There are men for whom time does not pass despite the cruel mechanism of oblivion. The Franco regime silenced the ticking of Evangelino Taboadabut their watches continue to accurately mark the biographical milestones of a singular character ahead of his time.
While everyone looked towards the sun, he observed the movement of the stars, hence his most applauded creation was a sidereal clock which still continues to tell time today at the Astronomical Observatory of Santiago de Compostela.
When he conceived the device in 1945 with the collaboration of the astronomer Ramon Maria AllerEvangelino was already a renowned professional whose watches were displayed in town halls and institutions. Also in churches like Bastavales, whose bells moved Rosalía de Castro: “When I hear you ring, / I die of longing.”
However, his life was marked by fascist repression, which led him to take to the mountains with his son. Adolfo when he was on vacation in Lalín, where he was born in 1897. Hidden for three years in sheds, in mills and in a cellar built in his country house, the tenacity of his wife, Maria Oteroallowed them to be granted a pardon at the end of the civil war.
His hardships did not end here, although to understand the persecution to which he was subjected, it is worth going back to his childhood, in the parish of Vilanova, where his humble parents hosted the muleteers who crossed the village in their tavern.
He learned the trade at the age of ten thanks to an uncle and, five later, he was already running a workshop in Silleda. There he met María and with her he went to Vigo, where he set up a watch shop that would become famous throughout Galicia. Soon six children arrived, around twenty employees and a fire caused the company to move from Elduayen Street to Galán Street.
There, at number 15 of what is now renamed Príncipe Street, a neighbor reported “meetings held by several individuals”, as recorded in “Case No. 868 filed by the Vigo court against the countryman Humberto Solleiro and his wife María Urania Mella Serrano for the alleged crime of rebellion”.
When the researcher Iria Presa, expert on the figure of the anarchist intellectual Ricardo Mellafound the complaint, began to pull the thread, investigated the figure of the watchmaker and discovered his fascinating story.
“Since the dawn of the declaration of the Second Republic, Evangelino appears linked to different political and cultural associations and initiatives. Thus, we find him in May 1931 as a candidate for the Autonomous Galician Republican Organization (ORGA); and shortly after as president of the Social Dissemination Athenaeum, linked to the Communist Party and the International Red Aid,” explains Iria Presa.
Member of the Association of Friends of the Soviet Union and the Ateneo Deportivo Obrero de Lavadores, where his brother Cándido served as treasurer, in his watch shop tickets were sold for various events and donations were collected for political prisoners or for the plaque of Aida Lafuentethe Red Rose of Asturias, which would rename Elduayen Street at the proposal of the Group of Women against War and Fascism, whose headquarters were located there, recalls the researcher.
It is not surprising that, after the coup of ’36, he decided to go into hiding. “Things were beginning to get unruly and on the weekend he came with us to the village. When he was going to return to Vigo, we saw trucks with armed men passing towards Pontevedra. Then they told him that they were looking for him to kill him and my brother Adolfo. “That’s why they went to my grandparents’ mountain and slept in a bed of ferns,” says their 98-year-old daughter. María Elena Taboada Oterowho answers some questions on the other end of the phone.
How do you remember your father?
A humble person, despite his qualities and standing out so much in his profession. He was very cultured, very progressive and a very good person. However, they persecuted him because he stood out in politics and when the war broke out, everything that happened happened. Pasionaria was home and held me in her arms. I was the only female child: a packaging error [risas].
How did his mother support the family with his father in hiding?
Little by little. My mother liked medicine and managed to save a sick girl. Then, other people requested his care. They called it Silver Hands and, in exchange for curing people, they gave them chorizos, potatoes, lacones… and that’s how we lived. Without income and with so much scarcity, he started making sneakers, for which he charged a peseta. My brother Fernando got him a machine that prevented him from sewing them by hand. Come on, she was a fighter who managed to get ahead caring for the sick and making sneakers.
Why did you decide to write the book about your father ‘A story to remember’?
My grandson asked me to narrate his life and the possibility arose of having a writer novelize it, but I told myself: “I’m going to write it and I want the truth to be told.”
Evangelino and his son Adolfo had already been persecuted after the 1934 Revolution, although the worst would come after Franco’s coup. After three years on the run, the appointment of a new civil governor made them fear for their lives and they attempted to flee to Portugal. However, they were arrested and remained in prison for a year, first in Salvaterra de Miño and then in Vigo, as Iria Presa relates in this interview.
He did not abandon his job even behind bars.
First they imprisoned him in Salvaterra de Miño and then in Vigo. When he visited him, his wife would hide sticks and pieces of wood in the food. With limited resources and a knife, he built a highly accurate clock that worked for years.
He lost a son in the war and, once he was freed, his wife died in 1941.
The death of María Otero was a drama, because she was the great heroine. She managed to survive her husband and children during the war. She had a gift for saving terminally ill patients and was the family’s healer, as well as a politically active woman.
Evangelino sets up Talleres Taboada in Vigo and they commission clocks for the towers of numerous buildings.
That happened from the 1940s onwards, but before the war he was already a very good watchmaker. In fact, he had so much expertise that they called him Longines. Bastavales’ clock, made with his partner Ramiro Morales, dates back to 1933. They bought materials in London and Euskadi, from the company Viuda de Murua, and adapted them to the space for which they were intended. A very great engineering task. At the same time, they repaired watches and stood out for their political activity. They were a very cultured family and had a large library, which they confiscated.
Without a doubt, his most unique work was the sidereal clock commissioned by the Astronomical Observatory of Santiago de Compostela.
A gem. The astronomer and mathematician Ramón María Aller was also from Lalín and they had always known each other. I wanted to build it and I had the capital, but not the brains. After unsuccessfully ordering it from several watchmakers [incluidos los Talleres Torres Quevedo, del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)]Evangelino managed to develop the sidereal clock.
[“La circunstancia de ser fabricado en el país, sus originales características de escape y las aportaciones al diseño hechas por el constructor, el vigués Evangelino Taboada, hace de este reloj una pieza única, objeto de pormenorizada descripción en la Revista de Geofísica“, puede leerse en El patrimonio histórico de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela]
A Swiss company [quizás Omega] manufactured a very limited series of very special pocket watches and Aller obtained one, with the condition that he send it once a year to the factory to be calibrated. However, at a certain point he did not do it and, when they asked him the reason, he confessed that Evangelino Taboada was preparing it for him. The company wanted to hire him, but the regime did not allow him to go to work in Switzerland. There is no doubt that it was the Galician Tesla.
Instead, it took several decades for it to be recognized.
It was forgotten due to lack of memory, because it was not interesting. And then the era of modern watches arrived and its legacy was not claimed either. However, with the death of Evangelino, a tradition of watchmakers who made precision gadgets by hand ended.
When he had a large watch factory in mind, he was killed in a mysterious road accident along with his brother Cándido.
They were run over by an Army truck, a more than suspicious detail. It was part of the Vertical Union, but there were members of the Communist Party. Evangelino was targeted since his watch shop hosted clandestine meetings, to the point that when Franco visited Vigo, he was temporarily arrested. His daughter was afraid and asked him to leave political activity, a decision he made at the end of the 1940s, although they continued to be persecuted. Hence, Adolfo and another brother decided to emigrate to Argentina, because they could not stand the climate of persecution.
María Elena, her daughter, intervenes in the conversation. “What do I think about the accident? I don’t think anything, although it is a coincidence that it was an Army truck. My father and my uncle were calmly riding a motorcycle in the right lane and, suddenly, the truck changed lanes and the ran over.” Time could have stopped, but no: that road was scattered with clocks.
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