Gregorio Fuentes, son of Arrecife de Lanzarote, Canary Islands, where he was born on July 11, 1897, and of Cojimar in Havana, where he spent most of his life.
Hemingway met him in the midst of the danger of a tropical hurricane near the coasts of the United States in 1928. Ten years later he looked for him again to take charge of his boat Pilar, which he had built in 1934 and which he named in honor of the patron saint of Spain. From that moment on they shared adventures at sea, and a love for fishing. His vast experience in fishing and navigation were the initial link between Hemingway and him.
Based on his story, Hemingway wrote "The Old Man and the Sea", which led him to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. In the masterful novel written in 1952, the American writer modeled Fuentes in his central character and the tenacious struggle of the protagonist to bring to land the fish he longed to capture all his life.
Hemingway, who left Cuba after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, committed suicide in 1961 when he was about to turn 62, he had several illnesses.
After his death, as he testified, the Pilar became Fuentes' property, because Gregorine, as Hemingway called him, was more than a yacht skipper for the writer, he was also his friend and confidant. The Pilar was then in Finca Vigía, Hemingway's Cuban house, which is now his museum.
In November 2001, in his last public activity, Gregorio received from Hillary, Hemingway's niece, the certificate of "Honorary Captain" of the International Game Fishing Association (IGFA) at the Havana marina that bears the name of the American novelist. Thus he joined the exclusive group of 197 captains awarded by the entity.
In January 2002 he died at his home in Cojimar. According to his closest relatives, Gregorio retained his lucidity despite his 104 years and never lost the habit of smoking 6 cigars a day.
"My grandfather was a person of great character, loved by everyone, not only by foreigners, but also by the people in general; he always loved to tell stories, especially about Hemingway, about those beautiful moments he lived with him and that were always present in his mind," recalled his granddaughter, América Aguas Fuentes, after his death. "He is a symbol of Cuban fishing and human fraternity for all his years of friendship with Hemingway," said one of his friends, José Miguel Díaz Escrich, commodore of the International Hemingway Nautical Club in Havana.
Now that the fisherman from Cojimar has physically moved away, they plan to keep the memory of his appearance in his statue. The owner of the Pilar died, the man of the sea lives on in his stories, in the beautiful Cayman of the Caribbean.
José Antonio de León Luzardo