One day Flora went to look for her grandchildren at the Plus Ultra school and a few meters away she found a sculpture that paid homage to the pinocheras. She read the accompanying poster and explained to the little ones that everything that was included in the text had been passed on by her.
From that moment on, she never thought that the job she had carried out since she was a child, forced by circumstances to help support her family and which she never reneged on, quite the opposite, would bring her so much joy this past month.
“If Jesus saw today that I am going to an interview for the newspaper, he would tell me: ‘You’re willing to do anything, how light you walk”, he laughs. She refers to her husband, who died four years ago, whom she remembers every moment. She always told him that she “compromised everyone” with her things, but the truth is that he “never refused” when she asked him for something.
He says this because he likes to help preserve the tradition, so that the new generations know “how hard it was to work in the mountains”, in a time of hardship and need, although in his case, he did not go hungry because his father had land and was farmer.
Last week the City Council asked him to participate and give his testimony at the inauguration of the aforementioned sculpture, the work of the artist Jesús Pérez. He didn’t hesitate. “I have a good memory and it doesn’t bother me to say it. I am not ashamed of anything, on the contrary, I proudly say that I have been a pinochera”.
She is one of the youngest left in The Guancha. The rest are older, given that this traditional trade disappeared several decades ago, when the socioeconomic model began to change and the population sought greater job stability given that in the mountains “there was no social security or anything. You had to put the seal on the union to have your insurance, ”he recalls.
Florentina Mesa Rodríguez comes from a family of pinocheros. She is the second of six siblings who accompanied their father to the mountain from dawn to look for the dry leaves that fall from the pine and that cover the floors of the pine forests and that were once used as bedding for cattle, packaging to protect the transport of bananas, tomatoes or other vegetables, and as fertilizer on farms. Even, for a long time she served as a mattress filler.
They got up at five in the morning and “don’t you know what we had for breakfast?” he challenges me. “My father milked the goat and gave us raw milk with gofio. Nowadays, who gives raw milk to a child? Nobody”, he answers. “Bodies can’t stand it because it’s very heavy and it comes out warm.” She drank “a lot”, she repeats.
It was his weekend and vacation routine because he went to school from Monday to Friday. In his case, he finished sixth grade and now it is Enma, one of his granddaughters, who gives him directions when she reads. Flora loves it and she tells it proudly.
They carried in the sack what they had for food at home because they spent many hours in the mountains and they had to take advantage of it if the weather was good. One very hot day they couldn’t go “because the pine needles were very hot” and if it rained, they had to leave. When it was very cold, “the boys cried because their hands fell asleep from the frost, until they lit the fire.”
It was a very hard and unprofitable job “but we did it because there was no other choice,” she maintains resignedly. Still, they saw it as fun. “People were always singing, they were hungry but they always sang and we were happy. Now do you see someone singing in the bush?” she says. And immediately afterwards, she argues that “before people were happier, because when they went to reap wheat or pick potatoes she also sang.”
She started when she was 10 years old and stayed until she was 14, the age at which she went to work in a banana packing house in the neighboring municipality of San Juan de la Rambla, where she walked every morning, “and all for eighty pesetas”. When she had her “little money”, she gave it to her mother and always kept a little “because my father got it into our heads that we had to save to have something and not have to ask”. She instilled the same thing in her four children, María Verónica, Jesús Manuel, Bruno and Teresa.
He was there until he was 21, the age at which he got married and he dedicated himself to them for the most part.
Even so, he continued to collect pine needles for his house, because he always had land to cultivate. “I kept going and I keep going to the mountain,” she says.
Now, when he goes upstairs and sees how many needles there are, he holds his head in his hands. “When I grew up there were hardly any, because a lot of families dedicated ourselves to the mountains, especially from Icod El Alto, in Los Realejos. There is so much that it makes you want to roll over and throw yourself on top of it, something that she couldn’t do as a child, ”she jokes.
Flora went to what was known as ‘Monte El Rey’, “which was auctioned off. You couldn’t get into a private one. Or maybe you did and you were lucky that they didn’t see you and nothing happened. She preferred not to risk it.
“It is a job for which you have to have strength, although each one carried what they could”. In his case, at the age of 14 he already carried between 40 and 50 kilos. “And on the shoulder” -he clarifies- “not above the head”. He did the same with the banana pineapples “because with the handles it bothers a lot”.
She didn’t realize if her body ached or not because it was always the same job and she was used to it.
She regrets that currently pine needles are not collected “despite the risk that it is accumulated there, because it can cause many fires”, like the last one that she lived and that forced her to leave her house, located in the El Farrobo area, in the upper part of the town, “where the fire was terrible”.
To this is added that an authorization is necessary to be able to do it, “because if Seprona or the forest rangers find you, they will fine you. It happened to one of my brothers”, he certifies.
She knows the paths perfectly because she walked them since she was little. “I love going,” she confesses, and that is why she is willing to collaborate “in whatever” to tell what life was like before. One day she was called from her grandchildren’s school, where she also worked, to put together the pine needles for Canary Islands Day. “The man’s has two ropes, and the woman’s has only one,” she explains. “I never say ‘no’ to anything, least of all when it comes to preserving our traditions. Today the children hardly know what the mountain is and it’s a shame, ”she laments.
