Tachero

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1973 · Authors: Fernando G. Delgado

Fernando González Delgado (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1947), better known as Fernando G. Delgado, is 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.

Between January 1972 and May 1973 he wrote his first novel Tachero, the real name of a coastal hamlet on the northern slope of the Anaga massif located at the foot of Taganana, but in the novel it is the fictional name of a Santa Cruz de Tenerife of the early 1970s. Thus we can identify the city by its streets, port and picturesque places. One of these places named by the author, now disappeared, is the port tavern "La Viña del Loro", located on La Marina street, which Fernando G. Delgado calls "Las Viñas" in his work, describing it as follows:

«[...] In Las Viñas, the old parrot repeated the swear words taught to him by the sailors and called the drunks by name, giving a measure of the frequency of each one in that decrepit place, where the significance of things was born in us, as the wine, composed chickpeas, cheese and olives took hold of us and made us sing and communicate. And on the contrary, you would turn pink and your modesty or fear or desire would grow; stumbling on the kerbs of the pavements on the way out, reproaching us for the restless behaviour caused by alcohol.

Las Viñas was a meeting place for floral games poets, rhymers of patronal festival programmes, street bards known by all the drunks by their names, and who, from the oldest cultural society, its afternoons of censorship and provincial morality, would come to the tavern to prepare the intrigues of the next contest, proud to be the authors of the sonnets sung to the wine on the high walls of Las Viñas, with a granary above from which sometimes a typewriter could be heard and an old man with glasses walked around with a bunch of invoices, pierced by a thick wire. Meanwhile, below, the bards recited from memory the latest décimas, composed for the date of the conquest of the country, and insisted, with a tongue tied, on the rhetorical song that served as background, merged with the monotony of loud conversations, the boy who enters with the evening paper, the fresh ink, and a thin woman, with breath similar to those who wandered around there, extended her hand without other words, nor other purpose, than to ask for a glass of red wine after the alms.»

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