Manrique’s many other signature buildings and sculpted landscapes include the Cactus Garden of Guatiza and the cultural center at Jameos del Agua, where live music sounds through volcanic chambers, home to blind albino crabs. He built one of his homes in a palm grove at Haría (now a museum), and another over lava bubbles at Tahíche (now headquarters of the César Manrique Foundation). Visitors can see the paintings he collected by the likes of Picasso and Miró, alongside his own artworks, which tended to draw on the contours and colors of Lanzarote itself… the dusty reds and scorched blacks of past disaster areas long since turned eerily beautiful; the azure sky and cobalt sea beyond; the deep green of olivine crystals (also found in meteorites and on the surface of Mars) used to make the local peridot jewelry; and the orange-yellow of ancient xanthoria lichens that are the island’s oldest living things.
There is also the bright white paint on traditional housing, often with blue or green exterior woodwork, and distinctive roofs and patios canted to collect the occasional rain. Manrique lobbied to preserve such designs during the early years of the tourist boom. His passionate defense of Lanzarote’s architecture is probably the biggest single reason that even the busiest coastal resorts–Puerto del Carmen, Playa Blanca, Costa Teguise–are not dominated by generic high-rise holiday apartments, and retain their original village feel.
A certain equilibrium defines even quieter beach communities like La Santa, which still harbors a small fishing fleet, even as it draws visitors from around the world for watersports. The offshore winds and waves are especially alluring to surfers, who can ride the celebrated left-hand break all day, then feast on the equally renowned local red prawns in the evening.
Such enclaves encircle the whole island. The westward edges of Pedro Perico country drop away to hidden coves where shearwaters and peregrine falcons hover over sheltered beaches. To the north lie the fine toasted sands and chiringuito bars of La Garita beach, and the contrasting calm of Caletón Blanco, with its vivid aquamarine pool between lava formations.
This is Lanzarote in microcosm, where magma-moulded moonscapes meet the sea from which they emerged, and suggest the kind of natural balance that we humans can only wonder at. César Manrique put it this way: “The universe has already discovered all things. All we have to do now is be more humble… and try by all means to learn from the experience of millions of centuries of this marvelous spatial harmony which it has been our fate to discover.”