The last half century of Spain through the life of Ramón

He is a native of Algeciras but came to the Canary Islands 53 years ago, fell in love, got married and stayed in Tenerife, although this did not prevent him from traveling the world, as he dreamed of since he was young.
Ramón Michán studied English Philology at the University of La Laguna while working in the hospitality industry, a sector in which he began at the age of 15. His passion was teaching but one of his bosses “bought” it, offering to earn double what a school had offered him and with two little girls and a third on the way, he did not hesitate.
Ramón managed several hotels in Puerto de la Cruz, such as Las Vegas, and in the south of the island Bitácora, Vulcano and Playa de la Arena for 11 years.
However, his passion for philology was always present. “Both as a hotel manager and as a teacher that I never was, I have always enjoyed what I do,” he confesses. Now retired, he is dedicated to organizing informative routes with the CITs of Santa Cruz and Puerto de la Cruz and is in charge of those dedicated to the writer Agatha Christi at the festival that bears his name, both in Spanish and English.
He had been with the idea of ​​writing a book on tourism for a long time and during the pandemic he finished shaping it. This is how Ramón x 3 arose, a book about his life that is an excuse to talk about the last fifty years of Spain and how tourism emerged in Tenerife, with an almost deserted South until some “audacious” businessmen decided to build hotels “and it is currently the best concentration of four-star facilities in all of Spain.”
The book begins with his grandfather, Ramón Michán Garzoly, who went to the war in Cuba, continues with his father, Ramón Michán Marín, who fought in the Civil War in 1938, was taken prisoner by Franco’s troops and spent seven months in Pamplona, ​​and culminates with him, who had to live a different and changing political context. In his case, he did not go to any war but he enlisted as a voluntary recruit in the Extremadura Infantry Regiment.
Ramón Michán finished his secondary studies in record time, four years in one, and although the teachers spoke with his parents to convince him to continue studying for a university degree, he was clear about his decision: earn some money and travel abroad to the first chance.
In Ramón x 3 he reviews the dictatorship and the main political events in Spain in recent years that confronted a large part of society at the time. His wedding was an example, since his father had enlisted in the Republican Army and his father-in-law, in Franco’s. They realized that day that both had taken part in the battle of Teruel but on different sides, “trying to kill each other.”
He says that his marriage was “an emotional act of reconciliation and a symbol of the transformations that were gradually taking place in Spain and I could not be happier,” he confesses.
At the same time, it tells of the transformation of tourism and of Puerto de la Cruz, with hotels that no longer exist, roads that were banana plantations and areas, like La Paz, that were not even developed.
The hospitality industry that Ramón knew and practiced is far from the current one, indeed, it has completely disappeared. “Before the salaries were low but in a hotel there was a doorman, bellboy, counseling, reception, they took your luggage and in the restaurant the waiters knew you. All that is gone ”, he says.
In his case, he managed to manage teams with more than 200 employees and the director did everything, hired the employees, went on a trip to promote the hotel and organized events. “Now if a hotel has 100 workers it is already a lot because they are the same as banks, reservations are made online and there are directors of everything, marketing, entertainment, reception, kitchen …”.
So in 2010, when the hotel where he worked was acquired by a large Spanish tourist group, he decided to take the plunge and retire a year earlier than planned. They offered him to stay, but at the age of 64 and about to leave, he was not interested in learning a new system “and it would not have been convenient for them to teach me either, so we reached an agreement and were very happy.”
Ramón x3 is a dual book. This does not mean a literal translation of the texts but two versions of the same story, “because there are things that must be explained to an Englishman, such as, for example, that it is a churro. That is why it is ideal for people who are learning either of the two languages ​​”.
He also thought about them when writing them. Each chapter has a simple and entertaining style and the perspective of a tourism professional. Ramón always liked Ernest Heminway a lot: “short sentences and to the point so that the reader understands”.