It might be in 1962 when Cesar Gonzalez-Ruano visited the Cross portinvited by Isidoro Luz Cárpenter, who that same year was appointed president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, after having been mayor of Porto with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the monarchy of Don Alfonso XIII, the Second Republic and the military regime of General Franco.
The photo, which I have rescued from my archive, shows César and probably his wife, Meri de Navascués, on a camel on the recently inaugurated Avenida de Colón, with Isidoro Luz as an improvised camel driver and the Valle-Mar hotel, in the Ibarra family, in the background.
César responded to Isidoro Luz’s invitation for various reasons. Because of his friendship with the last great politician from the north of the island and for visiting the land of his former friend in Paris, Óscar Domínguez, about whom Ruano recounted really funny things in Memoirs of him.
Like when the painter, during the German invasion and the parade of Hitler’s troops along the Champs Elysées, climbed a tree and loudly insulted the führer and all his relatives. But since the Gestapo did not understand what he was saying, they did not arrest him. The agents believed that he was cheering the Germans.
He also recounts how Óscar imitated Chirico’s painting so well that during an exhibition by the latter painter there was very little work by Chirico and a lot by Óscar, but with Chirico’s signature, with which Chirico, who was a slacker, was very impressed. satisfied when he entered the showroom, in Paris, with everything already assembled. He also imitated Picasso, whom he called “don Pablo”, but Picasso let him do less than the other.
There is a black legend around González-Ruano, regarding his behavior towards the Jews who wanted to enter Spain to flee from Nazi terror. But some authors attribute this phobia against the writer to envy and grudges from his enemies. It is curious: Franco never granted him a journalist’s card, nor was he admitted to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language. César never spoke of politics in his articles, nor in his Memoirs, although his chronicles as a correspondent in Berlin and in Rome during the Second Great War, including an interview with Mussolini, were as biased as those of the rest of the Spanish correspondents.
The Gestapo arrested him in Paris and imprisoned him in the Cherche-Midi military prison. Several times they were about to shoot him and there he wrote his Ballad of Cherche-Midi, considered a masterpiece of poetry made in the war by a Spanish author.
When I was a child, I met González-Ruano at the Miramar hotel in Puerto de la Cruz, owned by the Luz family, where he was staying. The hotel was run by my father. Ruano was a contemporary of another great journalist, a family friend, Don Mariano Daranas, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing and who gave me a precious article, which I published in a special supplement in the newspaper “La Tarde” in 1971. An article lyrical about the forest fronds of the Orotava Valley, “that swirl but do not fade”, said Don Mariano (Las Palmas, 1898- Madrid, 1994).
Daranas and González-Ruano were very close friends. The first was a correspondent for ABC during the European war in the French capital and witnessed firsthand many events related to this war and the role of Spanish diplomats and journalists in it.
In Tenerife, González-Ruano, in his two stays, spent many moments with Luis Álvarez Cruz, who was a master of articles and interviews, and with the archaeologist Luis Diego Cuscoy, who took him to the Museum and showed him the Guanche mummies. to the writer. He confesses in his stories that he was very impressed with the mummy of a young Guanche woman of about 19 years of age, of whom Cuscoy even knew what was the last thing he had eaten before her death, according to what he recounts. Ruan himself.
The famous commander Lorenzo Bruno, who rubbed shoulders in Madrid with the cream of the cream of the time, told me that on one of César’s two trips to Tenerife he was accompanied by a girlfriend, who he introduced to the ladies of Tenerife society as his wife. . When they found out about the deception, it was already too late: the writer had returned to Madrid. The ladies were very upset, because they had showered the young woman with entertainment, bouquets of flowers and gifts. How important would this be today? None, but in a placid and retarded society like the one in Tenerife at that time.
This photo that I have found seems to me that it has not been published, although who knows. I have another in which Luis Álvarez Cruz, César González-Ruano and Isidoro Luz appear, belonging to the latter’s family collection, which I included in one of my books. In any case, a small chronicle of history and the testimony of the presence on the island of Tenerife of one of the greats of Spanish journalism, who was a disciple and friend of Baroja, Azorín, Pérez de Ayala, and companion of many and so many writers and humanists who contributed to the literary greatness of this country, such as Julio Camba, Dr. Marañón and a very long etcetera.
And that he told everything in his Intimate Diary, his articles, his Memoirs and his more than seventy published books, from novels to essays, going through several biographies, including a definitive one: Baudelaire’s and others not so much like Mata- Hari or Unamuno. A journalist who is in history, with his lights and his shadows. As everyone.