The mountain of Tindaya (Fuerteventura, Canary Islands) is more than a mountain. It was a sacred site for the indigenous people of Fuerteventura, who decorated it with hundreds of engravings. Its rock has been quarried and sold for ornamental purposes, and can be seen on numerous institutional buildings. It is also the proposed location for a ‘Monument to Tolerance’ designed by renowned artist Eduardo Chillida, consisting in digging a huge cubic cave in its interior. Meanwhile, goat herders continue to use it and tourists visit it everyday, despite access being forbidden to the general public.
Entangled in a complex controversy spanning over thirty years, Tindaya’s future remains suspended in uncertainty. Activists have fought for its full protection and the study and dissemination of its archaeological remains, while the state first licensed the quarries, and then promoted the construction of the Monument to Tolerance - a project that, according to them, would be a turning point for the island.
A film about a mountain as much as a film about doing fieldwork in a hyper-mediated context, ‘Tindaya Variations’ follows the traces of the Tindaya controversy in today’s Fuerteventura. Activist actions, exhibitions, public talks, interviews with locals and computer simulations of the Monument are presented against a background of tourism, post-crisis ruins and arid landscapes.

Official selection: 2019 Royal Anthropological Institute’s Ethnographic Film Festival (Nominated for Werbner Award); 2019 L’Alternativa Film Festival, Barcelona; 2019 Athens Ethnographic Film Festival. Other screenings: Ethnografilm Paris, University of the Basque Country, Casa de la Cultura (Puerto del Rosario, Fuertenventura).

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24648