The Three Dons

Don Carlos, Don Fernando and Don Salvador. They often played dominoes together, seated around a table in the shade of a palm tree. Or chatted over a glass of wine in a bar, snacking on jamón serrano, the famous Spanish cured ham which comes in expensive and distressingly thin slices.

Don and doña are terms of respect in Spanish, courtesy titles, much superior to the plain old señor and señora which simply mean Mr and Mrs. You can ascend to the title don or doña in various ways. The simplest is to open an account with an electricity company, because their monthly bills will address you thus. But this is just commercial toadying and not to be taken seriously.

More convincing is another common method, which is to become very old - or even more reliably, to die, when the obituaries in the local newspaper will award you the title posthumously.

Far more appealing as an approach, although much less easy to achieve, is to have lots of money. Our Three Dons all had lots of money.

We got to know Don Carlos on the beach. While we swam he walked briskly up and down the tideline in the sunshine, a dignified figure in bathing shorts and a big, prosperous belly. From initially nodding cheerfully to each other we progressed to pausing for a word or two, and gradually we learned a little more about him. Born on the island, he still owned property here but had married into business interests and a different way of life on the Península, the Spanish mainland. 'I come back here to relax,' he told us. 'Un pequeño paraíso.' A little Paradise. No argument there.

Don Carlos had a heart problem and had been told to take gentle exercise. The problem was something to do with swollen blood vessels - let's not be too gory - and although it was operable, the cardiologist had warned him there was a one-in-three chance of failure. 'One in three chances that they'll kill me!' he roared, outraged. Two in three that they wouldn't, then, but Don Carlos was clearly not a gambler and had decided just to cross his fingers and keep walking.

Maybe his friend Don Salvador played some role in this decision. He was a pharmacist, addressed as don perhaps from respect for his expertise, or his age, or more probably because like Don Carlos he had inherited property. By the time we met him he had retired, but he still lent a hand now and again in the pharmacy.

I went there one day with a sore back to ask if he knew anyone who could massage it better. 'There's a curandero,' replied Don Salvador, shrugging eloquently. A curandero is someone who claims to heal without being conventionally qualified.

Don Salvador could have tried to sell me pain-relief pills, but it turned out he also suffered from back pain and as a fellow sufferer, he showed me his cost-free solution. 'Look,' he said, coming around to the front of the counter. 'The best way to treat a sore back is this.'

Bending his legs, he leaned backwards against the edge of the counter, positioning it between two of the knobbles of his spine. Then he leaned back a little further and wriggled, like a brown bear rubbing its back on a pine trunk. 'Like this, you see?' Rising a little to position the counter edge between the next two knobbles, he wriggled again. Whether it was doing any good I've no idea but he was clearly enjoying it.

A while ago the town council installed some bright yellow exercise machines near the beach, one of which has a big rubber roller that achieves much the same effect. Any brown bear would love it.






And then there was Don Fernando. Who had a secret.

We got to know him a little better than the others through chatting in the bar of the Club Náutico, the Nautical Club, a pleasant venue half buried in a cave and not as grand as it sounds. 'We call you people the golondrinas,' he told us. The swallows, who arrive in winter and depart in spring, until some of us forget to fly off again.

A man of wit and wisdom, and also of great patience, Don Fernando listened to our baby Spanish with elegant politeness rather than hysterical laughter and occasionally helped us climb over a pronunciation hurdle. I can still hear and see him demonstrating Archipiélago Canario, the Canarian Archipelago, leaning forward for emphasis: 'Arr-chee-pee-AY-lago!'

Like his two friends, Don Fernando owned land and property, including a large farm in one of the island's many valleys where he, or rather his handful of loyal workers, grew bananas on a commercial scale. And avocados, oranges, grapes, apricots... anything will grow in this rich, volcanic soil, you just have to throw down a pip, spray a little water and stand back.

He invited us to call into the farm one day, which of course we did. 'Have a banana!' A banana picked yellow from the growing bunch is a revelation, rare and wonderful. For export the bunches are cut down while still green, because if you try to transport bananas already yellow they arrive looking like discarded work gloves from an oil rig.

At this stage Don Fernando didn't know us well enough to confess his secret. That came later, over a glass of wine or two in a restaurant. Eccentricity being not only permitted but expected of a don, he drank his wine from an ordinary glass tumbler as used for water: 'Much better than any wine glass, look at all that air above it for the bouquet!'

As our conversation progressed from the humdrum to deeper probings and the broader-sweep stuff about work, life and the Universe, he suddenly became pensive. 'Luck plays a big part in life.'

'Well yes, but you have to…'

'Do you know,' continued Don Fernando, lowering his voice, 'how I came to own my farm, all that land?' We had assumed it was inherited, but he shook his head. 'I have my wife to thank for that.'

'Ah, so the land was hers and…'

'No. I won the lottery. A big prize, mucho, muchísimo.' He mimed a huge bag of money, golden doubloons. 'I'd have spent the lot, wasted it,' he admitted with endearing honesty. 'Fortunately my wife had more sense and insisted I buy land. I couldn't see the point, but she was right. Look at it now.'

He topped up our glasses from the bottle. 'Sensible woman. Here's to my wife.' We clinked glasses.

'And also to health - salud! And happiness - felicidad!' And while we're at it, let's add luck as well - suerte! When you think about it, all you really need is luck.


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A postscript for the pernickety
In English we capitalise the titles Don and Doña, whereas in Spanish they do not. Nor do they capitalise our Sir and Dame, which looks a bit odd, as in 'sir Francis Drake' or 'dame Maggie Smith'.