By Domingo Medina.| The perpendicular street of 450 linear meters, which begins in Viana and ends where it meets Rodríguez Moure and Avenida de la Universidad (Camino Largo), is called Cabrera Pinto. The oldest name for this road, which reached the lagoon, was known as the street that goes to Tejar de Moreno, which is the one that led to the San Sebastián hospital, founded in 1507 on the initiative of Juan López de Villera, where today is the Hogar del Santísimo Cristo de La Laguna residence (formerly the Nursing Home), on Viana street. El Tejar de Moreno was installed very close to the lake, where the water they needed to make the Arab tiles that were used so much in the construction of the roofs of the lagoon houses was extracted. The historian Manuela Marrero, tells us in reference to the Gomero “Cristóbal Moreno who in 1525 received a census of two lots in the lagoon, in the part where good and resistant clay is made.”
Later this road was called Fagundo, in reference to a neighbor of the original street. The name of Tejar de Moreno y Fagundo appears in the Tazmía de la Isla de Tenerife from 1552, by Francisca Moreno Fuentes. It was also called El Peral street in 1793.
In the Lent of 1807, the Island of Tenerife again suffered a very important epidemic.
During Holy Week of that year, in La Laguna the number of sick and dead was considerable, “mainly the plague has fallen on the neighborhood of San Juan and the street called del Peral. Although the weather was clear, the processions did not leave the temples due to a lack of people to accompany and carry the images. There were such a number of corpses that they put two in each grave; They then proceeded to bury them in the hermitages of San Juan and San Benito, according to the Diary of Appointments of Juan Primo de la Guerra”. This fact led to a complaint from the clergyman, Pedro Bencomo, to the health authorities, asking that they bury the dead with respect and in accordance with the norms of the Church.
This epidemic accelerated the construction of the first cemetery in La Laguna, which was completed and its first burial was in 1814, that is, 7 years later.
During the night of September 19 to 20, 1846, Francisco Núñez Álvarez, a small owner, a simple man who lived in a modest house on this street, was found dead in his bed. The doctors who assisted him, doctors Gaspar Jerónimo and José Bethencourt, discovered a three-inch wound in the neck, tearing the flesh up to the third vertebra. He had no known enemies, “his only fault of his” was that he was hardworking and thrifty. The murder, despite the fact that an ax and a cane-cutting machete were found in the Tanque Grande with which they carried out this painful event, was never clarified. The suspects were acquitted.
Luciano Morales was from this street, a popular character from La Laguna who was characterized by the fantastic tales he told in the “patience bench”, located in the Plaza del Cristo, very close to the beginning of the Las Peras road. Many people would gather there, cars would even stop, so that their owners, taking advantage of the trip, could listen to “Cho Luciano Morales”, as he was known. His stories were nothing more than exaggerated stories, but in the absence of “TV, internet and cell phones” they made them have a good time. His grandson Juan Manuel García Cabrera, a merchant on this street and a poet, winner of several prizes related to Canarian songs, said that his grandfather’s stories were the fruit of his extraordinary imagination. According to the journalist Luis Álvarez Cruz, the popular character had a magic lamp lit on his head.
In what was then Fagundo street, the Ateneo de La Laguna was founded in November 1904. Its first president and co-founder was the poet José Hernández Amador. Other founders include Adolfo Cabrera Pinto, Francisco González Díaz and Benito Pérez Armas. The main purpose of this cultural entity was from the beginning and as established in its statutes, to contribute by all means to the scientific and literary progress of the country. Subsequently, the Ateneo was transferred to its current headquarters in the Plaza de la Catedral, after passing through a venue in the Plaza de La Concepción and for a time in the Teatro Viana.
WHO WAS CABRERA PINTO?
Don Adolfo Cabrera-Pinto y Pérez was born in Santa Cruz de La Palma on July 31, 1855. He graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Seville. He held a professorship in Ávila and was an assistant professor at the Granada Institute and at the Ciudad Real Institute until he returned to the Canary Islands.
He was appointed director of the General and Technical Institute of the city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, where he did a great job from 1901 to 1925. In addition to being a teacher, he was a great and prominent journalist, editor of El Popular, which was published in Santa Cruz de La Palma and collaborator of other newscasts. He was also part of the commission to recover university studies and worked tirelessly for the reestablishment of the University of San Fernando and the School of Teaching. He was the person who intervened requesting university studies before King Alfonso XIII during his visit to La Laguna.
Don Adolfo Cabrera Pinto was a very relevant personality in La Laguna and we cannot find a better description of his charisma than the one made by the Tenerife writer María Rosa Alonso when she says: “Don Adolfo and his wife lived in La Laguna, in a house on Calle Carrera, spacious and spacious house, which is on the corner of Núñez de la Peña, and occupies one side of it up to the corner of Bencomo” (today Mayor Alonso Suárez Melián).
“Don Adolfo would leave this house, dressed in black, with a hat and a cane, often accompanied by his white dog, named Nilo, who walked with him at a time when the threat of automobiles did not exist and the streets of La Laguna were wide. runners for our children…”
The City Council of La Laguna named him Adoptive Son of the City. This street was labeled with his name and the faculty of the Laguna Institute agreed to call the aforementioned center the Canarias Cabrera Pinto Institute.
The illustrious professor died in Seville on December 3, 1926 at the age of 71.
