I remember the summers of my childhood in Playa Santiago, like someone who remembers a secret homeland that no longer exists, a homeland raised with the first light of July and with the constant murmur of the sea, a childhood homeland that has remained forever in memory. They were warm mornings, endless mornings, when the sun, barely at ten o'clock, rose over the beaches of callaos, burnished, burning, burning the soles of our feet, while we ran barefoot towards those transparent waters, calm at first, mirrors of salt that broke with the first dive. And there, with our skin on fire, the sea welcomed us, with the red and blue mats waiting for us, with the pink corkboard buoys tight around our waists, hugging us like an ancient god, laughing with us, tattooing us with the saltpeter a secret alphabet that only childhood knows how to read.
The sea breeze moved the party papers, which were not simple decorations, but voices of light, spinning like an invisible choir, like a high and serene song that seemed to come from heaven to announce the joy, and the entire town breathed that song, that music without instruments, that liturgy suspended in the air, while we, absorbed children, listened to it without understanding that it was eternity that was being revealed to us.
The first day of July was different, always different, because it dawned with flyers opening the sky, with the speakers spilling the Pasodoble Canary Islands, solemn, vibrant, inevitable, falling on the colored houses like a sound tide. And that pasodoble was the biggest bell of our small world, the ring that marked the beginning of the true summer, that of parties, that of laughter, that of shared joy. Then came the games in the square, races, jumps, minimum prizes that seemed like treasures, screams that raised dust and joy, and, at the end of the afternoon, the thick, hot chocolate that stained our mouths with sweets and our memories with happiness.
The stands, covered with green leaves, seemed like improvised palaces for a popular nobility without a crown, and the orchestras, with deep basses, brilliant trumpets and tireless guitars, poured out boleros, merengues, salsas, pasodobles, until they turned the entire night into music. And we wore new clothes, because the party demanded another body, another light, another way of smiling, and the entire town was transformed, bigger, more alive, more ours than ever.
The afternoons were of long tables, with oilcloth tablecloths and stewed potatoes, with fresh fish and wine for the adults, with soft drinks and ice cream for us, with long after-dinner conversations, unhurried conversations, laughter that seemed eternal, and then, with the coolness, the street again, to run, to invent worlds, to play until the night enveloped us in music and gunpowder, and the sky, lit by the fliers, also seemed to celebrate with us.
The sales were humble temples, with hot bread, with soft drinks in glass bottles sweating from the cold, with trinkets that shined on the shelves like treasures, with small promises that seemed big. The town seethed, with the sound of footsteps, with greetings and promises, with furtive encounters under the electric lights, and everything had the density of the unrepeatable, the certainty that, even if it returned every July, childhood would never return the same, because childhood always escapes, like water between hands.
I am and was happy in Playa Santiago, between red and blue mats, between corchopan buoys and paper that sang with the sea breeze, between the Pasodoble Canary Islands and the flyers, between the beaches of burning callaos and thick chocolate, with cousins and friends, with orchestras and sales, with the luminous innocence of those Julys that will not return and that, however, remain intact, lit in my memory, like a sun that never sets turn off.
Written by Carlos Jesús Pérez Simancas.
