To the list of human activities threatening the world's wild places we can now add a new item: art. This, at any rate, is the official definition of a scheme which, if it goes ahead, will leave one of the most beautiful mountains on earth blasted by monumental graffiti.
Mount Tindaya, on Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, is an ancient volcanic plug of international geological importance. It is the home of cacti, lizards and flightless birds that have become extinct everywhere else on earth. Perhaps most importantly, the mountain was the holy shrine of the Guanches, indigenous people eliminated soon after the Spanish arrived in the islands. They appear to have used it as an astronomical observatory. In some places, there are elaborate funeral sites.
Most remarkable are the 200 "podomorphs" they left on the rocks: bizarre engravings which look like pairs of feet. Nothing like them has been found anywhere else. Tindaya is still regarded as holy by many people in the islands.
Eduardo Chillida is one of Spain's most celebrated sculptors. He is the winner of the Carnegie Prize and the International Grand Prize for Sculpture. His works are found in public places all over the world. But for years he has been searching for a site on which to leave a vast and lasting testament. He wants to hollow out a mountain, carving an empty cube so big that it would leave a person standing at the bottom speechless with astonishment and awe.
When the Canary Islands government heard about his plan, it got in touch with Chillida: he could have Tindaya. The scheme, officials insisted, would attract tourists and enhance the prestige of their island. The land would become a vast natural gallery for the work of a great man. That the rock this "sculpture" would excavate is worth some £150 million, that government officials have been closely associated with people trying to quarry the mountain and that there is no other earthly way in which they would be able to get away with digging a hole this big are, of course, entirely incidental concerns. This is, the authorities would have us believe, art for art's sake.
The mountain, if this scheme is executed, will be devastated. Geologists have warned that its summit could collapse into Chillida's cube. The dust, disturbance and immediate damage caused by the quarrying could destroy or drive away some of the mountain's rare species. The government has previously sought to restrict access to Tindaya, in order to protect the Guanches' carvings. It could not justify the project without encouraging thousands of people to visit it. Land speculators have moved in already, buying up the endangered scrubland on and around the mountain in the hope that it will become valuable building land once the sculpture has been completed. The government has commissioned neither environmental nor archaeological assessments of its plan.
But the volcanic porphyry from which the mountain is made is in great demand. It is of a particularly beautiful variety, much sought after for facing prestigious buildings. Its value has risen significantly over the past few years. The "sculpture" is, in other words, a brilliant and audacious scam. Government officials have spotted in Chillida's grandiose dreams the means of realising their own.
This is not to suggest that Chillida himself is party to this artful dodge. He is just a vain old man who wants to build a monument that will be impossible to ignore: his egocentricity is being exploited by people who have recognised a perfect convergence of interests. But despite numerous attempts by the islanders opposed to the project to tell him what he is putting his name to, Chillida refuses to acknowledge the problems. He appears to believe that his sculpture is a matter of destiny.
"I went up and found those footprints left by the Guanches and it turned out that they are identical to my signature, but with a few more fingers," he recalls. "Strange, no?"
The opponents of his scheme are, he says, making a fuss about nothing. "I only want to create something for man, a great space where we would feel smaller than we think we are, and more tolerant to one another, a place of tolerance: marvellous."
The problem is that if this project goes ahead, the tolerance it will commemorate will be the tolerance of corruption. A complex, extraordinary place, whose archaeology and wildlife are represented nowhere else will give way to a sheer-sided quarry, impressive but bleak, whose lines echo those of every urban environment on earth. This is how the world loses its wonders: through the venality of officials and the vanity of famous men.
