by Joe Cawley
Armed with a plate of squid and boiled potatoes, some crusty bread and a local beer from the Restaurante Olga, I sat watching a couple of locals surf the waves that pounded the craggy coastline. I was at the furthest point possible from Playa de las Américas, Tenerife’s epicentre of commercialism; sixty-two miles, to be exact. I was separated from civilisation by 3,000-foot-high mountains behind and a turbulent sea in front, and there was not a ‘lucky-lucky man’ selling fake watches and sunglasses to be seen. It was a perfect escape from the madding crowds and represented ‘the other side’ of Tenerife that the tourist board were now keen to promote.
I was so enamoured with Almáciga that I decided I would extend my stay. A handwritten note pinned behind the bar advertised rooms for rent. Fuelled by adventure adrenaline and three bottles of Dorada Especial, I waited for the bar person to return so I could make enquiries.
A couple walked in and announced, ‘Buenas tardes,’ (Good afternoon) to no one in particular. From behind a newspaper in the corner, a voice called back, ‘Buenas.’
I liked this practice of strangers publicly greeting each other when they came into a bar or similar meeting place. It seemed friendly, retro and community-spirited. I’d noticed it in other local bars and restaurants and I decided that I would do the same from now on.
A leather-faced gentleman in a battered trilby sauntered in and slammed a coin on the bar. ‘Hola,’ he muttered in a nicotine-gruff voice.
Nobody replied. It was my chance. ‘Bolas,’ I shouted confidently into the silence. The silence became even quieter.
He looked at me, eyes narrowed. ‘Qué?’
In a rush of enthusiasm, I had combined the two customary responses – ‘Buenas’ and ‘Hola’ –into one word, unfortunately a word that meant ‘balls’ in Spanish. I just smiled, my cheeks a shade rosier.
The man muttered something and jabbed a finger into my chest. Thankfully, the bar lady returned and barked at the man before the situation escalated. My bubble popped, I decided that I was leaping the gun in my attempts at integration; instead of booking a room, I headed back to the bus stop. In the words of a previous – and exasperated – Spanish teacher, poco a poco assimilation was a more realistic approach than trying to do a full-throttle nosedive.
I boarded the 246 back to the bustle of Santa Cruz, changed onto the 110 express for the east-coast motorway run to Las Américas and re-entered the familiar world that I’d left eight hours before, a little deflated but not downhearted.
Back at the house, I regaled Joy with tales of my island adventure, enthusing about this ‘other’ side of Tenerife. She responded with adequate expressions, but I could tell she didn’t share my excitement.
‘You should write it down,’ she said from behind a Hello! magazine. ‘I bet other people would be interested.’
I noted the emphasis on ‘other’.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The original inhabitants of Tenerife were called Guanches: cave dwellers who remained stuck in the Stone Age for perhaps longer than they should have. Their provenance is uncertain, but the most accepted theory suggests they arrived from North Africa in around 200 BC. Carbon dating of the sparse archaeological relics backs up this notion, as does the fact that there are similarities between the language and place names of the Canary Islands and those of the North African Berbers.
However, one rather large hole in this theory prevails – how did they get here? The Canary Islands were never connected to the African mainland, even though they’re only sixty miles apart at the closest point (between the island of Fuerteventura and the most south-westerly tip of Morocco), and not a scrap of evidence has been found to suggest that the Guanches had any seafaring knowledge or indeed knew how to make boats.
Other anthropologists point to Mexico or Egypt as the root, based on similarities between the house-sized pyramids in Güímar, an otherwise unremarkable town (though with an excellent museum) on Tenerife’s dusty east coast, and the fact that the Guanches also mummified their dead.
Those with vivid imaginations or a taste for mind-altering chemicals have a more romantic theory about Tenerife’s first dwellers. They say that the Canary Islands are the highest peaks of the fabled land of Atlantis and that the Guanches were the only survivors when that continent inconveniently sank.
