Risco cado, between the sun and the full moons - La Provincia

The game of sunlight and the moon in the cave of Risco Caído de Gran Canaria it is so extraordinary that it has nothing to envy to the fabulous temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt, it is more, it is unique in the world and axis of the cultural landscape of the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria, that have entered in record time in the final straight for your registration as Unesco World Heritage, in just three days in Azerbaijan.

It is about the lost temple of the Aboriginal of Gran Canaria, an almogarén that until a few years ago was the pajero of a cattle rancher of the municipality of Artenara that he never imagined that every time he entered this time capsule to take care of his animals he traveled to the beginning of the era and much less that around him a prodigious story.

And that is when the first day of each spring comes to light the morning sun with phallic form to fertilize the mother earth and travel its wall, carved with all kinds of pubic triangles located in a kind of border at three levels to tell a story that uses the optics of entrance, its twists and notches, as well as the changing angle of the beam of light to change shape in what runs through the altarpiece carved in the rock and shows the face of a child and even a pregnant woman, although the profusion of their meanings are still to reveal in full.

This has happened in the last 2,000 years, or more, from the equinox from spring to autumn, when the sun stops entering and the full moons begin to enter, marking in this way the passage of the months until the next spring equinox.

It marked the evolution of an entire society until the conquest in 1484, when it fell into oblivion until, in the middle of the nineties, the archaeologist Julio Cuenca was trapped by its wonderful dome because, as the director of the file driven by the Cabildo of Gran Canaria, Cipriano Marín, if striking is a spherical dome, much more is this paraboidal structure that entails handling a concept and a really complex and surprising execution, in fact absolutely unusual.

Ensimismado by the dome, it was not until 2009 when Cuenca noticed the entrance of light and its different forms, and understood that I had to start observing the cave at dawn, and in this way the lost temple of Artevigua of the old canaries was opened before them, a population that has its roots in the primitive Berbers of North Africa and manages to develop a unique culture in complete isolation.

The Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria they are a cultural landscape - defined by Unesco as a joint work of humanity and nature - consisting of 1,500 caves, a thousand public rock triangles - the greatest concentration in the world - and vestiges that allow us to speak of a relict landscape and alive at the same time full of temples, sanctuaries, fortified granaries located in impossible places, necropolis, vertical troglodyte urbanizations and dwellings in caves occupied at times uninterrupted for centuries to the present.
And all this - and here is one of the keys - in an indissoluble relationship with the clouds, which led to the Cabildo of Gran Canaria to promote the first one before Unesco that includes this association with the sky.

In its journey has added the support of the population and the four municipalities of the 18,000 hectares covered by the proposal, as well as the support of the Canary Government, which in turn moved the proposal to the Spanish Government, which made it theirs and Sunday will be the only one presented by Spain.

Tormented landscape

The tormented landscape that welcomes this cultural area is sheltered by the imposing Caldera de Tejeda, of 18 kilometers in diameter, which arose due to the collapse of the impressive stratovolcano Roque Nublo, today a symbolic monolith of Gran Canaria, and at its feet the result of "a tremendous commotion of the bowels of the earth, it seems all a petrified tempest" as described by Miguel de Unamuno.

In geological terms, the area hosts an extreme geodiversity that constitutes a book open to the contemplation and learning of singular geological manifestations that include inverted relief, as well as ridges, escarpments, promontories, cliffs and ravines that, if that were not enough, present a rate of endemism and protected species unparalleled in the protected areas of northern Africa and southern Europe.

The attributes

The attributes that give the landscape its universal value are therefore the astronomical almogarenes, the sacred spaces, the troglodyte habitat, the stations of libico-bereveres engravings, the exceptional profusion of pubic engravings, the expressions related to the water culture -day today Gran Canaria is the place in the world with the highest concentration of wells with vertical perforations up to 400 meters and large dams, and the old transhumance routes, a tradition that survives today and to which we must add the pottery or the gofio itself.

Extraordinary is also the result arrogated by the genetic analysis of the barley grown in the area: it is the same variety as a thousand years ago and it is the only case of a plant so genetically verified in the world.

Therefore, the Cabildo of Gran Canaria He hopes that the wonderful heart of Gran Canaria will become part of the catalog of world cultures on Sunday, a heritage of humanity so valuable that its conservation becomes the responsibility of the countries of the planet.