The underground lagoon
Clear cave water holding blind white crabs.
Frank Vincentz — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0
**A collapsed volcanic cave that César Manrique turned into a hall, a lagoon and a white pool — and in the lagoon live blind white crabs found nowhere else** — in northern Lanzarote. ⚠ **The word *jameo* is the key**: **the local term for **a place where a lava tube's roof has fallen in**** — ✅ **opening the cave to the sky**; **and this cave is part of a tube six kilometres long**. ✅ **What Manrique did in 1966**: **he built no building — he arranged the cave** — **a stair, a lagoon, a palm garden in the open gap, and a brilliant white pool**; ⚠ **with almost no straight lines**. ⚠ **And in the lagoon lives the blind white *jameo* crab** — ✅ **an endemic species found only here**, **and the island's emblem**. ✅ **And there is a concert hall inside the cave with natural acoustics.**
Clear cave water holding blind white crabs.
A brilliant pool among palms in the open gap.
A hall inside the cave with natural acoustics.
Carretera Arrecife-Orzola, 35542 Haria, Las Palmas, Spain
**A local artist and architect who persuaded an entire island not to build the way its neighbours had — which is why Lanzarote is different.** ✅ **Who he was**: **César Manrique** (1919–1992) **was born on Lanzarote**, ⚠ **lived for years in Madrid and New York and worked as an abstract painter**; ✅ **then returned to his island in 1966**. ⚠ **What he saw alarmed him**: **mass tourism was beginning** — ✅ **and he had seen what it did to Benidorm and the Costa del Sol**: **concrete towers along the shore erasing the place**. ✅ **What he did**: ⚠ **he persuaded the island authorities into rules still in force**: **(1) **no building above two storeys** outside the capital** (four there); **(2) **houses white**, with green window frames inland and blue on the coast**; **(3) **no roadside advertising hoardings**** — ⚠ **which you notice immediately when driving**; **(4) **no visible power lines** where avoidable**. ✅ **Then he designed the sites themselves**: **Jameos del Agua, the Cueva de los Verdes, the Mirador del Río, the Cactus Garden, his house at Taro de Tahíche, and the Timanfaya restaurant** — ⚠ **on one principle**: **do not build **on** nature, but **within** it, in its materials and forms**. ✅ **The result is that the whole island is a UNESCO biosphere reserve**, ⚠ **and a rare case worldwide of one artist changing a country**.
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