by LORENZO LEMAUR SANTANA
From the end of August until next May, I will be living in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. I've gone this season to coach the women's first division handball team of Club Salud. My friend Octavio proposed it to me and I loved the idea. It happens that coming to Santa Cruz has made me want to write about this city that I love, I always liked it from the many times I have come. The ramblas, Calle del Castillo, the many squares and parks, with so many large and leafy trees. These are things that we don't have in Arrecife, and that I miss quite a bit. A few days ago I went to the municipal library, near Plaza del Príncipe, and I was reading a book titled Santa Cruz de Tenerife, history of its streets and squares. I liked it a lot.
I started this article from a cybercafe in the Cruz del Señor area, specifically on Juan Álvarez Delgado street, transversal to General Mola. I will live nearby, on Santiago Beyro street, in the same Plaza de la Cruz del Señor. I am waiting for them to install a telephone line with its corresponding ADSL at home, nowadays it is the least that is dispatched and should be dispatched.
I want to write, these days, about this city that I love and in which I am going to be lucky enough to live for about 8 months. About its history, its people, its streets, squares, avenues and neighborhoods. Always from my very particular and therefore subjective perspective. But I will not be able to avoid making comparative references to my city, Arrecife.
Having said that, I will tell you that, where General Mola Avenue forks (going straight creates Obispo Pérez Cáceres street), turning to the left, over the Santos ravine, we enter the La Salud neighborhood. In that area begins, at least for me, another Santa Cruz. The City, the neighborhood, in which I will live until May and where I will work, as coach of the women's handball team of the club that bears the same name as that neighborhood, which was formerly called Anaga, where Beneharo was mencey when the conquest.
In that corner, where, on the Zurita bridge, General Mola Avenue crosses the Santos ravine, on the margin of which on May 3, 1494, the adelantado Alonso Fernández de Lugo founded the city of Santa Cruz de Santiago de Tenerife, I sat a few days ago to clean up the notes I had taken that morning. It was September 30 and I had been writing notes, while taking a pleasant walk through the area.
In that corner, two large posters announce two other large works, with millionaire investments for Santa Cruz. About 8 million euros for the Taco - La Cuesta road, which should be finished next January, and another 48 million euros for the first phase of the Santa Cruz - Laguna tram, a work that according to the poster should be finished in March 2007, shortly before the next local and regional elections.
Well, what I was getting at, in that corner begins my new neighborhood, the Salud neighborhood, and more specifically the La Cruz del Señor neighborhood, which I toured that day, in part, and on which I took notes of many things that have caught my attention, mostly for the better.
There must be many neighbors in the Salud neighborhood, there must be many because it is large and with many buildings of up to 13 floors depending on the area. This neighborhood, like Titerroy, also has its health center under construction. One thing that has caught my attention a lot in this area, of the few that I don't like, is the amount of noise that is suffered in the street, and also indoors, from bars and other establishments. Many cars, a lot of traffic. I don't think it's because I'm getting a little deaf, as my friend Inma, and also Cristina, sometimes tell me. No, I don't think so, it won't be that, it's just that there really is a lot of noise that is suffered in the street, but that is one of the servitudes of large cities. So much noise that I can hardly hear when they call me on my cell phone. But, on the other hand, you can enjoy wide, well-urbanized streets, with wide sidewalks, with parks and squares that have their benches, their shade, their trees and their gardens, more or less well cared for, and, above all, something that I miss in Titerroy and Arrecife, people in the street, life.
As I said before, I have seen buildings of up to at least 13 floors, of housing, La Salud is an eminently residential neighborhood, on the south side of the Santos ravine, going up, on a slope. What slopes, by the way. Also, in addition to Avenida General Mola, La Salud can also be reached via Calle Benito Pérez Armas. At the end, crossing General Mola, is Venezuela Avenue, which leads to the Salud Alto neighborhood, where the sports hall is located, where my team trains, in addition to the soccer field and the Perico Perdomo terrero. I live in the Cruz del Señor square itself, on Santiago Beyro street, in the Beyro building itself.
Already in Salud Alto, going up towards the pavilion, on Mencey Bencomo street, of whom I am beginning to become a devotee, José Miguel Schwartz Square catches my attention. It reminds me of Plaza Pío XII, in Titerroy, but I like this one because it has life, although a social venue that it has, in a kind of basement, is closed and full of rubble, unused. But on the square, with its shade, many people, mostly older men, play dominoes, chinchón or auctioned, on vandal-proof tables installed for that purpose, with their benches, also vandal-proof. Around people, who watch or talk. Every day, when I pass through that square before training, about 50 people give it life, and some dogs, well tied by their owners. And what I like the most is seeing people on the street, leaning on the corners, in the doorways of the bars, many bars, talking, living.
By the way, my aforementioned devotion to Mencey Bencomo comes from my conversations with my friend Octavio Pérez, Canarian, not Spanish, about him.
