Since he could barely walk, even before, a fervent yellow feeling in favor of Unión Deportiva Las Palmas nests in Juani Marrero’s soul. With his figure, on this Monday of the Canarian derby week, Diario AS begins a series of reports in a positive key on the main sporting event that can be seen in the Canary Islands.
Involuntary protagonist for a famous photo in which he appeared with the Las Palmas jersey and a Tenerife mask, Marrero bets on the good vibes between fans and clubs before facing a “special, unique match, with both teams, not like in the past, fighting to stay at the top of the table.”
He can’t remember it, but since he was a baby it was known that he would always belong to the UD. Nor is it that it took her long to realize it, and when she did she was already climbing as best she could through the stands of the Insular Stadium. “Soccer has always caught my attention. Maybe now more than before. When I was a child I really liked sports, but I always had that little thing for football until my father one day came up with the great idea, being a little girl, to take me to the Island State, “she recalls. “But I don’t have many memories either because she was a dwarf”, she adds with that perennial smile so characteristic of hers, which is not erased even in the worst moments of this 26-year-old girl, also “carnival and murguera de grada”, as she herself define.
She goes out of her way to take care of her dog and cat, who chase her so much while we chat, while she continues to travel back in time with UD Las Palmas as the perfect excuse. “From the Insular Stadium I had that bug, but I am more aware and I have experienced many things in the Gran Canaria Stadium, and it has always been with my father,” he says. Precisely, it was his offspring the main culprit of that unconditional love for the team of his land: “The reference, or as I have always said, with whom I really enjoy all the games is with my father, because in the end he was the one who got me that bug and that passion not only for football, but also for Unión Deportiva” .
Precisely, next to his father he enjoyed a picture between two strangers that marked him forever. It was a derby day at the Gran Canaria Stadium. She went to the access door and remembers how “the two hobbies said everything”. “There was that touch,” he evokes, but there was a scene that made him click in the soul, not even a wisp that today raises without complexes: “There was that bad touch, but I was at least trying to keep that good vibes that was also visible on the outside. I saw two men together, each one wearing a team jersey, and I was like, “Damn, this is cool.” Always so natural, he advocates expanding that image on both sides of the sea that separates us. That “island pique” does not go with her. “There is an insane insular pique that I don’t know who started it, which makes it seem that in Tenerife you cannot support or have friends from Las Palmas, and if you are from Las Palmas you cannot support or have friends from Tenerife.”
With an improper maturity of those well-worn 26 years, Marrero denies that manual of the good canary that says how you should behave. “A good Canary does not care whether your team is from Tenerife, Gran Canaria, La Gomera or Lanzarote,” he says with overwhelming confidence. For her, “the biggest problem is in the two capital islands. There is always this scuffle, and it seems or they try to make believe that some are better than others. And it is not like that. It is what I have always defended: after all, we are the same feeling but with different colors. ” So that there are no doubts, he sends a message before the derby: “I am from Las Palmas to die. My team is Las Palmas and my color is yellow, but it is not for this reason that I am born to wish evil to Tenerife or to any Canarian team in general. Obviously, now I want Las Palmas to win. “
The famous photo
A few weeks ago, doing his own exercise of freedom of choice and expression, Marrero posted on his Twitter profile a photograph proudly wearing the Las Palmas shirt, eternal companion, and a Tenerife mask. “I wasn’t looking for anything special,” he confesses. It was, rather, a gesture consistent with what he always defended and continues to defend: “That was a wink, a simple gesture to represent what I like with the two most representative teams in the Canary Islands.”
That “wink” exceeded, in any case, any expectation. Nor is it that there were. “At no time did I expect a tide of support not only from the two hobbies, but also from people who belong to other clubs on the island. Of course, there were negative comments and situations, but I will always stay with the positive of that, “he assures. A simple photo, a simple gesture of brotherhood without any negative connotation, led him to suffer the ignorant macho hordes that nest in the comfort of your keyboard. It happened to him with that photo and it happens many times when he expresses himself about Las Palmas: “I have always said that being from a team does not have to imply hating the other. It is that several factors came together, and put together, several factors. In my case, and that’s another, being a woman and talking about football “. The hackneyed male monopoly that has no place whatsoever, except in cave brains, in the XXI century.
Tenerife jersey
The impact that that innocent image had was so great that they even contacted her from Heliodoro Rodríguez López himself. “When Tenerife published their new kits, after I uploaded that photo, I said publicly that I liked them a lot, especially the blue one, which is beautiful in person. Unfortunately, they knew that sticks were going to fall from all sides “, he remembers. True to his principles, his absolute freedom, he did not care. And then he received a message full of hope and gratitude:” A person contacted me from Tenerife to thank me first for defending something that they also say and that I have been doing for a long time, as a way of thanking me for having had to put up with carts and wagons from some fans as well as others “.” More than a reward, it was a gesture of gratitude “, sentence.
As if wanting to clear doubts that she certainly does not have, she throws another message: “When I go to the Gran Canaria Stadium, as it is my home, I wear my home clothes. And this is yellow.” But the courteous does not take away the brave. “Both that blue Tenerife shirt and the mask have a special place in my wardrobe, and of course I do not rule out having to wear them one day,” he clarifies. But the derby is the derby. We talk about shirts and he gives another example: “For example, they never say anything to me when I put on the Tenisca shirt, among other things because it is a lower category team. They have led us to believe that you cannot wear the Tete shirt because it is your eternal rival, but it is not. For me a team that comes from the Peninsula is more of a rival and complains because it has to come here. “
Before talking about football, although it is not that we would have stayed exactly for that, which also sends a message of evocative hope: “I think it is very important to understand that you have to change the chip that being from Las Palmas forces you to wish him what worse to Tenerife, and vice versa. Pique healthy yes but that, no. Especially we, young people, must carry it out. The change begins with us “.
Derby in First Division.
It seems that the clock has stopped when, with little time for more, it is time to talk about what can happen on the pitch, and about the dream of living this match in the highest category of national football. “I have never been able to live it, and I also remember now the suffering of Las Palmas in Second B”, he says with some resignation. But it is time for hope. The present deserves it. “I know it is early to talk about promotion, but this derby is very special: both teams are struggling to stay on top, which was not the case in previous seasons,” he says. “Hopefully next year we will talk, but in the First Division,” he says. A debt contracted that must be honored.