Excelencias from the Caribbean & the Americas
Teo and the Sunken Fleet
THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE IS BAFFLED BY THE CURIOUS FACT THAT HIS NAME IS LINKED TO A DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE SUNKEN FLEET THE ADMIRAL CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS WARSHIP ONCE BELONGED TO
In March 2010, I traveled to Cuba in the company of the Secorún brothers: Pere, the director, and Josep Lluís, the cameraman of the Thalassa show, dedicated to the sea and aired on Channel 33 of TV3, the Catalan Television. We were also joined by Alfonso Cruz, an underwater
painter and fellow citizen of mine, who was born in Terrassa, just like me.
The four of us were invited by the Ministry of Tourism (MINTUR) and the reason for our trip was to make several documentaries dedicated to the sea in Cuba, to Alfonso's relationship with it and his underwater painting. In my case, I would be in charge of the wrecks of Admiral Cervera's fleet, both in its historical and diving aspects. These audiovisual works were intended to spread out the excellence of Cuban diving.
Even local newspaper Granma broke the news of our arrival in Cuba and our claims. The Cuban newspaper labeled me as "the pundit on Cervera's fleet".
During seventeen heart-beating days we toured Cuba by land, sea and air, visiting some of its best diving areas: Playa Girón, Isla de la Juventud, Cayo Guillermo, Santa Lucía, Santiago de Cuba, Guardalavaca, etc., where we took several underwater and land filming sessions directed by celebrated Cuban journalist Omelio Borroto, director of Cuba's Secret Nature for Mundo Latino filmmaking company, let alone the collaboration of another renowned colleague, Pere Secorún.
The dives were coordinated by Vicente González, a magnificent underwater photographer. Noel López, Víctor Isla and José Rivera participated as underwater cameramen, while Pedro Rivera and Josep Lluís Secorún were tasked with the out-of water shooting. All of them were top-notch professionals.
To top it all off, Alfonso Cruz painted an underwater picture for the Cuban National Aquarium, located in Havana. As it could not be otherwise, the stars of the work were the dolphins that were immortalized in canvas by the artist's refined pictorial technique. The
canvas remained in Cuba as a witness of a trip and some unforgettable experiences.
From this shooting journey, Thalassa came up with three documentaries: Cuba un jardí submarí (Cuba An Underwater Garden), Un pintor submarí a Cuba (An Underwater Painter in Cuba) and Teo i la flota enfonsada (Teo and the Sunken Fleet), the latter about my curious relationship with Admiral Cervera's fleet and the wrecks of that ships, which lie in the sea bottom on the western coast of Santiago de Cuba.
There is nothing special about what I have just told you if I didn't say that I am a professional electrician: I work as a technician for an electrical service company that is a contractor for the ENDESA Power Company.
I am neither a historian nor a journalist or anything like that. So I live, apparently, quite far from this kind of adventure. However, the underwater world, travel and history, are my passion. By a series of coincidences, although there are those who say that they do not exist, I have been very lucky to be able to combine these three aspects with spectacular outcomes, at
least for me. I think that's why I can consider myself a very, very lucky person.
All this kicked off with the purpose of my first trip to Cuba in back 1994: to dive the wreckage of a Spanish ship that sank in the waters off Santiago de Cuba and of which I only knew its name, Columbus, which belonged to some Admiral Cervera's fleet, a completely unknown character to me. I didn't even know where the shipwreck was located, the memory of which was getting lost in the blurriness of time, and so I failed. I couldn't fulfill the object of my journey, but far from failing I kept on trying and returned to Cuba again and again until I finally succeeded, by dint of tenacity.
It struck me funny, almost baffling, that my name, Teo, is now linked to a documentary about that sunken and forgotten fleet the Admiral Christopher Columbus battleship once belonged to. It is as if destiny had granted me that privilege or perhaps it ended up becoming an obsession, trying to unravel the mystery: that sunken and forgotten warship on a lonely beach of eastern Cuba.
I have been able to prove that dreams do come true. When I began to look into everything about the Columbus ship. I was able to watch a documentary that Commander Jacques Cousteau called “Cuba, The Waters of Destiny”, a curious name that almost comes to mind with what I am telling you.
In “Cuba, The Waters of Destiny”, a deceased Cuban historian shows up, a man who narrated, from the walls of Morro Castle in Santiago de Cuba, the sad and dramatic outcome of the Spanish fleet after the naval battle.
Afterwards, Cousteau said: "Crossing the barrier of time, we floated over the unrecognizable chimney that propelled Columbus in a race for survival, which was lost beforehand. Pursued, the heavy cruiser wound up succumbing". Seeing the shipwreck of the Spanish cruiser on the screen, I contemplated those two scenes I daydreamed that one day I would be able to do something similar about, and in good faith I succeeded.
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