The silbo gomero will travel through the streets and monuments of the historic centre of La Laguna to commemorate International World Heritage Day, with messages of unity and activities for all ages.

The city of La Laguna and the silbo gomero celebrate this year the 25th and 15th anniversary, respectively, of their declarations as World Heritage by Unesco, two important cultural legacies of the Islands that this Saturday will be twinned to celebrate the International Day of World Heritage. Throughout the morning, the whistled messages will link some of the most outstanding monuments of the historic complex with messages of celebration and unity, a proposal that will be accompanied by participatory activities in the street and an introductory workshop to this intangible asset for all ages.

The councillor for Cultural Heritage of La Laguna, Adolfo Cordobés, recalls that “on 4 December, we will celebrate the first quarter of a century since the declaration of La Laguna as a World Heritage City, an event on which we reinforce our commitment to promote the safeguarding and dissemination of the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the historical complex and the maintenance of its authenticity and integrity”.

For Cordobés, “the values that have made La Laguna the only World Heritage City of the Archipelago are not only linked to monuments or the layout of the streets, but are present in all the cultural assets, traditions and the human legacy of centuries of history, realities that transcend our territory and that unite us with three continents. And this International Day we wanted to build a bridge over the sea and share the celebration with this important Intangible Cultural Heritage, a silbo gomero that is also a symbol of neighbourly union and that we must contribute to safeguard and disseminate”.

With this proposal, explains the artist Rogelio Botanz, promoter of the initiative, “we want to show and celebrate the fact that the citizens of La Laguna have two world heritages of which they should be proud. One, the best known, is the urban design and the historic buildings that rest on this physical surface that we can all walk and contemplate. The other is less obvious, but it is there: the Gomeran whistle which, as an intangible asset, does not rest on a physical space, but on those thousands of Gomeran families and their descendants who, arriving in the middle of the last century from their native island, helped to shape this city that we are today”.

With this twinning, with the participation of the Department of Cultural Heritage of La Laguna and the Silbo Gomero Cultural Association, “we are going to turn the historic streets of La Laguna, for a few hours, into a channel through which the whistled messages walk, to look with new eyes at those rooftops, those towers, those balconies, those bell towers from which the magic of the whistle flies and stimulates minds and hearts”, adds Botanz.

The initiative will feature whistlers from La Gomera and the presence of master whistlers from the Aula Insular in their different local branches on La Gomera, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Laguna. The programme will start at 10:00 a.m. with a brief whistled message to announce the beginning of the day, which will start from the tower of the Concepción, chaining whistles along La Carrera street and from the heights of emblematic buildings, until it reaches the balcony of the Casa de los Capitanes.

Every hour on the hour, until 2 o’clock in the afternoon, different whistled messages will be broadcast with the same itinerary and related to the anniversaries that are celebrated on this day, with phrases such as “Que des la voz pa`bajo, que estamos celebrando el 25 aniversario de la declaración de La Laguna como Patrimonio Mundial por la Unesco” (Let your voice be heard, we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the declaration of La Laguna as World Heritage by Unesco); that “La Laguna and La Gomera today walk hand in hand, the silbo flies through their streets, twinned heritages”, or that “La Laguna welcomed thousands of families who emigrated from La Gomera in the middle of the 20th century”.

Workshops for all ages

At 11:30 a.m., the Museum of History and Anthropology in San Agustín Street will host two workshops on the Silbo Gomero, both for children and adults, given by teachers and children whistlers, both from La Gomera and from the Network of Educational Centres for the Teaching of the Silbo Gomero in the Canary Islands.

Another of the day’s other striking proposals will take place between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, in front of the Teatro Leal. This is the “Whistled Telegrams”, a demonstration of the capacity of the “silbo gomero” to transmit any previously unknown message. A table will be set up with books on the heritage of La Laguna, from which the public will choose a paragraph for the whistlers to transmit from the street to those on the balcony of the Theatre.