History - Arts - Travel - Humour

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1979 · Authors: Miguel Borges Salas

Miguel Borges Salas (1899-1986) was one of the most ingenious Canarian writers of the 20th century. His lighthearted view of everyday life and the personal skill he demonstrated in revising history in an unorthodox way made him one of the most admired pens in the journalistic literature of the islands. He appeared in print at the age of 15 in the pages of La Prensa, one of the most representative newspapers of Tenerife, which gave rise to the current El Día, where he published until his death. He travelled through the United Kingdom, France and the United States, acquiring great knowledge in agriculture, until he earned a doctorate in Edaphology. In 1950 he carried out the rice plan of Venezuela. He won the Leoncio Rodríguez journalism award and surprised in the last years of his life with a prodigious memory that he poured into articles, collected in the book H istoria-Artes-Viajes-Humorismo .

In an article from this publication, titled "A London Good Friday," the author recalls a meeting of fellow countrymen in London in the early decades of the 20th century, longing for the passage through the streets of Santa Cruz of the procession of Nª Sra. de las Angustias from the church of El Pilar, naming the most distinguished members of the Chicharrero society who gathered there.

«There was eating, drinking, no singing nor gunshots, and after the meal, mentally, we evoked the procession of Nª Sra. de las Angustias, from the church of El Pilar, which at that hour would be following its route. One thirty in London was equivalent to twelve noon in Santa Cruz, and the unforgettable Don Aldolfo , moved, tells us: "Now it must be climbing - the procession - along Calle del Castillo; Doña Adela and her niece Sixta and "the girls" (referring to the family of Don Emilio Serra) and Emilio's poacher, kneeling on the old balcony from Nelson's time, with tears in their eyes, watching under a splendid sun, so different from this grey and foul one, the passage of the traditional procession".

I added - since I have been a "processionist" - the spectacle when the image on its way made a brief stop in front of the house of the "girls" of Buitrago (two almost centenarian sisters), and there were also tears on the balconies of Isidrito Guimerá, with his wife Doña Manuela Gurrea, his son José Manuel (the poet) and Miss Ravina. Already on Teobaldo Power towards El Pilar, opposite what was "Santa Cecilia" where Teobaldo Power performed his unforgettable Cantos Canarios on the piano, my remembered painting teacher Don Teodomiro Robayna with his wife, his sister Doña Emelina and their two children, Gumersindo and Carmita (do you remember, Gumersindo?) leaning out of the windows of the huge mansion, with a splendid courtyard of lush fig trees, heliotropes and rose bushes. Adjacent to that house, on the corner of San Lorenzo (today Pérez Galdós), it was possible to see Don Ulises Guimerá Castellano, with a venerable beard, with the whole family praying as the moving image passed by. Don Ramón Gil-Roldán with all his family; the family of the steadfast friend Don Fernando Arozena, his wife and children; Mr Encinoso and Doña Magdalena; Don Alfredo Williams and, already on Calle del Pilar, the tavern known as "La Restinga", half closed (I mean with the doors half shut with some late parishioners inside easing their sorrows); Don Francisco Bonnín and family, sheltered under the shady canopy of the violet bougainvillea; Mr Gómez, commander of the Civil Guard and forces of the Institution, whose barracks were opposite the church; Mr Saavedra (from the subordinate Telegraph Corps); Don Francisco La Roche y Aguilar; Don Agustín Guimerá y del Castillo Valero, father of the second-in-command of the "Juan Sebastián Elcano" and of Marcos Guimerá Peraza (the tireless notary pursuer of the life and work of José Murphy); Don Amaro, with his establishment on the corner of Amargura (General Morales); the famous harpist Clotilde Cerdá (Esmeralda Cevantes) behind the garden wall; Felipito Poggio; Alfredo Díaz (the Sherlock Holmes of Tenerife) and his wife Marianita La Serna; the widow Mrs Perdomo... and as a sonorous finale the drum and bugle band of the Red Cross, the loudest, most resounding and rhythmic in Spain. [...]»

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