The ayuntamiento, the town council, has just announced with great ceremony the winning illustration for the poster. We'll have to wait until October for the event itself - a very special celebration that takes place only once in five years, an elaborate homage to the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of the island.
Seeing the poster design triggered memories of a strange - and at the time, very sad - story from this same event many years ago. The poster depicts the fleet of boats that will accompany the Virgin on her voyage around the coast, and it immediately made me think of Isabel and Isidro.It was a few weeks after the celebration that Isidro sat himself at our café table: 'Con permiso?' May I?
'Of course! Que tal, how's things?'
'Mal,' he answered, briefly. Bad. He ordered a black coffee.
We had known Isidro and his wife Isabel for many years. They ran a small business (now long gone) where we began as customers and soon became friends. The last time we saw them they'd been seated with a friend of Isabel's at the front of a ferry, one of the scores of vessels large and small bobbing around the Virgin's boat on her big day. Isidro was strumming his guitar and the three of them were singing a stirring song in the patron saint's honour, swaying from side to side in happy unison.
Today he was looking much less happy. 'She's kicked me out,' he announced, flatly.
'Who's kicked you out?'
'Isabel. We've separated.'
I laughed, I'm afraid, and so did J. People joke about ditching their lifelong partner: 'Where's your wife?' 'I sold her last week.' It's the kind of silly tease you tell your grandchildren to make them giggle, or sometimes cry.
After a moment, seeing Isidro's expression, we both stopped laughing and J said, 'It's a joke?'
'No joke. I've moved out. Living apart.'
This was too ridiculous to believe. Minnie Mouse booting out Mickey? Popeye leaving Olive Oyl? Isidro and Isabel were inextricably part of each other.
It was the friend's fault, Isidro alleged. Verónica. She and Isabel had been close friends at school but as a young woman Verónica left the island in search of wider adventures. They kept in touch though and now Verónica was back, no longer young, and with nowhere to live. She moved in with Isabel and Isidro.
Her arrival was like dropping a firework cracker into an afternoon siesta. Verónica woke them up with a flash and a bang. Well, she woke her friend, anyway. The two women returned to girlhood, taking up where they'd left off several decades ago, launching themselves like parrakeets into a new spring. Isabel cast off her old, tired plumage and emerged in fresh and colourful display, her clothes of the latest season instead of whatever's in the wardrobe, her hair tinted and curled, her make-up bright with pink blushes and blue shadows. She became again a partygoer, late-night dancer, diner in restaurants with hilarious groups of friends.
Isidro wanted none of this and was quickly written off as a bore.
I don't know the painful details of the final weeks but the outcome was that Isidro moved out of the family home, leaving the two girls to enjoy their second youth alone. It turned out to be a fairly short one because Verónica had a heart attack, so for a while Isabel became a nursemaid. Eventually her friend recovered enough to take flight again, back to wherever she'd come from.
I would like to imagine the two of them, Isabel and Isidro, sitting quietly on a park bench in the shade of a palm tree, chewing over this episode: so what was that all about, then?
Fear of growing old, the feeling that life had crept slyly past while they were busy running the business, bring up the kids, doing the dusting, polishing the car? A cry for more, another chance, let's have a little more fun this time?
She and he would sit there in silence for a while, side by side, looking over the grass and the trees and the flowers, then one of them would take the other's hand and they would decide it had just been a moment of madness.
But no. They didn't get together again. After a few years of living alone Isidro found another partner and, a while later, so did Isabel. They continued attending the five-year October celebrations, of course, and I'm sure they'll be at this year's, although they're getting a bit old for the strumming and singing.
Notes for the serious student
Every year there is a celebration of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the Monday following the first Sunday in October. Once every five years the celebration expands into a huge series of events called the lustrales, a word that nowadays just means five-yearly celebrations. (Any more and we'll get drawn into discussing Latin and ancient Rome, which I'd be wiser to avoid.)
On Monday the eighth of October this year, the Virgin will be taken from her permanent home in a little chapel on the coast at Puntallana, loaded onto a gaily decorated fishing boat and carried southwards to San Sebastián, accompanied by a huge fleet of vessels from tiny dinghies and sailboats to luxury yachts, car ferries and naval patrol ships.
In the port of San Sebastián she will be transferred to the beach and into the town to be feted with singing, dancing and fireworks. This is called the Bajada, the landing, and most of the population of the island will be there to watch, along with many more from the other islands. It's a big do. There is even a dedicated website:
http://www.lustraleslagomera.es/
There is much more to be said about the Virgen de Guadalupe - for example, she's called affectionately La Morenita, the little dark-skinned lady. Why is she dark? But I think it had best wait for another time.
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