She was a camel driver and carried a “little sheep” in her hand. She stood to one side so that the animal wouldn’t kick her. She was the “strongest” among her sisters and brother. That’s why she was the one who “pulled” the car to Arico with her mother “to grind a piece of gofio they gave us.” She went to look for the “little grass” for the goats and firewood when her father was shipped to Africa. And, later, she went to “work in those worlds; to Arico.” Everything on foot from Porís.
If seedbeds had to be fixed, I fixed seedbeds. She was in the tomato and, later, in the cooperative. “If my mother caught a little fish, we went to Fasnia or La Zarza. And I with her. Walking up and walking down because we had no one to take us.” The life of Adela Pérez González was not peaceful. Yes happy. Today she will receive the tribute from her town, within the framework of the V Las Hiedras Festival, organized by the cultural association of the same name, for which it has been recorded by the researcher and popularizer Horacio González, who has made a profile of the life of her.
“Very exciting for the whole town”
Starting at 7:30 p.m., in the Plaza de la Punta de Abona, the event will begin, within which the Arico 2023 Traditional Culture Award will be awarded, the fourth given at the festival. “It is not just for a job,” explains Silvia Luis González, “but because he has defended what is ours. He loves it and it gives him life. She has always been a very given person, involved in the parties” and in the life of Porís itself – where an avenue is named after her – adds this member of the Board of Directors of Las Hiedras.
The mayor, Olivia Delgado, remembers her “from a very young age working in tomato packaging for the Nuestra Señora de Abona cooperative. I remember seeing her all my life the same because the years don’t pass by Adela and she is very exciting for the entire town that the cultural association has seen fit to grant her this recognition,” she adds.
“I think it’s wonderful,” the protagonist responds about this tribute. Wonderful because “I like to see my people all together, I haven’t seen them in a while. My people does not mean mine mine,” she clarifies, but rather “all Arico by weight.” I have family in all of Arico, whom I love very much,” she adds. Although she is “about ninety years old”, she continues playing the lute, which is one of her great passions. But she can no longer go to her performances in her “green, very pretty” SEAT 127, she says. “I’m waiting for the mechanic, but he doesn’t come to fix it. Anyway, I go to the living room, warm it up, fix it and clean it. What if I sell it? The car dies there along with me; Then, let them do what they want,” she says. She had a lute in her house because her uncle Antonio, who died in the Spanish Civil War, left it there.
“The musicians would stand there, on that sidewalk in front, to tune. And I took out what they were playing. I learned alone,” she concludes. She started in the summer with “a lady, Delfina, who played the accordion, at Casa Eufemio.” Later she was at parties like Agustín’s or Don Juanillo’s.
Mondays in Playa de las Américas
“Now we are at Doña Eloísa’s Parranda, where we go very far away, to a hotel in the South in Playa de las Américas, on Mondays. I love it,” she says. And his eyes light up. However, he never liked dances. “We were happy. At that age? “We went wherever they told us,” she explains, to emphasize that “I didn’t like dances, but I had sisters and they did and that’s why we went to La Punta.”
Adela Pérez González has worked all her life to maintain and advance the Porís church. “We did comedies in the church and in the Casa del Vino, on a drum stage to raise money and have the Virgin,” an image of the Virgin of Fátima. “And with those bitches we bought it.” Later came Carmen, patron saint of fishermen.
“I have been there since it began – in the temple of this town. Working to buy the things that were needed. I prepare it on Sunday afternoons, for example. I clean a little shop until people arrive and then I pick up. Now we are making a collection because we want to change the windows below, which are bugged,” she warns.
Soccer team goalkeeper
She also played soccer and was the goalkeeper. “All the girls made a team,” she explains, “and they made me the goalkeeper. “We played in a little field.” From all of this there are graphic memories, photographs, of a woman who was a pioneer and who went to school with Doña Antonia, who was from the peninsula, lived in La Laguna and, “when she left, I stayed in charge of the girls and took them out.” “to go for a walk.”
During her childhood, she did not want dolls, but a doll, which she made herself and called Federico. She still has it on the bed.
“We went down,” he explains, “to Playa Grande, where things appeared because the boats that went to La Gomera and Los Cristianos passed through there. “I wanted to have a little doll,” she says.
He was joining pieces of different parts of remains that he found on the beach: “One day I pulled the little legs: three or four, at least, I pulled. And then I said, ‘well, I’m going to make a little doll.’ I took the two most similar ones. Then the head, which still has a penis on one side, and the little body.”
Building Federico
“I spent quite some time, I joined it with elastic, then I painted the eyes blue and the clothes were made by my sister who is in Santa Cruz and who is a seamstress. Is beautiful. We even gave him a name: Federico,” she explains.
Time passes and has dizziness. He wants them to pass. Not to drive anymore; yes to play the lute in those hotels “very far away, in the South” and take care of her church and her people, who tonight will pay tribute to a woman who smiles wherever she passes.
The honoree, as a young woman, with the lute.
With glasses and hat, on the women’s soccer team.
Adela González will be awarded today.
