Mine is another voyage

Bosola's dying words in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi could almost be my motto.

Readers of my previous posts on other platforms will know that I make occasional trips to the Canary Islands with my Canarian husband. These are emphatically not holidays, or not as most visiting Brits would understand the concept anyway. Our main objective is to restore the family's rural patrimony and engage in wider protest actions to prevent or frustrate corporate destruction of the islands' heritage, both manmade and natural. Not for us the 'fly and flop' breaks beloved of most Brits who come here in huge (and unsustainable) numbers. In fact, insofar as they can be characterised as holidays at all, ours are distinctly of the working variety. Tourists may be flocking to the ritzy Carnaval in Santa Cruz de Tenerife as I write but, for us, the glamour never starts.

It's a hard slog being an environmental activist here - and, God knows, it's no walk in the park in the UK either - with widespread apathy enabling rampant corruption. But general incomprehension is also mixed with antagonism, generally not overt but, rather, sullen and resentful. This reaction can, perhaps, be best understood against the background of decades of vicious state repression under Franco butting up against the irrepressible Spanish party culture. Canarians certainly know how to have fun in spite of a sea of troubles. Carnivals, fiestas, singing and dancing, street parties (botellónes), illicit beach bars (chiringuitos) and barbecues (parrillas) are very much part of a subversive culture masquerading as time-honoured tradition. So seeking to rain on their parade by pointing out the existential crisis enveloping them inevitably makes one an unwelcome spectre at the feast. And one suspects it's not that Canarians are unaware of the unpalatable reality just that they don't wish to be reminded of it. They party like there's no tomorrow precisely because they're conscious there may not be one - and who wants to be a party-pooper by rubbing their noses in it? The phenomenon could be a psychological response to residual Catholic fatalism coupled with the reality of living on an actively volcanic archipelago. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!

But the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the islanders is not just volcanic it's also the prospect of a wider environmental catastrophe. For example, the archipelago has always been short of water, for drinking, washing, horticulture and agriculture. In the past this led to very careful management of scarce water resources by the aboriginal peoples and the Spanish settlers, with a private well in the patio being a prized addition to any house and natural springs (fuentes) being jealously guarded. Communal open-air laundries (lavadoras) were the norm well into the 20th century. Galleries (galerias) were mined deep into the mountainsides in the 1930s to release pent-up meltwater from winter snows that permeated down through the rock. Waters were channelled via a complex network of main arteries (canales) and cut stone feeders (tejeas) - all gravity fed - into tanks (tanques) to irrigate terraced fields (huertas) and plots (fincas). This amazing hydrological system was closely managed by superintendents (agualías) whose word was law when it came to any dispute over supply.

The dry-stone walled terraces (terasas) for cultivation can be seen all over the islands, even at the highest points and up the sides of the deepest canyons (barrancos), representing centuries of gruelling hard labour to create and maintain them. As a result, the islands were incredibly fertile, hence their historic trade in wine, sugar, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, wheat and bananas. The volcanic soil, much if it carried manually by the aboriginals, or by later Spanish settlers (conquistadores) using donkeys, to create the tilth of the terraces over generations of back-breaking labour, is remarkably productive, only requiring water to produce abundant crops year-round. Colour photographs from as late as the 1980s show verdant valleys full of fruit, flowers and greenery. Grapes, oranges, lemons, avocadoes, almonds, corn all grew in profusion with careful tending and a regular watering. Nowadays, the abandoned agricultural landscape is largely dessicated, desertified and overgrown with cactus, making it a prime target for rampant overdevelopment. Concrete has replaced corn, bricks bananas and tiles tomatoes. And the water? That's been siphoned-off to fill swimming pools, feed showers and flush lavatories.

Of course, it's easy to romanticise the past and mourn the passing of an imagined bucolic rural lifestyle, lived in lush green valleys. I'm under no illusion, staying in a remote rural community, how tough life was for most of its past inhabitants and still is for many of its present-day ones. The reality of rural poverty can be masked by glorious sunshine and an apparently easy-going lifestyle but just because it's hot and sunny most of the year, heating isn't essential and the minimum of clothing is sufficient to get by doesn't mean there isn't real deprivation behind the shuttered windows and closed patio doors. Food banks, a lack of access to public transport, healthcare and support for the elderly, are as much a reality of contemporary rural life here as in the UK.

Unsurprising, then, that many folk here are only too happy to abandon the old ways, quit growing crops, sell off their ancestral land to developers, allow wind turbines and solar panels on their terraces or rent out their old houses (casas viejas) via Airbnb and convert old tanques into swimming pools. And as there are no regular, reliable bus links, everyone who can afford to do so owns at least one car (petrol-fuelled, of course, as, despite all the wind turbines and solar panels disfiguring the surrounding countryside there are no rural public car-charging points). This leads to congestion, pollution and ever-more road-building, which in turn encourages ever-more infill house-building, which in turn discharges more raw sewage into the formerly pristine surrounding seas. 

It is the most vicious of vicious circles; the utter degradation and wilful destruction of ancient landscapes, unique marine habitats and a rich cultural heritage is heartbreaking. And this is made the more acute by knowing that someone, somewhere is making a shed load of money out of all this misery. But, in the end, the inevitability of human life in these islands becoming unsustainable is the most concerning prospect of all. That's what we're fighting to prevent by advocating for humans to live in harmony with nature. Our efforts are largely unappreciated - it's a thankless task trying to save people from themselves - but we carry on regardless.

Believe me, it's no holiday.

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