Fishing was one of the main economic activities of Lanzarote, which, although it has been overshadowed by tourism, was the lifeline of a Lanzarote society that suffered poverty and famine. Thanks to it, and without forgetting agriculture, many families managed to get ahead.
The main port of the island was Arrecife with the Charco de San Ginés as a natural refuge against the trade winds that constantly lash Lanzarote. Here docked some of the boats that were used for this activity and it was where Pepe Tabares, fisherman and factory worker, grew up, who suffered firsthand the shipwreck of El Rasán, a cargo ship that connected Africa and Lanzarote.
Tabares grew up among boats, hooks and traps, so fishing was almost innate in him. "At 14 years old, due to the need at that time, I had to embark on a ship that only carried merchandise to Cabo Blanco," he says.
The journey was made every 15 days, as it took five days to reach the destination, five days to distribute the merchandise, which was usually salt, and another five to return to Lanzarote.
The shipwreck
The nightmare of any sailor or fisherman is that the ship sinks and this is what happened to Pepe Tabares and the rest of his companions in the mid-1950s.
During one of the trips along the coast of Africa, Tabares realized that the ship had a leak around seven in the afternoon. "I went up to have dinner with the others and when I went down later to the engine room, it looked like a flood because the water reached the steering wheel," he recalls.
At that moment, he began to shout to warn his companions who tried to bail out the water by using pumps but without success. "We arrived at a place where we could get closer and we stopped the engine, which caused the vibrations to stop and the water stopped entering," says Tabares.
The crew thought about how to plug that leak so that the ship would stay afloat. "We had baking soda and cement, so we mixed it, plugged it and hardly any water came in, but as soon as we started it, it came in again," he declares.
Everyone was desperately looking for a beach where they could run the ship aground to be safe and not drown, something complicated since many areas of the coast of Africa are cliffs. Finally, they found a beach where they could arrive with a small boat.
The crew members were on the beach for more than a week where, thanks to some lobster farms, they were able to feed themselves and survive. "On the boat we had fishing line and with the boat we went to look for it to bring it ashore," explains Tabares.
After eight days, a lighthouse keeper appeared who went to each lighthouse in the area to check them. That was the light at the end of the tunnel that everyone saw, since he was the one who rescued them. "He took us to where he was staying, two kilometers from the beach, and gave us milk and camel meat to eat, and also bread," he says.
That bread they ate was not just any bread, since it was made in a way that neither Pepe Tabares nor his companions had ever seen. "I will never forget how he made the bread because he kneaded the flour and when the sand was hot, he put the dough in it and put embers on top. After an hour, he removed the sand and took out the bread," he reveals.
After being rescued, they spent more than two weeks in Villa Cisneros, which is now called Dakhla, waiting to return to Lanzarote. Then, the military took the ship's crew to Gran Canaria to testify about what had happened. After the shipwreck, Pepe Tabares began working in the fish factories where he was for more than 40 years.
A conscience that did not exist 60 years ago
60 years ago, life and society were very different, so many irresponsibilities were carried out because the conscience of the population was not the same as today. "Some things were dangerous because I remember leaving the Arrecife dock on the first trip without a license plate because I was 14 years old and I was not old enough, today that is unthinkable," he points out.
"I also remember leaving with water on the deck of the ship because they loaded them up with merchandise, it was already loaded with salt and they asked us to put more things in," he recalls.
In addition, the hygienic conditions were often not ideal. "We carried the water in iron drums and the water after two or three days was brown from the rust of the drums themselves," explains Tabares.
As for fishing, Lanzarote has always been characterized by this activity, where the croaker and the grunt were the protagonists. However, decades ago, fish were more abundant than they are today.
"In the past, fishing was done in a traditional way and today there are much larger boats that are dedicated to trawling and more intensive fishing," he concludes.