More than 1,500 schoolchildren walk through this first non-fortified Renaissance city to demand dialogue, coexistence and the rights of future generations.

La Laguna has started today the big week of events commemorating the 25th anniversary of its declaration as a World Heritage Site, a day in which more than 1,500 students from different schools in the municipality have walked its historic streets, inside a layout that was designed without walls, as a peaceful city open to the world, to send a message of unity, coexistence and peace, a call that, from childhood and a small corner of the Atlantic, has appealed to the need for dialogue and think about the legacy of future generations.

The Mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, received the multitude of children on this Peace Walk in the Plaza del Adelantado, a name that recalls the founder and political centre of this city since the beginning of the 16th century, the first of its time that was not fortified, laid out according to Renaissance criteria and which was the reference for many later Spanish-American cities.

“On 4 December 1999, La Laguna was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco, a title that honours us and that has marked the recent history of our municipality. This 25th anniversary is the ratification of a commitment, that of continuing to build a city that protects and is proud of its heritage, capable of adapting to the future and of reconciling its conservation with the needs of its inhabitants,” Gutiérrez recalled.

The mayor declared that, “at a time of so many conflicts and uncertainty, in La Laguna we are once again raising a necessary message of peace, drawn in our streets and monuments 528 years ago, and which we launch to the world to ask for a reflection on what legacy we are going to leave to the children of the planet,” said the mayor.

Primary school pupils Lara Rodríguez Cabrera, from CPEIPS Mayco; Sara Feliciano Armas and Adriana Pérez Hernández, both from CEIP Camino Largo, were in charge of reading the manifesto of the schoolchildren of La Laguna, which brought together a large crowd in the Plaza del Adelantado and after which began a Walk for Peace that went through the main streets of the historic city.

At the end of the reading of the manifesto, a constable on horseback and dressed in period costume rode through the streets of the historic centre to announce, in a loud voice, the start of the events of the Semana Grande with which La Laguna celebrates the 25th anniversary of its inclusion on the World Heritage List.

This is a local tradition recovered in 2021 and which dates back to the old town criers on horseback in the 16th century, a reminder of its origins and with which La Laguna, as stated in this unique proclamation, commemorates a “recognition that fills us with pride as citizens of La Laguna and commits us to work for the preservation of a historical legacy as exceptional as it is beautiful”.