
It was founded on April 8, 1922 by a group of young people from a neighborhood with a marked agricultural character in which banana trees predominated, with some farms and in which there were hardly any houses: The Meadows.
Led by the teacher Florencio Sosa Acevedo, who was later a deputy to the Cortes for the Communist Party and mayor for two years of the Cross portthey were concerned with the education of the people at a time when illiteracy reigned.
Thus, they decided that the best way to combat it was to integrate young people from the neighborhood into the social and cultural life of the city, because being a rural area, the approach to the town center, where the social and cultural activities of the moment, it was very difficult. They got a place, located at number 112 of the Las Dehesas road, their headquarters until today, and on April 8, 1022 they founded the Taoro Valley Education and Recreation Society of Las Dehesas. Its first president was Marcelino Sosa, Florencio’s brother, who served as secretary.
It worked under that name until the First Republic and then it was renamed the Valle de Taoro Cultural Society, although in the neighborhood and in the Cross port it is known as the ‘Casino de La Dehesa’.
During the declaration of war it was paralyzed for a while, between the 40s and 50s it went into decline from which it came out graceful and was reactivated again. The Franco regime arrived and many of these activities were suspended, conditioned by the laws of the new regime, until it returned to recover the dynamics and cultural activity that in the neighborhood always had some reflection.
closure risk
A decade ago it also went through a difficult time and managed to come back, although few activities have been maintained. It was never closed despite the difficult times it went through, even at the risk of disappearing.
It always had a “masculine” character and was run by men given the preponderance of men in the social manifestations of that time. At its foundation, it was not contemplated that women should be part of it, although in recent years attempts have been made to integrate them, both in management positions and in the activities of society.
“Francoism served to incorporate them into social life. They went to sew and rehearsed in a folkloric group within a modality called choirs and dances”, recalls the journalist and former mayor of Porto Salvador García.
That was the initial kick and little by little they were added until in the 80s the Casino acquired another participatory dimension. Proof of this is that the first movements of the current neighborhood association were there.
It is the only entity with a marked social and cultural character in Puerto de la Cruz, together with the so-called Casino de los Caballeros, which was only open for a couple of years but whose activity was more focused on leisure.
The Casino de La Dehesa tried to “socialize at a time when it was difficult to do so”, underlines García. Like other similar institutions, it had large rooms where people gathered to kill leisure. Well into the 1970s, theatrical pieces were offered at its headquarters, complemented with some music but without instrumental boasting. “A piano or a guitar was enough, which they used to star, well invited or children of the partners”, he points out. It was the time of greatest splendor together with that of the first years.
It had a reading room and a library in which not only the press was offered, but also books that the associates themselves used to donate and that still exist. In another space, they enjoyed playing cards or dominoes.
On specific dates, such as the end of the year parties or the Carnivals, they summoned the associates and in some cases, the entire public. Until a decade ago, it was organized on Carnival Monday, an event attended not only by members but also by friends and acquaintances, says Cristóbal Díaz Tena, president of the organizing committee for the Centenary events.
A bar that opened in the evenings
The institution had a small bar at its headquarters that was only open in the evenings and in which only white wine and chochos were served, a small canteen that continues to function run by the society itself.
At the initiative of the population, the church of San Pablo was built in Las Dehesas, “but where they met, went and made some kind of agreement was in the Casino”, emphasizes the Puerto Rican journalist. It was the alma mater of the neighborhood.
The people who went down to the town used the Las Dehesas road because it shortened the path and that meant a very close link with the Punta Brava neighborhood, because further on from the institution’s headquarters is the Las Adelfas road, which connects this neighborhood with the helmet. When the old unitary school of Las Dehesas disappeared due to a shortage of students, those who remained went to study at the center of Punta Brava.
In the Casino there was also the germ of a famous Canarian wrestling team, Punta Brava-Atlante, now defunct, whose directors frequented the society a lot.
At present, the entity chaired by Domingo García Díaz has almost a hundred partners, among whom very few are still women, an objective that remains to be achieved. The anniversary marks a before and after for society and also influences future challenges, although the first, given the situation, is to keep it open and try to restore normality, says Cristóbal Díaz Tena.
“We had planned to do many things for the first centenary but we had to stop them due to COVID, so we decided to focus on the 8th, the date on which it was founded,” he says.
On Friday evening, the president of the entity recalled the important people who passed through the Society while Salvador García made a journey through the history and the relationship between society and the neighborhood. The mayor of Porto, Marcos González, also intervened. The act was closed by the folkloric group Los Almendros, a native of the neighborhood.
There have been many famous people who have been part of society. Florencio Sosa is joined by another teacher, Narciso Brito, and more recently Martín Álvarez, “a person thanks to whom many of the activities of recent years have been promoted together with his collaborators”, underlines the president of the organizing committee of the centennial events.
The challenges ahead are many, but there is no doubt that the priority is to return to pre-pandemic normality. Another, no less important, is to unite society with the neighborhood association, because in the end they are the same and that union is essential to continue keeping the social and cultural activity of the neighborhood alive.