The first breaths that allowed me to wander in the educational process were received in a center that, with special popular affection, was called for years the University of Duggi and to which we look today with satisfaction, appreciating the time that has elapsed and acknowledging all those here who offered the initial and fundamental first lessons. I was a Duggi kid. I arrived here by the hand of my parents, in the 50s of the last century. I treasure among that skein of images that make up memories, in that childhood space that, as Rilke points out, is the true homeland, a wealth of names and events that begin with Doña Amparo, in the kindergarten class.
In those years the blackboard had been left behind and we made use of pencil and rubber. I retain the smell of the putty and the echoes of his voice, affectionate and attentive, encouraging us to the line given in the peseta notebooks that had on the cover the image of a beaver or that of other unknown animals here, so that we could scribble with sticks , crossed strokes and worms.
On occasion, when my nose bleeds, Miss Amparo would take me out to this garden, then with a fountain made of Andalusian tiles, white dotted with blue and yellow, and she would allow me to play with a turtle, which wandered freely among the floor of callaos and the lands given to gardening. Further down, before the urgent extension works cut it off, was the access stairway to the large patio, with other fountains that commanded greater ornamentation.
Hand in hand with Don Francisco, a young teacher from La Palma, probably in training, crossed every morning the space that mediated from our house, at Benavides 71, in front of the Placita, to get to the school. My mother and my grandmother Mamaía left me in his care. So the boys and girls, each one in a different wing of the school, would line up and sing before starting classes. We were children of the already attenuated post-war period, who in the middle of the Cold War tried to overcome the years of special harshness and who were distributed to us in the afternoon, before arriving home, a portion of yellow cheese and powdered milk, from the Marshall Plan. Later would come the bottles of milk and milkshakes, coming from the incipient dairy industry, which relegated to oblivion the household chores of the famous milkmaids.
It was a time that clung to the symbols of a martial patriotism, which imposed its codes against the defeated, a period that made us wear the uniform of the blue shirt, in which my mother, as a good palm tree, would not fit any more. There was no choice but to embroider the coat of arms in the front pocket, which was said to be national, the one with the yoke and the arrows, giving it an original touch and, for this reason, distant from the pattern that was bought in Don Avelino’s shop, the Catalan of the sedalinas, in the Rambla de Pulido. Our tender voices sang, loudly, the repertoire of that time: “Isabel and Fernando”, “I had a comrade”, “Prietas las filas”…
SOCIAL AID
In those years, the boys entered through the corner of Duggi street and the girls through Ramón y Cajal. On the exterior wall, between the windows of Ramón y Cajal, in front of the Peregrín Santana flour and pasta factory, the sign with black and red lines remained indelible until well into the 1980s, showing the anagram and the textual citation that announced the Social Assistance, the one with the hand that wielding an arrow faced the hydra of evil, which, like so many things, gave a certain repelús and that we never managed to understand.
Don Ramón and Doña Agustina, with their children, acted as custodians of this center, which is going to celebrate its centenary. In front of the door of his house, a leafy bougainvillea grew freely, in which our balloons used to get trapped. On more than one occasion they were surprised by the rapid entrance, jumping the walls that mediated with the square, of the older ones, whom we called the gandules, who sought refuge fleeing from the chillies, who had been alerted by the breaking of lampposts, the passing of balls from the gardens down the street or any other prank. This center had the honor in the midst of the Republic of officially receiving, in its original baptism, the name of Colegio Blas Cabrera Felipe.
The City Council, which included councilors such as Pedro García Cabrera, wanted to honor the illustrious Canarian scientist with this. Time did not play in favor of the successful agreement, since in the turn of events it was disrupted, minimizing the future of a neighborhood, the Duggi, which was proud to label its streets with that of a large group of children who had achieved honors for their exemplary dedication to the homeland: Cairasco, Iriarte, De Lugo, Pulido, Benavides, Castro, Porlier, Serrano…
Luis Cola Benítez, historian and official chronicler of Santa Cruz, told us that he had located in the City Council minutes the corresponding to the name initially given to this school, raised on the site that in principle was going to be used for military use. The agreement was that it bear the name of the Canarian physicist and researcher Blas Cabrera Felipe, director of the Physical Research Laboratory and rector of the Central University of Madrid in 1931, one of the greatest figures of science that our country has given with international projection. , who died in Republican exile in Mexico, his remains returned to the La Laguna cemetery last year.
The signature of the Plenary session of Santa Cruz, which the historian Carlos García has been able to locate on time, records such a noble decision. We understand that its restitution would be fair, uniting the current name, that of the Holy King, Fernando III of Castilla, father of Alfonso X, with that of Blas Cabrera, from the Canary Islands, thus being designated as the San Fernando Infant and Primary School. – Blas Cabrera Felipe.
