Raquel Fernandez |
Santiago de Compostela (EFE).- Carolina is 100 years old, José María as many, Eustaquio 101, Esperanza 106 and Dolores 107. All of them are part of the exclusive club of centenarians that they make up in Spain, according to the latest data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), corresponding to 2022, up to 19,639 people.
Teachers, one from pastry, another from carpentry, another from livestock, a fan of dancing and the last one of Sudoku. This quintet of Galician centenarians shares with EFE the secrets of their long existence.
José María Marful: “Always active and fighting with life”
José María Marful celebrates as one of his greatest achievements in life having returned “to Spain again” years ago, specifically, to his homeland in Lourenzá (Lugo). There, just a month ago, he blew out the candles of the century surrounded by his family, but also by two of his other banes: his fruit trees and the woodwork.
“I sit down to eat at noon and until I have dinner I am entertained with my things,” he details. And it is that a whirlwind of vitality like the one that runs through his veins does not understand “any secret” apart from being “always active” and “fighting with life”.
From the age of 9 he had to work, first to lend a hand at home, then to survive by dedicating himself to carpentry and finally to support his family he emigrated to Germany. Hence, he launches as advice to be “always worrying about work”, but without forgetting “to have fun”.
Carolina Viaño: “Eating well”
For Carolina Viaño, a native of O Pino (A Coruña) and halfway between the ages of 100 and 101, her home is that refuge where she leafs through the newspapers every day and recovers those pastry recipes that she still has from all those years in which she worked as a baker.
Since those times, he has the feeling that the world “changed a lot”, although he recognizes that, in any case, it is not worth worrying about the uncertainties of existence because, after all, “who knows what is coming”.
As is typical of his age, he hears a little poorly, but that does not prevent him from enjoying a good conversation in which he recalls old stories. Between laughs, he confesses that he is not sure if there is a formula to reach a centenary, beyond “fulfilling many years” and “eating well”, he laughs. Of course, to overcome the current mark he shrewdly recommends to the younger generations “live well” and “work little”.
Eustaquio Pérez: “I never took medicine”
In the interior of Ourense, also known as the Galician Okinawa, the province boasts one of the most significant ratios of centenarian inhabitants. One of them is Eustaquio Pérez, who at 101 years old -he turns 102 in September- goes out into the mountains every day with the twenty sheep that he cares for daily.
“This is a gift. My life is work. I get up around four or five in the morning, have breakfast with a pot of coffee with milk, bread and sugar, and then when it’s daylight I go down to the stable and take out the sheep”, explains this resident of Quintela de Leirado who he lives with his wife.
After this incessant routine, he assures that when he gets home “eating, sleeping and resting” are priorities until the sheep return to the stable at the last minute.
The secret to your good health? “I never took medicine, sometimes I have a headache or stomach ache, but it goes away,” he details, although he admits that now, with the years he has accumulated, some medication is prescribed for him.
Esperanza Cortiñas: “Dance a lot and play the game of cards”
Esperanza Cortiñas does not believe that there is any secret to getting to blow out the 106 candles as she did last December. She is healthy and her memory is intact. Her only handicap is that lately she has to walk “careful not to fall”, even when she is at home.
However, this neighbor from the A Ponte neighborhood (Ourense) does not deprive her of continuing to travel.
“I recently went to Paris with my daughter,” she says. It wasn’t the first time she had taken a plane. Still, she was surprised to see only “young people” on board.
From the years in which she dedicated herself to housework in foreign houses to her wanderings around the world that she continues to collect today, she observes that life “has changed like overnight” and she thinks that people “are not kind as before”.
“Dancing a lot and playing the game of cards every day in the afternoon” not only help her cope with modern life in which she does “everything” but also helps her memory “be very aware” of exercising.
Dolores Fernández: “Not having worries”
It’s been almost two months since Dolores Fernández turned 107, making her the most experienced member of the five. Getting there for her has been a “matter of faith”, although taking her life with philosophy and humor also helps her, as her daughter Marisa de ella corroborates.
“I get up early, I go to the 10 o’clock mass, I walk and then I’m about my things”, says this Ourense woman with enthusiasm. Reading the press, cooking with her daughter, sewing and doing sudoku puzzles are those little routines without which she does not understand everyday life.
Agile, except for the “infirmities of age”, a comment that is repeated like a mantra, Dolores is critical of the injustices that occur in the world, one that has changed “in some things and not in others” since her youth and in the one who would like, above all, that people “were decent”.
For her, the engine that has always moved her is the love of her husband and that of her children, helping her “not to have worries” and to know how to appreciate the little things.