“Special and beautiful” whistled language echoes around this island
L A GOM E R A,S PA IN» Sitting atop a cliff in the Canary Islands, Antonio Márquez Navarro issued an invitation — “Come over here, we’re going to slaughter the pig”— without speaking a word: He whistled it.
In the distance, three visiting hikers stopped dead in their tracks at the piercing sound and its echo bouncing off the walls of the ravine that separated them.
Márquez, 71, said that in his youth, when local shepherds rather than tourists walked the steep and rugged footpaths of his island, his news would have been greeted right away by a responding whistle, loud and clear.
But his message was lost on these hikers, and they soon resumed their trek on La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the Atlantic that is part of Spain.
Márquez is a proud guardian of La Gomera’s whistling language, which he called “the poetry of my island.” And, he added, “like poetry, whistling does not need to be useful in order to be special and beautiful.”
The whistling of the Indigenous people of La Gomera is mentioned in the 15th-century accounts of the explorers who paved the way for the Spanish conquest of the island. Over the centuries, the practice was adapted to communicating in Castilian Spanish.
The language, officially known as Silbo Gomero, substitutes whistled sounds that vary by pitch and length for written letters. Unfortunately, there are fewer whistles than there are letters in the Spanish alphabet, so a sound can have multiple meanings, causing misunderstandings.
The sounds made for a few Spanish words are the same — like “sí” (yes) or “ti” (you) — as are those for some longer words that sound similar in spoken Spanish, like “gallina” or “ballena” (hen or whale).
“As part of a sentence, this animal reference is clear, but not if whistled on its own,” said Estefanía Mendoza, a teacher of the language.
In 2009, the island’s language was added by UNESCO to its list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; the United Nations agency described it as “the only whistled language in the world that is fully developed and practiced by a large community,” in reference to La Gomera’s 22,000 inhabitants.
But with whistling no longer essential for communication, Silbo’s survival mostly relies on a 1999 law that made teaching it an obligatory part of La Gomera’s school curriculum.
On a recent morning at a school in the port town of Santiago, a classroom of 6-year-olds had little difficulty identifying the whistling sounds corresponding to different colors, or the days of the week.
“The only rule is to find whichever finger makes it easier to whistle, and sometimes unfortunately nothing works at all,” said Francisco Correa, the coordinator of La Gomera’s school whistling program. “There are even some older people who have understood Silbo perfectly since childhood, but never got any clear sound to come out of their mouth.”
As is the case in many languages, whether whistled or not, there is a generation gap on La Gomera.
Ciro Mesa Niebla, a 46-year-old farmer, said he struggled to whistle with a younger generation trained at school because, he said, “I’m a mountain guy who learned at home to whistle the words our family used to farm, but I don’t have the vocabulary of these kids who learn salon whistling, which is a bit too fancy for me.”
With its distinct geography, it’s easy to see why whistling came into use on the Canaries; on most of the islands, deep ravines run from high peaks and plateaus down to the ocean, and plenty of time and effort are required to travel even a short distance overland.
Whistling developed as a good alternative way to deliver a message, with its sound carrying farther than shouting — as much as two miles across some canyons and with favorable wind conditions.
However much she is attached to her cellphone, Erin Gerhards, 15, sounded keen to improve her whistling and help safeguard the traditions of her island.
“It is a way to honor the people that lived here in the past,” she said. “And to remember where everything came from, that we didn’t start with technology, but from simple beginnings.”
In what would have been big news before the pandemic, Gov. Jared Polis late last month declared a state of emergency, his 18th since March and one of more than 320 executive orders he has issued during the coronavirus crisis.
Those numbers feel much too high to Republicans in the legislature, who this week again made clear their intent to try to curtail the governor’s unprecedented authority and hand some power back to other policymakers.
Four GOP bills to this effect have been introduced, and lawmakers say more are likely coming.
“One of the most basic, fundamental bedrocks of our republic is representative government,” said Sen. Rob Woodward, a Loveland Republican who is sponsoring a bill designed to protect small businesses from being ordered to close if and when big-box stores can stay open.
“When you have a single individual making law, executing law, making all these decisions, that’s not a very healthy way to run things,” Woodward added. “That’s why we left England back in the day.”
Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Andres Pico, meanwhile, is pushing a bill to limit gubernatorial disaster declarations to 60 days, saying “the legislative and executive branch (should be) working together, and I don’t think we are right now.”
Those two bills, and others that will follow, surely will die because Democrats control the legislature. The party of Polis has shot down similar proposals throughout the pandemic, and there’s no evidence that will change.
Polis’ power and prominence in the past year aren’t unique: Governors around the country are in the spotlight like never before. Unlike his colleagues in states with split-party control — Michigan and Kansas, for example — Polis rarely has had to negotiate. Democrats have grumbled at times about Polis leaving lawmakers out of the loop on key decisions concerning the state’s COVID-19 response. But for the most part, they’ve been glad to cede power.
“There’s probably a partisan element to this,” acknowledged Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat and the legislature’s chief budget writer. “That’s the reality when you control all three — the House, the Senate and the governor’s office.”
For the majority of the pandemic, the executive branch has been the only fully functioning branch of government in Colorado. The legislature, which is part-time, has met for about a month total since COVID19 shut down the Capitol in March. The judiciary is deeply backlogged; Chief Justice Brian Boatright told lawmakers Thursday that a “tsunami” of 14,635 jury trials await for when operations return to normal.
Barring COVID-related public health setbacks, Capitol leaders say the legislature will meet through the spring, meaning critical questions that were settled largely by Polis throughout the pandemic can in theory fall to lawmakers.
They could pass bills to override his authority, change operational rules for struggling businesses and freeze evictions, among other actions.
But they’re not looking to pick many fights. GOP bills such as Woodward’s and Pico’s are as good as dead on arrival.
“I know that some folks have issues with how long it’s lasted,” Moreno said of the governor’s reign. “But I don’t really think it’s our role to manage a crisis of this magnitude.”
That is, except budget.
Polis has plans for a state stimulus package in excess of $1 billion, and this year sought what essentially would have been a rubberstamp from the Joint Budget Committee, a bipartisan (but Democrat-controlled) group of six lawmakers. for the
They declined.
Polis now appears more interested in making new investments to kick-start economic recovery with job-creating projects such as broadband service expansion and major road repairs. The legislature, Moreno said, may be more interested in restoring budget cuts made in 2020, when the state’s economy was projected to tank much more than it actually has.
And as for who might decide whether and how another round of federal stimulus money might be allocated in Colorado?
“Good question!” said Sen. Bob Rankin, the Carbondale Republican and a state budget writer. “I believe it should go through (the legislature). I don’t know. I hope. I am trying as hard as I can to convince Moreno and the other Democrats to push back very hard on the governor.”
He and his GOP colleagues will keep trying, but evidence from the past year shows they may not get far.
Polis told The Denver Post this week he doesn’t like having so much power — “the worst nightmare,” he said — but sidestepped a question about whether the GOP proposals are appropriate.
“We’re always happy to have a discussion with the legislature about the proper role of the legislative, executive and judicial branches in an emergency,” he said, “but nobody will be more thrilled than I am to give up those emergency powers when the pandemic ends.”