“We are worried, no member of our Church wanted something like this,” says Boris Portnykh, a 33-year-old native of Kiev, the son of a Russian from Siberia and a Ukrainian from Kiev, who works as secretary to the Orthodox parish priest in Tenerife, Vasily Fedik .
Like the majority of Russian-speakers in the south of Tenerife, “in our Church, nor in normal life, we distinguish ourselves by being Russians or Ukrainians, we are all the same, and today more than ever it shows”, he comments before the latent concern about the invasion of the Russian Army in Ukraine. Waiting to see the Orthodox parishioners who every Sunday, almost a hundred, go to the Callao Salvaje chapel in Adeje, Boris recalls that “I live in Palm-Mar and diverse nationalities do it there in harmony, there has never been a problem for being from this or that country”.
Of the same opinion is Katerina Kranevskaya, who also lives in the coastal town of Arona: “We never ask ourselves if you are Russian or Ukrainian, Lithuanian or Belarusian, we are all Russian-speakers and we get along in harmony”, although she, Russian by birth, has an excuse for what is happening: “Ukraine has not complied with the Minsk treaty, signed in 2015 with France and Germany.” Likewise, Katerina acknowledges that she has been living in Tenerife for 15 years, married to a Canarian and mother of three children, that there are many Ukrainians who hate Russia, but there is also another large part that would like to be Russians. “In Tenerife, the majority of Ukrainians are pro-Russian, here we are all united” and gives the example of her friend, Vitalia Levitskaya, from Kharkov, who acknowledges that “many Ukrainians with family and friends here have already advanced the trip to Tenerife so could happen.” For his part, he lamented that “this war is not good for Russia, we can already see how the ruble has collapsed”, although he insisted: “We cannot allow the United States to have soldiers on our border, that NATO has strong control with our neighbors”.
the great church
A year ago the first temple of the Orthodox Church in the Canary Islands should have been built, in the municipality of Adeje. However, according to Boris Portnykh, secretary of the Orthodox parish priest of Tenerife, a controversy between the construction company and the architect of the project, about the quality of the roof materials, has kept the work stopped for more than a year and it is now when They have resumed work to finish the roof.
The temple, already built in its central structure, looks spectacular in the area of La Enramada, in La Caleta de Adeje, and is a source of pride for thousands of Slavs who process Orthodox Christianity. Although not all are necessarily Orthodox, according to Boris Portnykh, the church could serve the almost 10,000 Russian-speakers who reside in the south of Tenerife. If we add Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Georgians, for example, we would be talking about the main nucleus of foreigners in Adeje and Arona, similar to the Italians, although Portnykh acknowledges that more than half of those Slavs who have residence in Tenerife, only spend a few months on the island, while those who reside there all year round work mainly in sectors such as restaurants, real estate and tourism, including pleasure boats to visit the cetaceans”, he tells us. the secretary of the parish priest Vasily Fedik.
It does not hide that the large colony of residents of the former Soviet Union countries have great purchasing power, financially supporting the construction of the temple in La Caleta, with gratitude to the Adeje City Council for the free transfer, very close to the historic hermitage of San Sebastián, of 2,400 square meters, after the first stone was laid in the summer of 2019, by the Orthodox bishop of Madrid and Portugal, Néstor Sirotenko and the mayor of Adeje, José Miguel Rodríguez Fraga.
The temple is projected in two buildings, one as a temple proper and the other as a socio-cultural center, which, in turn, will be surrounded by gardens and trees. Until it is built, masses will continue to be held on Sundays in the Christian temple of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, in Callao Salvaje.
