professor and researcher in Archaeological Heritage Management and Tourism at the European University of the Canary Islands (UEC) and also a member of the Council. International Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).



The expert recalls that the declaration of urbanizations as World Heritage will always be accompanied by an increase in the tourist offer. In La Laguna, despite the fact that the number of rooms and accommodation places has barely changed in the last ten years, according to data from the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC), what has experienced considerable growth is the amount of income totals from this sector. In 2009, they reached 4.62 million euros. And in 2019, before the pandemic, it rose to 6.8 million.

In this sense, Pérez González regrets that until a few years ago the Laguna City Council did not have a tourism strategy, which was finally announced in 2017 in collaboration with the University of La Laguna (ULL), to coordinate the cultural richness of the territory with the presumed massive arrival of visitors. “The coexistence and maintenance of all the values ​​for which it was declared World Heritage are at risk because of this,” adds the expert.

in one of the official documents of the town hall, it is clear that the “consolidation of the municipality’s tourism sector” is backed by “being since 1999 one of the fifteen World Heritage cities of the Spanish State”. In other diagnosis, also made public on the website of the council and dated 2018, it is concluded that “the sustained and significant increase in the arrival of tourists (…) has begun to take place in recent years.” The quoted text also suggests that “no evidence has been found of the impact [de la vivienda vacacional] in the supply of rentals for residents”. The AirDNA application calculates a total of 628 tourist apartments in the area.



The City Council of La Laguna, for its part, does not deny that the dynamics of touristification have also reached the region. In the words of the entity’s Town Planning Counselor, Santiago Pérez, these are “fundamental problems” against which the administration has little to do. They bring “positive news and others not so much”. But that, after all, make the town an unattractive space from a residential point of view. The appearance of new businesses must have focused on the historic center of the municipality, since according to statistics from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), in 2019 La Laguna had around 200 fewer companies related to this activity, as well as transport and housing, compared to 2012 (4,006 establishments in total).

“All that we are talking about undermines the identity of the area. And, in fact, most of the historic centers are very similar to San Cristóbal de La Laguna. They are also full of ice cream parlors, taverns, businesses like that”, adds Pérez González.

In the research Parallel Cities: the materiality of the urban environment in world heritage citiesthe teacher at the UEC not only x-rays the lagoon district, but also Leipzig (Germany), where more of the same happens, Barcelona, ​​where the squares are places of coexistence for both locals and tourists, Old Havana (Cuba), where few inhabitants walk and use the heritage spaces for leisure, Alcalá de Henares, where daily activities, permanent music and services are intermingled.



“When the lack of knowledge of the environment and that they are not aware of what things would or would not change in those places, tourists and residents are faced with a new scenario unknown to them: they position themselves and, therefore, a debate is generated. In many of the recorded videos, the population was surprised by not knowing the name of the church or cathedral in front of which they were, and the tourists took the same situation with humor”, reasons the researcher.

Pérez González also points out that the UNESCO Convention on World, Cultural and Natural Heritage of 1972 “must involve the process [de protección colectiva del patrimonio] to most of the local actors related to the property itself”. However, it was not until 2021 when the La Laguna City Council definitively approved the regulations of the Municipal Council of Cultural Heritage. More than 20 years without an advisory body of a more social nature in this field, in charge of “monitoring municipal and private action in relation to cultural heritage”, as well as being “the channel for the participation of residents and neighbors involved in its conservation”, according to the lagoon council itself.



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