Either way, there aren’t many true Guanches left on the island, despite claims to the contrary by stick-wielding shepherds and others with similarly enduring careers. When the Spanish conquered the islands in the fifteenth century, many islanders were killed, or sold into slavery and shipped to Africa, Spain or Italy. The genetic line of those that remained became diluted through ‘relationships’ with their conquerors and other visiting nationals. Nowadays, if you hear an islander proclaiming, ‘Soy Guanche,’ they’re probably either drunk, misguided or referring to a very tiny trace of the Guanche gene that’s embedded deep in their DNA.
Twenty-first-century Tenerife has a population of one million. Of that one million, roughly ten per cent are expats from 114 different countries. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually more Italian expats on the island than anyone else. The British make up only 18 per cent of the expat community, putting them in third place, after the Germans.
According to figures from the Ministry of Employment and Social Security, at the time of going to print there are also 678 Irish living here, 169 Americans, sixteen Canadians and twelve Australians. There’s also one person from Azerbaijan. I hope for his or her sake that they speak Spanish, or they may be in for a lonely time.
Add to that the five million visiting holidaymakers each year, two million of them British, and it’s hardly surprising that Tenerife is a cosmopolitan cauldron of different cultures. Like ourselves when we arrived, pale-faced and wide-eyed, in 1991, many of these visitors fall into the bracket of ‘baffled and bemused’; fish out of water in a strange land they know nothing about and surrounded by strange people of whom they have no understanding. Particularly if they’re from Azerbaijan.
It was these baffled and bemused of Tenerife – expats and visitors alike – that interested me most. I became fascinated with the mismatching of cultures on our island and I began to jot down my observations. Incomers from northern Europe often had a particularly confusing time of it: being used to efficiency, over-politeness and logical reasoning, they were completely flummoxed when faced with the laissez-faire, often abrupt and always mañana attitude of Tenerifians.
As my interest grew, these notes about life in Tenerife became more detailed, and dare I say it, more organised. I even bought a Moleskine notebook, which made me feel very writerly. Joy and a few others read the notes and commented that I should try and get them published. This is the literary equivalent of your mum filling in the forms for X Factor after hearing you sing in the shower. However, with more than a little trepidation, I decided to dip a toe into the world of published writing and sent off a couple of 700-word expat observations to Island Connections, the main local English-language newspaper in Tenerife, which came out once a fortnight.
I received a polite email back thanking me for my contributions and informing me that they would appear in consecutive editions the following month. Hell, I was going to be published! A real newspaper had deemed my words worthy of their twenty thousand readers!
Little did I realise that the editors of pretty much all the local rags were desperate for words to fill the gaps between advertisements and advertorials. Any string of ink in a reasonable state of cohesion would have been accepted. But I wasn’t to know that and duly celebrated my literary breakthrough as if I’d won the Booker Prize.
As if that wasn’t victory enough, the initial email was followed up with further correspondence asking if I’d like to become a columnist, providing ‘witty’ observations for every fortnightly edition. I felt my career was racing: from random note-scribbler to columnist in the space of a few weeks! Naturally for a local paper, the rewards weren’t overly generous. In fact, there weren’t any. Not in spe
ndables anyway. I was allowed to place a free advert in the classifieds, if I could think of anything to advertise. The ad value was worth the equivalent of around £7 at the time, which priced my work at a penny a word.
I had no reason to question this rate. Mainly because I had nothing to compare it with. Within twelve months, however, this would become £1 a word. And I still find it hard to believe how fortune enabled such a rapid rise.
Several weeks later, I was invited to visit the basement office of said newspaper in Los Cristianos. Kandy, the editor, asked if I’d be interested in a part-time job, working in the features department. I looked around the office to try and identify the journalistic colleagues I’d be working alongside.
‘Who’s in that department?’ I asked.
‘Julie does the features at the moment.’ Kandy nodded towards a short, rotund figure at the far side of the office.
Julie was mechanically shoving Rich Tea biscuits in her mouth at an impressive rate.
