Dear teacher, several days have passed since your passing, but I didn't know where to start, so I'll start with "your beginning", because your end will never come as long as your memory lives on in us.
So much has been said, written and recognized about your life and work for your invaluable contribution to preserving what we are today as a people, that I prefer to emphasize your human dimension and what captivated me about you.
You told me many times that you didn't have a childhood, that you were born almost a man, between farm work and shepherding from a very young age because, to paraphrase an old saying, "a boy's work is little but whoever loses it is crazy". That must be why the child that we all carry lived in you in a special way until the end. It did so in the form of infinite illusion and love for his land, the illusion that kept your mind hyperactive, lucid and with the wisdom that experience lived between 1919 and 2018 gives, which is something.
The veneration and respect that different cultures profess for "old age" has always powerfully caught my attention and aroused great empathy, at least the most ancestral ones. I would swear that it was even when I was very young - I was - when I realized this watching the family afternoon westerns where the decisions of the Sioux council of elders were sacred, or later in so many documentaries of "tribes of the world" where the deep respect for the experience of their ancestors was revealed to me as a universal value of Humanity, today something more than questioned. With those values nourished by my family environment I grew up, and with all certainty it was precisely that wisdom of life, that powerful illusion of the old-child, that creativity, elegance, chivalry and humble greatness, that captivated me when I met you in person already entered this century, although I had already heard something about your adventures - especially pottery.
Since then, dear friend, there have been many fewer times than I would have liked that I have been able to share with you. Every now and then on Sundays in Mozaga, where your "favorite blonde" (a beautiful camel), your donkeys, ducks, chickens and other fauna - including your son and my dear namesake if he doesn't mind, because of the fauna I say - and, lastly, in your own house in Simón Bolívar, where you lived your last years with Isabel, whom you loved and cared for until the end of her days, which were almost yours. By the way, you probably believe in Valentine's Day, that commercial celebration, as much as I do. That is, nothing. But, paradoxes of life, you did not want to abandon this until only months after your wife did, 98 years after appearing to disappear in present body to the reunion with Isabel, as a gift, just on February 14.
Your legacy to Lanzarote is immense and, as I said, I will not dwell on it today, but there is another enormously valuable one that is the fruit of that relationship: a noble family saga of which you can be as extraordinarily proud as they are of you. Unfortunately, a large part of the knowledge of "ours" goes with you, but we have them left.
Dear friend Juan, I am left with that deep love for Mother Earth, "the Pachamama" as it is said in Quechua, and that is why one of the few gifts I gave you was a figure, "the Pachamama" in stone brought from the Sacred Valley of Peru. But of your different facets, although the most outstanding was that of being a magnificent master potter, I am left with the ethnographic and anthropological aspect, for your self-taught taste for the aboriginal world and archeology, creating first the first archaeological museum of Lanzarote in the humble neighborhood of Titerroy, where I grew up, and later the second in the Castle of San Gabriel. It is a pity that you do not see in life the Archaeological Museum of Lanzarote that will be in the house of Arrecife where you lived or the Site Museum of Zonzamas, but soon both will be a reality. I promise you, if they don't prevent me from doing so before.
As you know, and in line with this, just a few days ago I had the umpteenth opportunity to verify your lucidity, memory and creativity with which you once again transmitted to me the many things that you still had to do and others that made you very excited. With a weak voice and clear ideas as always, this time there was a certain urgency in your words, a certain air of farewell, as if you were fully aware that "the moment" was near, very near, too near, Juan. Damn it!
But it is too late for regrets, you were a real privilege on my way and I can only thank life for it. Give them and be consistent trying to make you see fulfilled, wherever you are, some more of so many illusions. If it is true that Lanzarote has an eternal debt of gratitude with you, which it is, and if the words of public recognition of all of us who have the opportunity to "pay it" are sincere, it will not be difficult to do so. At least, on my part it will not remain.
On one occasion you wrote to your beloved Isabel, "when the seas dry up, I will stop loving you". Today I tell you that, when Timanfaya floods, I will forget your mocking smile, and how fertile you were for this arid land".
Until always, dear friend.
*Pedro San Ginés Gutiérrez, president of the Cabildo de Lanzarote
