The event, organized by the Department of Culture and the Pancho Guerra Foundation, featured literature, music, videos, and paintings.
The San Bartolomé de Tirajana City Council and the Pancho Guerra Canary Islands Foundation commemorated the 116th anniversary of the birth of Tirajana writer and journalist Francisco Guerra Navarro this Wednesday in the historic center of Tunte.
The tribute held at the Pancho Guerra Cultural Center was attended by teachers and students from CEO Tunte, the Adult Education Center (CEPA) in this municipality, the Santa Lucía Primary School, the Clotilde Cruz Peña Verseadora School, and representatives from the ULPGC's senior training programs.
The event, directed and presented by philologist and poet Yeray Rodríguez Quintana, featured speakers including Elena Álamo Vega, second deputy mayor and councilor responsible for Education and Culture, and Miguel Guerra García de Celis, president of the Pancho Guerra Foundation.
The poet recalled that "writers, artists, and creators continue to celebrate birthdays regardless of whether they are no longer with us, because their work lives on and remains the best testament to their vitality and strength. Don Pancho turns 116, and you have to have a lot of lungs to blow out 116 candles," he stated. For her part, Deputy Mayor Elena Álamo highlighted "the emotion, enthusiasm, festivity, and cultural tradition of the event aimed at intergenerational awareness of Pancho Guerra's legacy, so that, together, we can preserve and maintain it so that future generations will continue to know it in the years to come." Finally, Miguel Guerra emphasized the need to preserve and transmit "the wisdom that Pancho Guerra instilled in us about the Canarian signs of identity, such as our vocabulary and our way of speaking, from pride to love of our own, our land, its people, its traditions, and culture, because that is celebrating life." He also stated that continuing to celebrate Pancho Guerra's anniversary so many years after his death "makes sense, because it's about ensuring his cultural legacy isn't lost and that his legacy is carried on by school children."
The annual cultural program, which the City Council and the Foundation aim to institutionalize with the goal of promoting the writer's work, featured this year's participation by Cuban poets Raúl Herrera, Ana Marys Gil, and Emiliano Sardiñas, and local writer Elisenda Romano. Also featured were artistic and musical performances by guitarist and singer Luz Mila Valerón, flautist Adriana Medina, and cellist Tania Cantallops, in addition to Yeray Rodríguez himself.
1 During the event, the collaboration agreement established by the Foundation and the San Bartolomé de Tirajana Primary School (CEPA) for the 2024/25 academic year to include the Gran Canarian writer in the school's educational projects was announced. The results of this agreement include the educational video "Tunte," created by CEPA Secondary School students as part of the "Discover Your Town and Share It" project; the one-minute music video created by student Daimon Allan Wildebees with a poem by Pancho Guerra; and the painting exhibition by student Mariarosa Locatelli, which was inaugurated alongside a selective exhibition of Pancho Guerra's poetic narrative.
