www.islandconnections.eu
1984-2019
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July 11 – July 24, 2019 South Tenerife
850
Officially the largest foreign language newspaper in the Canary Islands
Timeshare fraud
Tenerife Moda
Protected species
Taxi driver murdered
Arrests and victims
Fashion in Paris
Kestrel nest destruction
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Coastal black spots
Farewell to the ‘Hero of Tebeto’
In June, friends, relatives, representatives of the borough of La Oliva, and above all his wife Ana Suarez and their son, said goodbye to Arturo Fontán Bouzas, who goes down in Fuerteventura’s history as the ‘Hero of Tebeto’. On April 15 of this year, the 38-year-old gave his life whilst saving a woman in distress in the sea at Playa de Tebeto in Tindaya. Without hesitation, the fisherman jumped into the sea to help the woman. Sadly, while she was being rescued, Fontán, from Galicia, was taken by the Atlantic Ocean. He had lived on Fuerteventura for 18 years and was a popular figure. His ashes were recently scattered in the ocean in a solemn service, following the inauguration of a stone on the site to commemorate his heroic act.
Photo: Salva La Tejita
Continued on page two
Wife and son bid farewell to their husband and father and scatter his ashes at sea
New World Heritage Site
Astronomical calendar at Risco Caído Early in July, at a meeting of the Unesco committee in Bakú, Azerbaijan, it was unanimously decided that the Risco Caído Cultural Park in Gran Canaria would be declared a World Heritage Site. The application was approved and the ancient place of worship was included in the catalogue of protected cultural heritage. The praise at the Gran Canaria presentation of their candidature came from Australia to China, from Kuwait and Tunisia to Tanzania and Brazil. The Montañas Sagradas (Holy Mountains) cultural park is a cultural landscape in the Caldera de Tejeda section of the Nublo Rural Park and is regarded as a unique relic in which human and natural history merge. It consists of around 1,500 caves, some of which are decorated with about 1,000 of what are believed to be pubic triangles and is thus a pos-
The UNESCO Commission visited the site in March 2017
sible place of fertility worship. It is the largest concentration in the world of such decorations and the remains bear witness to the unique culture of the indigenous people
of the Canaries. Recent DNA testing on mummies would seem to indicate that the original human populations of the Islands probably descended from the Berbers
of North Africa and developed a unique culture in the isolation of their island worlds. Continued on page two