October 3: a cross, a generation, and the story of a man who was in school, wrestling, football, banking, and the life of Lanzarote
On October 3, 1967, several young people from Haría began to carry on their shoulders up the Montaña de Aganada an enormous cross that had been left out of the project for the new church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación due to its size and weight. During the day they reached La Fuentecita and, afterwards, they continued during the nights along the mountain paths until October 11, when they managed to place it on the summit, guided by Elías Miralles Curbelo, a good connoisseur of the territory. It was not only a religious initiative, it was also an image of that Haría in which the neighbors still turned a collective task into a shared event, and it is precisely in that generation where we find Tomás Rodríguez Barrios, born in Haría on March 3, 1944, and then a 23-year-old young man who had already begun to build a career that would end up crossing a good part of the social, educational, and sporting history of Lanzarote.
There is no documentation that allows us to affirm that Rodríguez Barrios was part of the group that physically transported that cross, and it is advisable to maintain that distance between what is documented and what could only be supposed, but it is significant that 1967 was also a fundamental year in his life and in the transformation of the municipality. On January 14, the constitution of the Club de Lucha Unión Norte had been formalized after the merger of the Haría and Máguez teams, putting an end to a sporting rivalry that had divided the fans of both towns for years, and Tomás Rodríguez Barrios appears among the first members of that structure, first as a member and later linked to the technical functions of the team.
That coincidence helps to understand an era. Haría was changing, but it still retained the community dimension of a town in which the church, the school, sports, festivals, and neighborly relations were part of the same daily life. In that same year, the 1967-68 academic year of the Colegio Libre Adoptado de Haría began, initially housed in parish facilities, an initiative that expanded the educational opportunities for the municipality's youth. The cross rose towards Aganada while a new generation began to find other paths to continue their studies and develop their abilities.
Tomás Rodríguez Barrios belonged precisely to that generation. He had begun his education in the public schools of Haría in 1950, continued his studies at the municipal academy, and from a very young age became involved in sports. Canarian wrestling and football were among his first passions, and his subsequent career would show that his relationship with sports was not a passing fad, but one of the constants in his life. His proclamation for San Juan in 2013 constitutes an extraordinary personal memoir of Haría in the fifties and sixties.
In 1966 he finished his teaching degree and began his teaching career, but sports continued to accompany him. The athletic dimension of that career reached one of its most striking moments in 1969, when, at 25 years old, he was proclaimed the absolute champion
of the 800 meters flat race in the Regional Military Athletics Championship held on the tracks of the University of La Laguna. The chronicle in La Provincia presented him as a primary school teacher and a native of Haría, also recalling his good results in cross-country races and the 8,000 meters of the military pentathlon. He was proposed to attend the national championships, but he decided not to continue down that path because he was preparing for the National Teaching examinations.
The decision summarizes a constant in his life: sports were never separated from education. Rodríguez Barrios was a teacher, but also a coach, referee, leader, and trainer, and for decades this combination allowed him to be close to successive generations of young people from Lanzarote.
In 1970, a new professional stage began when he joined the Banco de Bilbao, where he would develop a career of approximately three decades. But even then, he did not abandon his connection with sports or his municipality. Haría's football would later occupy a large part of his activity as a coach, managing the municipality's team in different stages and maintaining a direct relationship with players and generations who would later become part of the island's sporting history.
Canarian wrestling, however, was one of the great pillars of his career. Unión Norte was born precisely in that process of reunifying the fans of Haría and Máguez, and over the years the club would become one of the great references of Lanzarotean wrestling. Rodríguez Barrios participated from the beginning in that structure and later expanded his activity as a coach and technical director.
His knowledge of sports also led him to refereeing. During the seventies and eighties, he held responsibilities within the Lanzarote Football Referees' Association and later continued to be linked to the federative structures. His career shows how island sports progressively moved from essentially local and community practices to more structured organizations, with federations, schools, referees, coaches, and regulated competitions.
In 1987, another of the great chapters of his sporting life arrived: the launch of the Insular School of Canarian Wrestling. Rodríguez Barrios took over its direction and participated in a project that aimed to bring wrestling to educational centers and introduce it to children and young people from all over the island, including La Graciosa. That initiative managed to gather more than a thousand students distributed in 22 centers, making Canarian wrestling not only a competition but also an instrument for training and cultural transmission.
And here is where one of the most interesting connections of his entire history appears: La Graciosa. Tomás Rodríguez Barrios' relationship with the eighth island began long before his banking activity. In 1960, when he was 16 years old, he participated in a wrestling match held in La Graciosa during the Carmen festivities. Decades later, in the pre-Lenten sermon of San Juan de Haría in 2013, he recalled that memory and described that day from the perspective of someone who had directly experienced that sporting and popular atmosphere.
