ALONG WITH PUERTO DE LA CRUZ, WHICH WE HAVE ALREADY VISITED, this, La Laguna, is my place; I said as much to the painter Pedro González as we drank wine in La Carrera, the street next to the convent of Las Clarisas; here the air which animates my spirit comes into play and this place where I now pick up again my island journey is the landscape which my feet already know; I know that it is a desert, or almost, a place where there are almost no palm trees, almost no plants, but the air, which is its principal inhabitant, wails as though it would destroy the whole world, and memory itself; and one walks into the purest of seas which seems always to be in a state of storm, roaring like an adolescent, wrinkled as though it had just suffered a terrible gale, like the one that scared everyone, even the outlaw (played by Edward G. Robinson, unforgettable) in Key Largo.
This is my place, La Laguna. Let me offer up a personal homage, the reiteration of a visit which I always owe it, a journey which I recommend as one would recommend drinking the best water from the best spring in the best house of best memory.
La Laguna is the place where I went to university; for many years it was the only university in the whole of the Canary Islands, and now it shares this honour with the University of Las Palmas. When it was the only university of the Islands, it was the common spot where students from every island came to study, which gave the City of the Sheriffs (a nickname that dates back to the time of the conquistadors, because it was here that they first drew up the plans for the exercise of their power) a cosmopolitan air, of course still very insular, but the cosmopolitan air that all students give to a place. They came from everywhere, and they gave the city a strange bohemian aspect, something which I am afraid it lacks today, because students tend to live in their houses rather than in shared accommodation or in the fraternities which were the scenes of an almost legendary wildness in the past.
La Laguna. It is here, in front of me. I can touch it, I touch the city; it is a tactile memory, I miss it; but now I touch it; it is a city which exists in order to be touched, it is not just a city, it is music as well, an inner voyage; it has never stopped having a sound of its own; the sound of rain, the sound of footsteps over the cobblestones, the clear sound of the night, the sound of the wind at a street corner, the sound of winter, the dry sound of summer.
One day in La Laguna, very early, when I was a student, I came here at dawn. Air is loneliness, the air of La Laguna is solitude, cold air, open air, as though it were the memory of a child, and I touch the air, it stands against my face, I walk down the Avenida de la Trinidad, the statue of Padre Anchieta behind me—this is the spot from which the man who brought the gospel to Brazil departed, from this land of air and water. I walk to the cemetery; the morning takes me to the old cemetery, where a cypress stands up unashamed and calls to the sun to give shade to the dead. Its blue shadow stretches out and I take cover in it; the shadow seems like another monument to the city which sheltered its ancestors.
You come in here, via Anchieta, and as you open your path into the city it is as though you are headed to a new life: La Laguna is this, a place where you will learn, you are an adolescent and you are entering the cradle of the Islands, you are still not aware of this, you don’t know that you are treading on the edges, and finally the body of history itself, but at this moment, when you arrive, you are entering the past because you are entering possibility once again. In past centuries it was through this place that literature entered the Islands, that debate came, the Encyclopédie … It was here that the conquistadors debated, but also historians like Viera y Clavijo, and poets like Viana.
When I enter the city there is no one here, it is early in the morning, but a cyclist passes with a lunch box on the back of his bike, and he nods to me. Everything is new in the city and I am a little kid again, coming to see in the air of the city what life has promised me: the adventure of seeing. I touch it. I touch La Laguna. A German doctor, who is travelling early in the morning too, has picked me up on the road, and we have understood one another thanks to my Greek dictionary. I am headed to the Institute, to do my pre-university course, and this is my first lesson, my baptism in La Laguna.
I touch La Laguna, but today I am in the cemetery, as though a hand were leading me to pay homage to the past. And then I head back to the Avenida de la Trinidad, and other early risers laugh as they cross the road at the same time as a flock of goats. The cobbles are still wet with rain or dew; the young men are all carrying folders and new books. Almost every part of what I am now seeing will remain forever burnt on my retina. My hands are frozen in my cotton trouser pockets, it is autumn and the sun gives no heat; a few men are shouting, coming out of the bars where they have been drinking liquors to fight the cold or else draw a night of partying to an end. There is a drinking culture in La Laguna, and the bars never run out of customers.
The city then opens up into its urban history, and here I am, I have come in via Consitorio all the way up to the Plaza de los Adelantados, and there is one of those cloisters in front of me which adds to the mystery of La Laguna, the nuns inside making sweets, darning socks, praying; the goats have followed me here, and there they go, climbing La Carrera, a street I have heard about in popular songs (‘A night in La Laguna | filled with cold and rain | La Carrera was not a street | it was a river … ); the street ends in an extraordinary architectural statement, the Church of the Conception, which the painter Pedro González transformed in some of his paintings into the cosmopolitan and terrestrial referent of the whole city, surrounded by modern cars and set in the powerful foothills of Mount Teide … This is the path which travels past the Cathedral, which is much more conventional than the Spartan Church of the Conception, seeming almost a lay building by comparison: more than a street, La Carrera is a passage that leads to the other exit from La Laguna.
The Ateneo stands in front of the Cathedral: even in the Franco period it was a place for republican or apolitical anti-Franco meetings, a place where famous bons viveurs would gather, legendary musicians … This is where the long career of Los Sabandeños would begin, the most important musical group in the history of the Canary Islands, the people who renewed the island folklore, the creators of a way of singing old and modern songs which possess the earth, where the earth which they touch is the chief protagonist. And the path I walk along leads to the Instituto de Canarias, where I am going to study, this is my aim in my first day in La Laguna, to start a new life, this is my city, here I am going to create myself, it is now day, but this will also be the inauguration of my nights. I listen to the fountain and hear the wind moving the trees, and imagine Miguel de Unamuno or Benito Pérez Galdos, the philosopher and the novelist, both of who came here, walking through these inner hallways; the kids with their cardboard folders and new books are here already, the ones who crossed the Avenida de la Trinidad at the same time as the goats. And I see them running down these corridors, as though they had lived there last year as well; but I have just arrived, I don’t know anyone, even though the city is mine now, I feel that I am a part of it, as if I was born here, I even recognised the light in the cemetery, the city is mine, I have it, I touch its memory.
Then I walk along Camino Largo, the line in the earth, the moss on the walls, the Camino de las Peras, El Pozo Cabildo, the fountains, the cobbles. I am walking on the past. Many years later I touched the same walls, walked the same roads; my hair is white and I am nearly fifty years older, as is La Laguna. But I feel as though I am arriving and touching it once again, and it feels the same as it did on that first morning.