LUIGI BENEDICTO BORGES
Updated Thursday, January 25, 2024-02:44
"Excellent lord of the candlestick, marquis of the night and knight of the candle."
This is how Manuel Rosado Verde
introduces himself
to everyone who, during the rowdy party nights of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Carnival, approaches him to take a photo with him.
Now they are made with cell phones, a few years ago with devices with film, but he lived in the era when the NO-DO
cameras were
the ones that, seeking to give an open image in the last years of Franco's life, were going to record the called "Winter Festivals", the name given to carnivals on the island since 1963. They could not be called "Carnival", a festival prohibited by the dictatorship.
«Yes, the oldest active Tenerife Carnival character is me.
But be careful, the oldest, nothing from the oldest. Don't take years away from me, I'll take them away from me!" Rosado exclaims while organizing the last details for the festivities.
With the ailments inherent to the
82 years
he turned on Three Kings' Day, he prepares this edition with special care "because he never knows what can happen."
He is trying to contact Dorada, the most famous beer on the island, to give him a cart with speakers so he can take it, with the corresponding drinks, to the announcing parade on February 9, which is when the party starts for him.
«For me Carnival
is anarchy, transgression
.
“He was born on the street and he should continue there,” emphasizes Manolo, which is how everyone greets him.
Manolo, in the 80s.
His idea is to go out surrounded by family and friends who will emulate, as best they can, his already
mythical character
: a Don Quixote who is awakened by the scandal of music and dancing.
Moistened, he goes out into the street in his nightgown and nightcap, lighting his steps with the candle he carries in his candlestick.
Once immersed in the fun, and with one hand free to hold a glass of rum,
he lets himself go
.
Of course, woe to anyone who decides to blow out the candle: they will receive a resounding scolding.
"And he'll have to buy me another glass of rum," he jokes.
Although he is a circus man - he worked as a
serious
clown at the
Circo Europe
, and it is said that he broke hearts there in every town where the tent was erected - his fantasy, which is what they call costumes in Tenerife, comes from cinema. .
Manuel does not remember why, during his stay in Madrid - "I lasted 17 years, and I don't even know how," he says - he finished filming
Don Quixote Rides Again
, the third and last film that
Cantinflas
, at that time at the top of his popularity, he recorded outside of Mexico.
He played Sancho Panza, while the role of Don Quixote de la Mancha fell to
Fernando Fernán Gómez
.
Both actors wore different nightgowns throughout the film, which was filmed at the old
Roma Studios
in 1972. Seeing his excitement at seeing them dressed like that, a flirt of his offered to make it his costume.
«Her name was
María Teresa
, she was a journalist who worked for the Movement Press.
And I don't know how she took advantage of an interview to grab one of the several nightgowns that appear in the film.
"Here, keep it," she told me.
And I made it my outfit », he recalls.
The Carnival characters are emblems of the party.
From there, a legend was born who joined the select group of emblematic characters of the holidays.
It is not only seen in the parade or the burial of the Sardine.
He also participates with the group
Los Esc@ndinabos
in the
La Canción de la Risa
contest .
Elected
Prince of Carnival in 1997
- "an unofficial, unofficial title, which is better" - he says that his love for the party comes from his father Elías and his aunt Bienvenida, who a century ago dressed up as a man in Icod el Alto .
And when they told her that she was a woman, she "made me piss against a wall with a pear full of water."
When he immerses himself in memories he can't help but remember the party companions who are no longer here.
«A few days ago, Don Rivero, who was our
Chiquito de la Calzada,
died .
He had Alzheimer's.
Pedro Gómez Cuenca, Charlot
, and Noel Espinosa,
El Vadita
, the oldest of all,
have also left .
A boxer and hustler.
He had a bad reputation but he always behaved well with me," he recalls.
'The Lord of the Candlestick', in some recent carnivals.
Miss Peggy
is another character he misses.
«He was already out marching at the end of the Civil War and was chased by the civil guard.
"He never revealed his identity, not even when she was Carnival Princess in 2000," she recalls.
Nor when announcing its withdrawal in 2011, due to mobility problems.
"
Just as she arrived, Peggy leaves
," wrote
Humberto Gonar
, the person who knows the most about carnivals.
Only after her death, three years later, was it revealed who she was: José Manuel Lis, clay craftsman and teacher of people with disabilities.
He broke all of his clay puppet pig masks except for one that his granddaughter rescued and now rests in the Casa del Carnaval in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
He also survives the candlestick that he made for Rosado, which he will come out with this year... if he finds it among the many nightgowns that he keeps in the house where he lives with his sister
Mercedes
, next to the Heliodoro stadium. Rodriguez Lopez.
The adventures of all of them were collected in the book
Characters of the Carnival.
Living memory of a town
, by
Cirilo Leal
.
«The day they gathered us all together to take a photo at the chicharro monument, we ended up partying at the Águila bar.
He approached me with a little mask and said "Manolo, you're finally getting me to dance!"
He didn't let me see who he was, but he did let me keep a beautiful watch that was caught on his costume.
He had a chain shaped like a double that, small, square... the following week I realized that he was still in my pocket.
I never knew who she was…or he.”
And as the psychologist and psychoanalyst
Susana Isoletta
highlights , «the mask emerges in everyone as a vindication of enjoyment;
"the costume appears as a deep individual need."
Manolo sums it up another way: "Before, you had to hold your hand to know if the person you were dancing with was male or female."