Óscar Torres Perdomo has been a concerned and innovative teacher, a generous documentarian and disseminator of cultural, ethnographic, and historical content from the islands of Lanzarote and La Graciosa. It is not an easy task to say goodbye to a friend with whom you have shared cherished moments: the training period at the Teacher Training School in Las Palmas; a fellow professional. And, in addition to sharing hobbies for culture, ethnography, and the heritage of the minor history of this Island.
I met Óscar during my teaching degree studies in Las Palmas, in the current Humanities building of the ULGC. Óscar had the ability to bring together students from Lanzarote, from the
"vuelta Arriba" (upper route), the "vuelta Abajo" (lower route), and those from Puerto, to arrange meetings in Las Palmas. The objective was to follow the football calendar of Unión Deportiva Lanzarote on their visits to
Gran Canaria. We would take an Utinsa bus, a Salcai, and head to Gáldar, Firgas, Arucas, Telde, or Las Palmas, and then chat with the players and with Román Cabrera, the team's coach.
I will never forget what happened at the Arucas stadium, during one of these matches. The announcer Andrés Fuentes was broadcasting from the sidelines of the football field for the audience in Lanzarote and the entire "Peña" behind him. In a moment of carelessness by "Fallo," Óscar took the microphone and continued narrating the match's events to the applause of his disbelieving colleagues. Also spectacular will be a match at the Hornillo stadium in Telde and the afternoon at Pepe Gonçalves in Escaleritas when the youth player Pepe Torres (his cousin) debuted with the first team. By the way, Pepe came on for a few minutes, ran down the wing, and disappeared into the dust cloud he kicked up in the corner area
In Óscar's professional career, we crossed paths at the CEIP Capellanía del Yagabo, the island's first school to offer experimental education prior to the Educational Reform (LOGSE).
Óscar was one of the first teachers to work with new technologies in schools (NN.TT) and to give training courses at the CEP for teachers using those "Pentium" computers and
removable disk drives.
Over the last twenty years, he worked with great effort, affection, and altruism to rescue all the proclamations from each place where fragments of history and experiences that reveal the way of life of the towns are treasured. He collected posters from carnivals, local festivals, and others. At the beginning of the present century, with the help of the inseparable Jesús Perdomo Ramírez and other collaborators, they unified their research work and recovered the horizons of content quite broadly, creating the "Digital Platforms-Web." They started with "Historiademaguez" and then incorporated all the municipalities and La Graciosa. Subsequently, the website on the history of Carnival in Arrecife was added.
From all this commendable work, a period of well-deserved recognition is emerging. The first would be the "Memorialist" award to Óscar Torres Perdomo and his colleague Jesús Perdomo Ramírez for "their fruitful research and dissemination work on historical and ethnographic topics of several municipalities." This recognition would be followed by the "Haría 2021 Awards," which will also go to the "tandem" of Oscar Torres and Jesús Perdomo "for their work in the municipality and the Conejera society." Finally, La parranda Marinera de Los Buches de Arrecife names him official chronicler of the Parranda Marinera, and shortly thereafter, a small square is named in his honor, next to the headquarters of Los Buches in Argana. Óscar has left us. Condolences to Carmelina, Óscar, Orlando, and family. Fortunately, we are fortunate to be able to enjoy the valuable legacy he leaves us
Now, the respective public institutions will have to preserve, safeguard, update, and disseminate the content deposited in these repositories of ethnographic and historical cultural interest.
