The Tenerife snowman is named as the ‘ugliest’ statue in Spain!

The well-known Snowman, located on the roundabout of Avenida Los Majuelos on the border between La Laguna and Santa Cruz in Tenerife, has been voted as the worst monument on one of the 23,000 roundabouts throughout Spain for the fourth time, however, a group of local residents are trying to achieve the opposite by petitioning for it to be recognized as an official Tenerife landmark.

The online surveys to find the best and worst statues on roundabouts in Spain started locally in Murcia but have spread nationwide with thousands of people taking part, uploading pictures, nominating a roundabout, and voting.

Ironically, the name of the survey is ‘Roundabouts’ which is also the pet name for the Tenerife snowman who locals refer to as “Rotondismo”, and of course the fact that an island with the climate of Tenerife has a snowman as a monument.

Since the surveys went national, the snowman has been voted the ugliest four times and has been in the top 10 every other time, and has been crowned as the “greatest monumental horror in all of Spain” in other surveys.

The 12-metre high snowman was created by the renowned Czech artist Jirí Georg Dokoupil, whose designs achieved great success during the 1980s after he was commissioned by the Santa Cruz Council to design the 1987 Carnival poster. From that he was also chosen to make this sculpture, which from the beginning has been surrounded by controversy.

Firstly, because local residents criticized its enormous cost and dubious aesthetics, and secondly because the Autonomous Organism for Culture (OAC) of Santa Cruz has refused on several occasions to maintain and clean it, saying that it is not their property.

Ultimately whatever your opinions or thoughts on “Rotondismo” the snowman, you have to admit you always look out for it when travelling up the TF-2 motorway and you always point it out to people who are going there for the first time!