Twenty years of research has passed on the largest site of pre-Hispanic remains in the Canary Islands. The past, truth be told, is an uncomfortable subject. A handful of bones that remind you of where you come from. A hindrance to progress, to highway construction, to the cement business. In southern Gran Canaria, progress has overtaken a cemetery. A vast cemetery measuring 20 m², with some 2.000 tombs that tell the story of the ancient Canarians. And what wasn't destroyed by machine was left to die in the oblivion of a warehouse.
The discovery of the Lomo de Maspalomas necropolis wasn't a miracle. It was a nuisance. The construction of the GC-1 highway in the 80s devastated part of the site, the most fertile area for burials. Those in charge of the intervention, instead of stopping it, botched it: they ripped out what was left of the earth, encased the remains in sedimentary blocks, and dumped them in a warehouse. An act of bureaucratic negligence. And there, in the gloom of a warehouse, without a budget, without honor, the bones rotted away.
In 2005, twenty years later, it was decided to begin unearthing the buried treasure. Eleven blocks containing eighteen individuals were examined. And the study, although limited, revealed the wealth that had been abandoned. There were graves and cists, individual burials, and a burial space for collective use. But what remains is not the story of an archaeological discovery. It is the story of a crime. A crime against memory. The highway was built over the remains of a people, and neglect silenced the rest. The only truth is that the bones, which survived death, barely survived progress. And we are all accomplices.
