We landed at the Las Palmas airport in Gran Canaria,and in a few minutes a taxi takes us to our hotel in Maspalomas, that beautiful beach surrounded by dunes in shades of orange, beige, brown and champagne, depending on the time of day. The boulevards here are lined with very tall palm trees ,like the ones I remember from my childhood in Cuba, which we called “palmas reales”. Regal palms, indeed.. The locals speak like my fellow Cubans, in that rapid spitfire Spanish tinged with words like “guagua” for buses, a term one would not catch a real Madrileno ever using. It feels like home, and, of course, my roots are here, since my paternal greatgrandparents came to Cuba from the Canary Islands.
The one thing that did not make me feel at home today was when I found out that our hotel has no Internet connection. Forget wires. Forget cables. Forget the Internet. Enjoy the pool that turns into a lagoon, or the tapas and cava at sunset, and, as the reception clerk told me—-and who could argue with him?: “Can you live without Internet for a few days?”
“Hmmmmmm, maybe,” I said, then quickly asked: “where is the closest Internet cafe?”
Oh, Playa de Meloneros. So after a day of beach and sun, here I am, the sweet sounds of tic tac tic tac on a dozen keyboards. The world of today, even in paradise-like Maspalomas, includes a sense of being connected. At this cafe, the computers and the martinis and sangria do a sort of flamenco dance.
It is happy hour at the Taverna de Meloneros.
Nobody is happier than me after I secure this connection.
Pass the tapas and a glass of cava, por favor.
OF SPECIAL INTEREST: It is Sunday, THE DAY of the EURO 2008 championship Final. All copies of El Pais and El Mundo were gone by 11 am! The power of a good story that everyone is following. It is what sells. It was the same 100 years go, and will be the same as people come to the media for content they want.
Hasta manana.