Last Friday, April 23, the hall of the Achimencey socio-cultural center of La Asomada was filled to the brim with family, friends and neighbors of Pablo Hernández González, the town's festival crier of the town where he was born.
Flanked by the mayor of the municipality, José Francisco Hernández, and the festival councilor, Francisco Javier Aparicio, Pablo Hernández began reading his proclamation.
A very emotional text full of anecdotes and experiences that at times made more than one smile, but there were also others, those that made more than one of those present shed tears down their cheeks.
Hernández was detailing the difficult situation he had to live through. "Being very young, from the time he left school he went to work in the fields." He also told one of the most bitter experiences he had to go through, "with only 16 years and with the sole company of my great friend, Pablo Reyes, we embarked on an adventure in search of a job with which to earn some money to help the family and without knowing how, we arrived in Belgium." "And we got a job on an oil tanker," explained Hernández, an oil tanker in which they spent two years and with which they went around the world.
One day they decided to return to Lanzarote and to his beloved town of La Asomada, which he always carried deep inside. Back home, Pablo recalled how in 1971 "the young people of the town elected him president of the festival committee and managed to celebrate the first open-air dance that was held in the town, raising some 70,000 pesetas of the time", money that was given to the parish priest to finish the church.
Another of the funny anecdotes he told was the one that referred to the fact that "in my town in those years, despite how badly people lived, families made children in droves, as if it were a factory, since only four marriages totaled 51 children". Pablo reflected with great nostalgia how the environment of the town where he was born has changed, "nothing is the same anymore, everyone goes their own way and there is hardly any time to chat and play a game of cards, let alone a game of bowls".
After reading the proclamation, Pablo picked up his guitar and presented the audience with a song composed by him and dedicated to Lanzarote and La Asomada. Immediately afterwards, his companions Manolo Guadalupe and Eugenio Martín joined him, with whom they give life to the so-called "Trío Los Roncos", and with great animation they performed several songs, ending with a medley of Mexican songs to which the voices of the public also joined.
