It is not the first time that Queen Sofía acts as a defender of nature. A regular collaborator of environmental entities, both terrestrial and maritime fauna and flora, this Saturday she participated on Las Teresitas beach, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in a release of sea turtles recovered from different injuries at the Cabildo wildlife center insular. The two specimens have returned to their natural habitat, baptized by Queen Sofia with the names of Lemon and Elma.
The King's mother has been accompanied by four young people from the Asperger's Association of the Canary Islands, whose leaders have a therapeutic and ecological program underway.
A team of divers from the Terramare Association collaborated in this release event in Las Teresitas, accompanying the turtles to ensure that they emerged through the mouth of the beach into the open sea.
Before heading to Teresitas beach, where she greeted some of the bathers who were enjoying the sun and water at that time, Queen Sofía visited the facilities of the La Tahonilla Wildlife Recovery Center, in La Laguna, where Lemon and Elma and other specimens of their species were recovered from the injuries caused, mainly, by the nylon of the fishing gear that strangles their limbs and when they reach the center they have to amputate them. Many are also injured or killed by ingesting plastics that float in the sea and that animals swallow when they believe they are jellyfish. Plastics clog their digestive system and prevent them from feeding on marine species.
La Tahonilla is a center dependent on the Cabildo of Tenerife, it is responsible for receiving, caring for and reintroducing injured wild animals found by diving clubs, sports docks, fishing guilds, public organizations or any other person on the island.
It currently treats about 1,500 specimens of animals, to which are added some 2,000 specimens that are cared for during the Cory's shearwater campaign, a species affected by light pollution, especially at the time when the chicks leave the nest and They make their first flights.
In addition, this center has a nursery dedicated to the production of flora, approximately 30,000 plants per year, of 50 species, for ecological restoration and recovery of the thermophilic forest, and also for direct sale to the public.
During the visit to this center and at the release ceremony, the queen was accompanied by the presidents of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Rosa Dávila, and of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Astrid Pérez; the mayor of Santa Cruz, José Manuel Bermúdez; the Government delegate in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana; the Minister of Ecological Transition, Mariano Hernández Zapata, and the Deputy Minister of the Presidency, Alfonso Cabello.
Queen Sofia periodically participates in the release of turtles in Mallorca and for years, accompanied by her grandchildren when they were small, she attended the return of the recovered specimens to the sea on the island of Cabrera. Since 2019, and through the Reina Sofía Foundation, she has collaborated with the Palma Aquarium Foundation in a marine fauna protection program. The result of this agreement, which began in 2019, is the provision to the Palma aquarium of two UCI tanks/reservoir, to keep sea turtles in serious or critical condition alive and to promote the recovery of these specimens.
On Friday, in La Laguna, also in Tenerife, Queen Sofía presided over the concert for the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Group of World Heritage Cities of Spain that took place in the cathedral of La Laguna, the city that holds the currently the presidency of the entity. The concert was attended by representatives of the different towns that host monuments or historical sites such as Baeza, Cáceres, Ávila, Córdoba, Tarragona and Santiago de Compostela, among others.
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