Calle de la Caleta

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1925 · Authors: Francisco Izquierdo

The poet Francisco Izquierdo (La Laguna, Tenerife, 1886-Havana, Cuba, 1971) in his book Medallas , published in Cuba in 1925, dedicates a poem full of memory and longing to the old Calle de la Caleta. 

«Calle de la Caleta, with its salty aroma

to tar, and its ruinous and haughty castle,

with its crudely painted green grille

and some old, rusty, ramshackle pine.

Juancito's tavern, where a sea lion

tobacco chewer was my companion

at dominoes; oh, the times we beat even the landlord

-and he was an ace- winning the wine treat!

And I proclaimed myself captain of a brigantine,

pipe in mouth, strong and with a blue gaze

full of grey distances of the high sea.

A pirate past, with a strange nickname,

that anchored on all the beaches and had an adversary:

Drake, red demon, good child of chance.»

28.465942, -16.247962