The relationship reappeared in his adult life, this time through his profession. As an employee of the Banco de Bilbao in Arrecife, Rodríguez Barrios specifically attended to fishermen and shipowners from Lanzarote and La Graciosa. A corporate publication from the bank presented him as a commercial manager connected to that sector, highlighting his
direct contact with fishermen and his knowledge of the needs of those who worked at sea. The image is powerful: the young wrestler who had arrived in La Graciosa to participate in a wrestling match ended up years later attending, from the bank, to the men who set out from their ports. And there is yet another surprising connection. César Manrique wanted to have a house in Haría from the mid-sixties and so he told Tomás Rodríguez Barrios. According to the testimony of the official chronicler Gregorio Barreto Viñoly, Rodríguez Barrios indicated that Salvador Perdomo Torres had properties for sale. In the early seventies, and after the negotiations carried out by the then mayor Juan José Santana de León, Manrique finally acquired a farm that he would transform into the home where he would live until his death. He was not the protagonist of Manrique's arrival in Haría, but he does appear at a prior and significant moment in that story.
Tomás Rodríguez Barrios's life continued to be linked to the municipality. In 2013, he was chosen as the town crier for the San Juan festivities and used that opportunity to return with his memory to the Haría of his childhood and youth. His speech was not just a festive proclamation: it was also an inventory of names, people, schools, football teams, wrestlers, festivals, places, and customs from an era that had already disappeared.
That is why October 3rd can serve as a starting point to recover his figure. The date brings back to memory that day in 1967 when the young people of Haría began to climb the Cruz de Aganada, but it also allows us to look towards the present. This October 3rd, 2026, the fifth edition of the Bajada del Camino de las Gracioseras will be celebrated, an initiative that recovers the memory of the women of La Graciosa and the old path of the Risco de Famara, another of the great human itineraries that united the eighth island with Lanzarote.
And that coincidence brings Tomás Rodríguez Barrios back again. A good part of his life can be read precisely through those paths that communicated people, towns, and generations: the path of the young people towards Aganada, the path of the fighters between Haría and Máguez, the maritime path towards La Graciosa, the path of the fishermen towards the bank, the path of the students towards the school, and finally, the path of memory that he himself walked in his 2013 proclamation.
Tomás Rodríguez Barrios was not only a teacher, nor only an athlete, nor only a referee, coach, or bank employee. He was a man who was present at different moments in the transformation of Lanzarote and who, from different positions, always maintained a link with Haría.
He was born when the municipality still retained much of its rural structure, grew up among schools, wrestling matches, and football games, experienced the educational transformation of the sixties, participated in the modern organization of island sports, knew the world of fishing and La Graciosa from the inside, collaborated in the expansion of Canarian wrestling among young people, and, indirectly, was related to one of the most important episodes in the cultural history of Haría: the definitive installation of César Manrique in the municipality.
On October 3, 1967, a generation of young people began to carry a cross towards Aganada. Almost six decades later, October 3rd once again looks towards the Risco de Famara and La Graciosa to recover another of the paths of island memory.
Between these two moments, the life of Tomás Rodríguez Barrios appears as a human bridge between two Lanzarotes: the one that walked along paths and organized its own festivals and sports, and the one that ended up becoming an island open to the world without ceasing to seek the keys to its identity in its past.
Perhaps that is the best way to remember Tomás Rodríguez Barrios: not as an isolated figure in the history of Haría, but as one of the men who helped connect that Haría with the Lanzarote that came after.
CONSULTED SOURCES
• History of Haría — biography, San Juan 2013 proclamation, documentation on Canarian wrestling, La Graciosa, Banco de Bilbao, and Tomás Rodríguez Barrios' gallery.
• Centenary of the construction of the Haría Town Hall 1922-2022 — chronology of 1967, Cruz de Aganada, Colegio Libre Adoptado, and Unión Norte.
• Lanzarote Academy — speech by Gregorio Barreto Viñoly on César Manrique and Haría.
• Lanzarote Memory — History of football in Lanzarote, including a photograph of Haría CF 1986-87 with Tomás Rodríguez Barrios as coach.
• History of Tías — documentation of the 1990-91 season, with Tomás Rodríguez Barrios as coach of Sporting Tías.
• Cadena SER Lanzarote, October 1, 2026 — fifth edition of the Bajada del Camino de las Gracioseras, scheduled for October 3, 2026.
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