‘But she’s on maternity leave soon. Besides which, she’s crap.’ Kandy waved and smiled; ‘Aren’t you, Julie?’
Julie waved back cheerily.
Life at the paper, albeit only part-time, was fun and varied. Kandy had handed the editorial reins to Bridget, a fiercely patriotic Irish girl with actual experience in reporting. She had worked for RTE radio and studied journalism at university. Happily, she had a similar sense of humour and was happy for me to continue producing my columns on life in Tenerife, in between doing bits of more serious newsgathering.
Newsgathering at Island Connections did not involve pounding the streets with notepad stuffed in deep pockets; rather, it entailed nothing more adventurous than scanning the daily Spanish papers and translating items that were either of interest to Tenerife readers or, more importantly as far as Bridget was concerned, contained some reference to Ireland. Daniel O’Donnell, Roy Keane and Lord of the Dance were given many more column inches than they deserved. Those inches may not have been entirely accurate either. My Spanish was still about the level of a five-year-old’s and despite me spelling this out to Bridget, I was handed all the translation work. The bits I didn’t get, which was most of them, I guessed or made up. But at least it helped to fill the paper, which was the overriding objective.
As Bridget’s confidence in me grew, I was landed with more lofty commissions, such as writing the horoscopes. I know some people take these predictions very seriously, but for me, assigning fate was a random affair. One edition, Pisces would be urged to ‘think about your next move to take that extra step towards self-fulfilment’, while Leos would be advised ‘not to make any hasty decisions as that may lead to stress’. Six weeks later, destinies would be reversed: Pisces would be advised to ‘think long and carefully about an impending decision that could lead to upset’, while it would be Leos’ turn to ‘start pondering what to do next to achieve personal ambitions’. I doubt anyone noticed, nor cared for that matter. Horoscopes are designed to be ambiguous enough so that any situation can be shoe-horned in to fit the forecast.
Occasionally real news would have to be investigated: murders that couldn’t be ignored, local political scandals that needed exposing, visits by fading celebrities who had to be interviewed. Back then, in 2001, Tenerife was not exactly awash with paparazzi desperate to catch the ugly side of stardom. We had plenty of ugly, just not many visiting celebs. Michael Jackson had performed in Santa Cruz in 1993, and a handful of other stars have graced our volcanic shores since, but the island certainly wasn’t, and still isn’t a key player in the world pop-music scene.
Icon-hungry islanders were fed only small crumbs of pop stardom, acts from the eighties trying to squeeze the last drops of adulation from long-gone recording careers, like Kajagoogoo or Shakin’ Stevens. On very rare occasions, the dying embers of their careers would suddenly spark briefly into life again, such as with Spandau Ballet.
Tony Hadley had been booked to perform to backing tracks at a monthly eighties disco and I was dispatched to interview him. It was at the time when he had very publicly fallen out with the rest of the band and I was waved out of the office by Bridget early one afternoon with the words ‘See what you can get out of him’ ringing in my ears. Tony, as I like to call him, was notoriously candid, and I knew that I was in for some juicy backbiting and scandalous name-calling. Unfortunately, it would never make it to print.
The interview had been arranged for 3pm on the terrace of Brinsley Forde’s bar. Brinsley was the former singer of reggae success Aswad. With his immense musical talent, Rasta philosophy and pop-world connections, he had decided a small cocktail bar in the middle of Playa de las Américas was the next logical step in his musical ascendancy. He did make a mean Sex on the Beach cocktail though, so I guess all was not lost.
The first thing that I noticed about Tony Hadley was his presence. Some people effortlessly ooze star status. Dressed in black shirt, jeans and cowboy boots and standing over six feet tall, Tony was one of them. I was feeling more than a little awestruck, stuttering out my questions, so the arrival of a tropical, fruit-laden loosener was a welcome interruption. As soon as the glasses were empty, two more magically appeared.
