MI CONVENCIÓN

JOSÉ MARIA CEREZO "TROVATA"

TUDI Representative in Spain

II CONVENCION TUDI

GUIMARAES-SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, 2023

1º Parte

“Aquí Nasceu Portugal”, Part 1

"Here Portugal was born," reads the inscription on one of the towers of Guimarães' walls, and since September 8, 2023, it has been engraved on my soul without the need for needle or ink. The city's foundation is attributed to a nobleman, vassal of King Alfonso III of Asturias, Vimara Pérez, who gave the town its name, originally called Vimaranes. Since then, history has been written with these references, but after the II TUDI Convention, the name Guimarães will be indissolubly linked to Paulo Gonçalves, Plaza de Oliveira, Medieval, and Catarina.

Attending the II TUDI Convention allowed me to personally meet those who were just small images on my mobile phone until then. My expectations of what it would be like to live together for 9 days with people from 10 different countries were far exceeded by what happened. There was never a voice louder than another in a human group composed of 50 senior tunos, 33 wives, and one young "Pauliño" whom all attendees lovingly adopted as a "son of all." All participants secretly participated in a competition to see who could be kinder, more polite, friendlier, and more accommodating than the other, with no prize other than a friendly smile. Everyone was rewarded; no one went without a trophy.

Today, memories compete with each other to be the most cherished, making it impossible to choose the best. Therefore, I will only mention a few, to avoid boring you with laughter, shared meals, visits, and settings: a great bunch of happy experiences.

During our journey on the Douro, we learned from Miguel Falla that liquids should be thrown to leeward if we don't want to risk having them return to our faces as a gentle curtain of water. Furthermore, the Colombian also enlightened us on where to expel flatulence on the ship. We must explain that the origin of what we call flatulence (to be polite) or farts (to be less polite, which are some of the names different places give them) is partly in the air we ingest when swallowing saliva, food, or drinks, in the gases generated when food reacts with stomach acids or intestinal fluids, and fundamentally because, by feeding the bacteria abundant in our intestines, they pay us back with abundant gases, sometimes not suitable for delicate noses. On this occasion, the passengers' stomach acids were made with Colombian rum, Tijuana mezcal, and chocolates and sweets made with secret Aztec recipes, and miraculously, everyone on board survived their consumption. The Viceroyalty of New Granada was categorical about it: these gases will always be expelled aft.

The Portuguese Nuno Barbosa, who by appearance and surname could well have been a character from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, reassured us when he noticed that all passengers were looking up as we passed under the São João Bridge (one of the six bridges connecting Porto and Villanova de Gaia, built to provide a railway connection to replace the one on the Maria Pía Bridge). He said that it was equipped with an anti-rollover system that would prevent the train from falling into the river and landing right on our boat. This news calmed the passengers, and some sphincters relaxed.

When I was a child, my father often took me to the greatest show on earth: the circus. Among all the performers, the animal tamers always caught my attention: sometimes lions, sometimes elephants, and occasionally tigers. I remember that man caged with the beasts, earning their respect with a voice that sometimes did not exceed the intensity of a whisper. It is well known that animals have very different hearing capacities, perceiving frequencies inaudible to humans. The beasts performed the exercise after the brief crack of the whip in the air that he always held in his hand.

These memories came to my mind during every rehearsal we did. Once on the theater stage, an Apollonian figure emerged from the noise, gently swaying the air with his hands, saying in a whisper, "listen to me and do not play!" Mambo is a tamer, not of beasts but of rational animals, replacing the whip with a sharp stroke of strings on his bandurria. He was able to bring out the best in us to blend on stage. If he had been there on that fateful occasion, he would have directed the Titanic orchestra, and surely no one would have jumped overboard in panic. It was a pleasure to be on stage with him; he infused such confidence in the group that no one doubted that the pieces to be interpreted would turn out well, and they did.

Largo da Oliveira is the most important and crowded square in Guimarães' historic center; something similar to what we could call the "Plaza Mayor." It is connected to Plaza de Santiago through the arcades of the Antigos Paços do Concelho building and has recently had as a monumental reference the Padrão do Salado, which was erected in the 14th century at the initiative of Alfonso IV of Portugal to commemorate the victory in the Battle of Salado in 1340. Everything around the square revolved around this national monument until the lord of the miraculous coconut arrived.

That giant, tall as a Castilian windmill, native to the island of San Juan Bautista, which the Admiral of the Ocean Sea called Puerto Rico when he discovered it on his second voyage, ironically answered to the name Pulgarcito, but he could very well have been christened Samson. At dusk, with the last lights of the day, people from all backgrounds gathered in the square with the hope of sipping that ambrosia that the giant held in his lap, and he distributed it prodigiously since it never ran out. Soon rumors spread throughout the Portuguese kingdom that the Taíno performed miracles by anointing pilgrims' chests with the elixir, remedying ailments, and dispelling sorrows, so that from his stay, the square became known as the "Plaza of the miraculous coconut child."

Caterina, the landlady of the Medieval Inn, gave him the recipe for the juice with the intention that the Borinquen would never lack the nectar when he returned to that land of brave lords.

I will carefully keep the memories of the II TUDI Convention in the drawers of my memory; they will be the medicine I will use when I need to take refuge in the best moments of my life to fight against others that will not be so kind. When the time comes, I will remember the camaraderie of my Senior Tunos of Ibero-America and their ladies, who, making friends among themselves, managed to tighten our fraternal bonds even more. The accents of people from the narrowest country on Earth will parade through my thoughts as I sing my way to Chile, the divine dream of men from Canada because he fell asleep in the Cathedral, as happened with Tula in his room (God has already forgiven him), Galician-Portuguese melodies of Trojans and Portuguese students, fragrances of Mexican mezcal and tequila, the figure of the man who should crown all wedding cakes by creating a pastry style called the Humberta cake, the "Ajai" of Colombian cumbias sung while surprisingly, the flute plays at the same time, the stars of American flags that I now replace with tambourines, the people from the large island of calm passage, and the strange accent of the inhabitants of Flanders.

TUDI enriched my "conhecimento" making it"mais bunito."

See you next year in the West Indies!

¡NO NI NÁ¡