With the reading of the proclamation by neighbor Soledad Martín González last Thursday night, the town of Mácher began its festivities in honor of its Patron Saint Peter the Apostle.
The social hall was packed with the public supporting their neighbor and accompanied by the mayor of the Tías City Council, José Juan Cruz, and the Councilor for Festivities, Miriam Hernández.
After that, Soledad Martín González took the stage to read her proclamation, the first part with a poetic line, continuing with anecdotes from her childhood, youth, and adulthood.
At the end of the reading, the mayor and the councilor presented her with a sculpture as a souvenir, and Genaro Bonilla, a member of the Festival committee, presented her with a bouquet of flowers.
The night continued with the screening of a video with a documentary reflecting what those famous so-called Candlelight Dances were like. The night ended as tradition dictates in the town of Mácher with refreshments based on handmade sweets and canapés prepared by the residents themselves.
Notes and anecdotes from Martín González's proclamation
Mácher, Mácher stretches out curiously, as if trying to see as far as Playa Quemada, as if suddenly and in a hurry, Lanzarote had broken its best pearl necklace on the way to Yaiza, without time to pick them up.
The bright white of its houses on its reddish and black slopes; warning that the day is coming: La Gaida, carefully sheltered by Tinasoria, observed in silence by La Capita and jealously guarded by Guardilama, which protects La Montañeta, which, because it is small and round, is the most tender to me.
It had to be you, Peter; the one who opens the doors, the one who receives in glory, the one who welcomes heaven... It could not be another the patron saint of this parish, the one who in your boat loaded the nets of abundance, of this fertile and generous land. That rewards the effort of the worn hands that open it, those that manage to dress it with a suit of white onion flowers with a lime green background of tender tomato plants... my Mácher, hardworking and peasant.
I am your daughter, one more of so many others, but today I want to proclaim, to shout to the four winds, that I am what I am because of these experiences. I was born in one of your white houses, the house that protected me, from the love of my parents' brothers, from the womb of the perfect woman, the fifth of ten siblings, daughter, sister and friend of your nobility.
My mother gave birth to me knowing that I would be one of those who loved you so much, and I looked out at the capricious Atlantic that changes color and state depending on how I feel. I curiously looked from afar at the Femés massif, the islands of wolves and Fuerteventura, as distant places, on the other side of the sea. I saw them unattainable from my tenderest childhood.
I grew up curious but awake, wanting to learn everything, to know what everything was. And so, with the tight braid that one of my sisters made for me, I arrived at school, with a great headache. The pain was not relieved by the shade, nor the aroma, nor the incredible silhouette of those trees that grew on the edge of the road next to the booth and the little school. I seem to be walking along that road right now.
Oh, who would return!. There I saw the light, I met my friends and with them I did not know that I would spend the most fun hours of my life, I did not know then that I would be a good hooligan, well, to be honest, none of us knew it then, but I soon showed promise.
Learning to read I think is the greatest treasure I owe to life. Reading is my freedom, my exciting travels, my fantasies and without reading, I would not have been able to dedicate myself to my dream, to the theater that is a seed that was planted in school. Since I was little I dreamed of characters, I saw myself as a maid, teacher, shopkeeper, mother of a family, minister's secretary, sister of little women or simply a marchioness.
Memories that continue to crowd in my memory and that this proclamation would be endless if I tried to comment on them all. But one of those that cannot be left in the inkwell is my school days, the road with some eucalyptus trees that led us to it, passing through the Mácher mill and as if its blades spoke to me like Don Quixote, the smell of dark gofio, the little fist that Pepe Ferrer gave us when passing by there and explained to us that it came out hot from the stone when it fell warm in our hand. But following the road to the little school of Doña Clarisa Curbelo, my first teacher, to whom I owe my love for literature, for reading, my round calligraphy, my spelling, my grammar and ultimately my unconditional love for the word, for language, all that that would later open the doors to my professional future... teaching theater, my passion, my bread, my way of earning a living.
With all this and much more, Soledad Martín González continued, ending with a "Long live Simon Peter! I have spoken."
