The Department of Culture and the Municipal School of Music begin this Friday and Saturday the commemorative events dedicated to the memory of the composer, director and founder of AF Umiaya, and to the promotion of the broad ethnographic universe of the Canary Islands that he championed.
The San Fernando Park in Maspalomas will host the commemorative events of the 1st Noé Peña Rodríguez Memorial, which the Department of Culture and the Municipal School of Music (EMM) of the San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council will organize during this month of April and next November with six days dedicated to the promotion of the ethnographic universe of the Canary Islands, especially its folklore.
The Noé Peña Memorial will begin this Friday, the 17th, at 10:00 AM, dedicated to preserving the human, cultural, and musical legacy of the former director of the EMM (Maspalomas Music School), composer, and founder of AF Umiaya (Umiaya Folk Music Association), as well as promoting the Canarian identity values he championed. It will take place in San Fernando Park with a school event where students from the Marcial Franco, Dunas de Maspalomas, and San Fernando primary schools will offer a representative sample of the traditional music and dances they learned in the Folklore Workshop.
Also this Friday, at the same location, but at 20:00 p.m., the Memorial offers a 'Meeting of Dancers' organized by the Parranda El Cañizo, in which, in addition to this representative group from San Fernando, the Parranda Chijeré (La Gomera), the ACF Surco y Arado (Gáldar) and the AFC Tajea y Torna (Las Palmas/Telde) will also participate.
In addition, this Saturday the 18th, between 17:00 pm and 21:00 pm, a craft fair with a play area and traditional children's workshops will be held as a prelude to the concert and star performance offered by AFC Umiaya for its tenth anniversary, which will feature the participation of the Tajaraste Cultural Association of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Raíces Award 2026
Already in November, the Department of Culture, directed by Elena Álamo Vega and Esther Delgado Sánchez, incorporates into this Noé Peña Rodríguez Memorial two film forum sessions at the Maspalomas Cultural Center on the 11th and 12th, with screenings of the documentaries 'Canarias, indigenous memory' and 'Canary Healers, healing traditions', respectively.
Also, on November 14th, the Raíces 2026 Awards ceremony will take place, recognitions that were promoted precisely by Noé Peña in 2019 to honor and recognize the work in the field of ethnography and folklore.
This first Memorial dedicated to Noé Peña, who died suddenly at the end of October 2022, will close with the exhibition of the artistic project 'The skin of Gran Canaria', by the photographer Elena Fernández Alemán (Elena Feral), at the Casa Saturninita Art Center from November 5 to 19.
