The Fuente del Pilar 'blesses' all the residents of El Tablero

 

This Tuesday, in the presence of Mayor Marco Aurelio Pérez Sánchez, the stream of the Pilar fountain has once again flowed freely and singly to provide the sound of water to the small square that was always the heart of the town of El Tablero due to its historical centrality and because it is precisely the place where the first pillar of running water was installed that gave water to the neighborhood population. 

 

 

This original pillar came into operation in August 1958, coinciding with the opening of the Pedrazo Cemetery. It was narrated by the official chronicler and Favorite Son of San Bartolomé de Tirajana and resident of El Tablero, Carmelo Pérez Rodríguez, at the opening ceremony of the current Plaza del Pilar and its new fountain, on May 28, 1999. 

 

The installation of the original pillar when El Tablero was still a rural center that grew with the tomato harvests, allowed women and children “to no longer have to go look for water in the puddles of the Barranco, or in the ponds that impounded the water from the minotes of Mediafanega, nor to the wells of Fiol and Los Pestanas, nor to go down the slope to fetch water from the well of Martinón,” said Carmelo Pérez. That historic pillar provided water two hours a day, at dawn and at dusk, and women and children came to it with buckets and clay pots. But that ancient fountain ended up disappearing, remaining a simple iron pipe with a stopcock. And that one also ended up disappearing when running water finally reached all the houses in the town. It was a municipal decision to avoid the use of water by the numerous vacationers and campers on the Meloneras coast who went up to the Tablero to look for free water with jugs and small plastic drums.

 

The current spring fountain in the Plaza del Pilar, an improved replica of the original pillar, functioned with many problems and for barely a decade and always in a rather irregular and intermittent manner. Its recovery and launch this Tuesday, after more than 15 years without a single drop flowing from it, has been carried out within the specific plan for the general renovation of the Plaza that was carried out before the Festival of the Holy Trinity. Operators from the departments of Roads and Works and Parks and Gardens directed by the eighth deputy mayor, Araceli Armas Cruz and coordinated by the councilor delegate Eduardo Armas Herrera restored the five streetlights of the premises, replaced the 4 old wooden benches with other iron ones cast much more resistant; They repaired the deficiencies in the pavement and installed two new litter bins to replace those that had disappeared. To put the fountain back into operation, they changed the motor and the rest of the mechanisms, and repaired the water leaks in the system.

 

 

 

That current source also has its history. It was included as a mandatory condition within the first project to beautify and recover Plaza del Pilar as a significant space in the life and history of the Tablero. It was also promoted by Carmelo Pérez Rodríguez from the Ayagabre Popular School (EPA), and to promote it socially he involved all the cultural, neighborhood, sports, associative and religious groups that were part of the Community Promotion and Intervention Project that he had launched in the town. He directed the idea at the same time that the construction of the new Church was planned, and in fact in the urn of the first stone of the religious building, a small reproduction of the first pillar made of clay was introduced as a symbol of the collective identity of El Tablero. .

 

To expedite that project to recover the Plaza del Pilar and its new fountain, Carmelo Pérez even made a first sketch, spoke with the municipal authorities and even transferred the concept of the public space to the architect. He insisted that he respect the old Indian laurels planted by Pancho García, and that the plaza be a reference of open space for the enjoyment and gathering of neighbors, with a small children's play area, benches for rest and the small monumental fountain. that remembered the old pillar, which he also sketched. For the artistic design of the fountain, the painter and sculptor Antonio García Cánovas, who was director of the Municipal Theater School, took on the challenge of making the sculptures of the children who play in it. They were first molded in plaster and later made in bronze in a foundry in Arucas.

 

 

The formal and festive ceremony for the inauguration of the square and its fountain was a historic event for the entire town. Carmelo Pérez recalled that they were “the place where Easter was sung and Carnival was held, where mass was celebrated in front of Mariquita Peñate's house and where itinerant artists sang in front of Honorio's bar and barbershop; also where men chatted, commenting on life, sitting on stones in front of Maximinito's Cafetín and in the back of Pedro Vega's Old Society, and the place where children played around the water. As a reminder of that event, all the neighbors who attended were given a small piece of ceramic fired by the ceramist Alicia Penín, with the motto: “In this square a pillar flowed.”