Thanks to the alcohol, relaxation kicked in, quickly followed by complete and utter inebriation. Before long we were calling each other ‘mate’. On my side, this was because it seemed pretty cool to be on ‘mate’ terms with a (once) legendary pop star. With Tony, I’m pretty sure that he’d just plain forgotten my name half an hour into the interview.
Afternoon became early evening, the sun casting a golden glow across the ocean behind us. By now I had all but abandoned lengthy note-taking, making the journalistic decision to just let the friendly conversation flow and see where it took us. I nonchalantly scribbled down the odd word while noisily hoovering the last remnants of rum through a straw, but I knew that I needed nothing more than the barest reminders to be able to produce scintillating copy in the morning. As the interview came to an end with an exchange of manly backslapping, some four hours and half a dozen cocktails after it had begun, I realised that walking required a great deal more attention than I usually afforded it.
I sat forlornly at my desk the following morning, nursing a rusty head and staring at a notepad that alarmingly contained nothing but abstract words: ‘deal’, ‘his wife’, ‘Norwich’, ‘last year’ and something that looked like it might have said ‘custard’. None of it made the slightest bit of sense. Not one word triggered any memory of even part of the conversation.
There was only one thing to do. I searched the internet for every recent interview Tony had given and cobbled together a thousand words from those reports. It wasn’t my finest hour, but, still, I had a nice photo of him and me together, and it was with a modicum of satisfaction that I heard he’d looked just as much the worse for wear as I had that morning.
Being arrested in the name of journalistic endeavours was also not one of my finest moments and could easily have been avoided had I been blessed with even a smattering of media knowledge.
There was a local news story gaining pace about the national police in Playa de las Américas and I was duly commanded to get a picture of a police station to accompany our report. What Bridget failed to advise was discretion. So, when the camera was snatched out of my hand and both arms twisted up my back in a manner I neither appreciated nor was accustomed to, I was a little taken aback.
I had been standing in the middle of a roundabout in front of the police station trying to decide whether a portrait or landscape image would work best when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. Just as I turned to investigate, I was grabbed by both arms, frogmarched in front of a queue of halted traffic, bundled through a metal side door and pushed into a plastic chair in an interview room.
The ETA terrorist group, intent on forcing an independent Basque state, had recently been on a bombing spree on the mainland, which understandably had put all Spanish police stations on full alert, even those in the remotest territorie
s. Taking photos of police stations at such a time was liable to cause a little concern amongst those in uniform and it was three such individuals who were forcefully enquiring why I’d been doing it.
‘Name,’ barked the most senior. He stood up, rolled up his sleeves and leant over the desk.
I bleated my name.
‘Who are you working for?’ Thankfully, his English was impeccable.
‘Island Connections.’
Boss policeman’s eyes opened wider. I felt the two lackeys who had strong-armed me move closer. ‘Which island connections? Give me names.’
‘Err, Bridget, Kandy…’
‘Write this down,’ instructed the boss to one of his lackeys. ‘So, these connections on the island, what do they do?’
This was not going in the direction I had anticipated. I needed to backtrack fast, but before I could, the policeman changed tack. He clicked through the digital images on my camera.
‘Why are you taking photos of this police station and my officers?’ He leant in. I could smell garlic, stale tobacco and a faint whiff of whisky.
‘My boss asked me to shoot them.’ I knew at the very moment the word ‘shoot’ fell from my trembling lips that a hole the size of Calcutta had just opened beneath me.
The chief looked at his two sidekicks, said something in Spanish and dispatched one of them through the door behind me. I smiled weakly at the chief, who glared through narrow eyes as he sparked a shiny silver Zippo lighter, took a slow intake of nicotine and let the smoke drift out from his nose and mouth. The lighter was similar to one I’d given my brother on his last birthday, but I decided not to share that observation just then.
The door opened and a new interviewer came in. He wore dark blue trousers that concertina-ed above scuffed black shoes. His matching jacket strained at the shoulders and waist as he bent forward. His neck spilled in pink folds over a dandruff-speckled collar. He turned to eye me as the chief filled him in.
