Certain People

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1989 · Authors: Fernando G. Delgado

Fernando González Delgado (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1947-Faura, Valencia, 2024), better known as Fernando G. Delgado, was a broadcaster, journalist, politician and writer with a long established career. He began in the world of media on his native island, winning a position as announcer at Radio Nacional de España in 1967. Later, he moved to Madrid where he graduated in Journalism from the Universidad Complutense. In 1992 he became the weekend news presenter for TVE's Telediarios. He has contributed to the newspapers El Día, Pueblo, Informaciones and El País.  With his novel La mirada del otro he won the 1995 "Planeta" prize.

Fernando G. Delgado, in his third novel, titled Certain People and published in 1989, creates a portrait of an era (the 1950s) set in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, following a sacrilegious theft and its subsequent consequences and outcome. Many fragments of the novel describe the provincial Santa Cruz under the Franco dictatorship. We choose one that describes a wedding.

«The dawn light of Santa Cruz de Tenerife was born from the sea and the tower of the Concepción stood out against a red light that gave the morning an atmosphere of calm. The heels of the high shoes of those forming the modest wedding procession made their steps resound in the silence of the holiday, only disturbed by the noisy murmur of the hurried conversation, the indecipherable dialogue of those women. The bell of the Caja de Ahorros clock struck the half hour (it was seven thirty) as they left Consolación street and entered Recoba Vieja and the Guimerá Theatre, down Santo Domingo, then La Noria, until the family atrium of the Concepción, which at the top is bordered by a Canarian balcony. They wore their best lace veils and some fastened the tips of their mantillas on their chests with striking costume jewellery brooches [...]»

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