In 1917 the Russian revolution began that ended the dynasty of the tsars. That same year, the entry of the United States into World War I tipped the balance definitively on the side of the allies. In Portugal, in Fatima, three little shepherds affirmed that they saw the virgin. And in Lanzarote, on July 28, Eulogio Dorta was born. This 2023 he will be 106 years old, which makes him one of the longest-lived neighbors of Santa Cruz. Because Eulogio has spent half his life living in Vistabella, where he arrived in the 50s, with his wife and his daughter, to build with his own hands the house in which today he operates with total independence despite his age. .
When asked what he does to have already completed more than a century of life, his answer is very simple, “live”. She assures that there is no secret, “I eat everything that is put in front of me” and remembers how in Lanzarote she ate “gofio, dried fish, cheese…”. She even protests because the glass of wine she drinks daily isn’t fuller when it’s served to her, “I still have a mouth and I can swallow”, she jokes. The only ailment he suffers from is deafness, but as he himself explains, raising his voice and speaking slowly, he understands everything perfectly.
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
Eulogio Dorta, a resident of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, will celebrate 105 years of lucidity and good health. FRAN PALLERO
The profession of bricklayer, just like his father was in Haría, in Máguez, allowed him to raise his family, his three children, and his wife, yes, after the army let him go. And it is that, like many Spaniards, with the outbreak of the Civil War, Eulogio was recruited to go to the front, where he was for three years, in the front line of combat, where he was even wounded. Eulogio is one of the survivors of what is known as the Battle of the Ebro, in which the most combatants participated, the longest and one of the bloodiest of the entire war, according to historians.
A stage of his life that he remembers vividly. “We carried a backpack in which only the ammunition for the machine gun weighed 11 kilos, and with that we had to advance, jump over walls, everything…”. He perfectly lists everything he had on him: ammunition, strapping, the carabiner, hand pumps, the gas mask, the helmet, “which weighed a kilo”…
When he was wounded, he explains that the only thing he did not leave behind was his helmet, everything else was left on the battlefield, including a shoe. “We were advancing when they started shooting at us from one side and the other and we had to run. I hid behind the trunk of an olive tree and watched the bullets whistle from one side to the other. That day only one died.”
He says that when he was able to start running again, between bursts of machine guns, and telling himself “whatever God wants”, he was able to reach the command post, and that’s when he realized that he had been wounded. “I arrived without a shoe and bleeding. They had even already called roll. It was the sergeant who realized that he was bleeding and sent me to the infirmary. The bullet entered between his tendons but did not touch anything, ”he details while he points to the exact point on his ankle where he was injured.
Fifteen days in the infirmary and again at the front. “I healed before, but we had to wait for a few of us to get closer to where they were fighting, because we didn’t even know where we were,” he recalls.
He fondly remembers the “Italians” with whom he had to fight in the mixed brigades. “Things were different with them, they were the strike force, we were never in the trenches. If a front had to be broken, when they sent us, they were the ones who went ahead”, and when the war ended and they left “we noticed it, they took everything they had brought with them, the weapons, the tanks, and the food, it was them leaving and starting to go hungry ”, he admitted.
It tells amusingly how they did “lice races”. “They put their hand in their armpits, because that’s where they got together the most, and they took one out and put it on a cardboard with others to see which one went the furthest.”
He is moved when he remembers how the captain of his company had the courtesy to say goodbye one by one of his soldiers, “I can’t help it, every time I remember how it was one by one I get emotional, no one had a gesture like that, no one” .
After the war, he could not return to the Canary Islands. She spent years on “wait”. “We continue to stand out in Catalonia because they did not trust the Catalans, consolidating the positions gained with the war.” He surprises his family with a revelation and it is that he had a half girlfriend in Catalan lands. “It wasn’t a girlfriend, we were talking, but it wasn’t anything serious, I had a girlfriend waiting for me here,” he says with a sly smile, and takes the opportunity to remember the song that the soldiers sang when they entered the villages, asking the girls not to look at them. from the balconies, which made them lose their step.
When he was finally able to return to the Islands, already discharged, he had to continue another three months linked to the army because “there were rumors that the English were going to send ships to invade the coasts, and we had to take care of the shores of the beaches”.
He returned to Lanzarote, where he married, and had his first daughter, Josefina, with whom he now shares a house, and who is on his way to living as long as his father, now 79 years old. Her husband, José, also boasts of good health at 83 years of age. Guillermo and Lucinda are her other two children. He was married for more than 60 years to Lucinda, who died at the age of 91.
Until the arrival of the covid, Eulogio went out alone, moved more freely, but, as his daughter Josefina explains, with the pandemic “as a precaution we opted not to go out.” That has not made a dent in the health of this hundred-year-old man who, every day, climbs the dozen steps that take him to the roof where he takes care of his plants with all the care in the world. How much his 57-year-old granddaughter Eurices, Josefina’s daughter, says that her health is so good that “she doesn’t take any medication, and even when my parents got sick from COVID, he didn’t get it even though they all lived in the same house.”
Eulogio has ten grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren, among whom is Damaris, Eurices’s daughter and Josefina’s granddaughter, who proudly speaks of her great-grandfather, helping him remember and showing him the black and white photos she keeps on her mobile.
The only thing about his health that Eulogio remembers with disgust are the times he has had to undergo surgery, “there I had a bad time.” Up to three times they have operated on him and they have removed a piece of intestine, although “it did not affect me to eat,” he says with a half smile. He underwent the last one at the age of 102. “The doctor operated on him because she told us that he was in such good health that it was worth it for him to live what was ahead of him with quality of life,” says his granddaughter.
