An Egyptian adage says that “man fears time, but time only fears the pyramids.” In Madrid, time marks the clock on the door of the Sun, especially every night of December 31, when all Spain looks there … To see how the ball lowers and the needles come together and the bells announce, between general choking, the new year. But this eternal cycle of seconds, minutes and hours that nothing is able to stop will stop, however, for a few days at the Puerta del Sol. Because the clock is undergoing a deep maintenance operation, disassembly included. At the moment it does not sound, and in a few days, it will stop giving the time.
Jesús López-terradas, co-founder of Losada Watches, deals with the care of this sophisticated mechanism of total accuracy since 1996. Then, when his watchmaking he took over the maintenance of the most famous clock in the country, he was made a complete review to ensure that everything was in order. From that date, this set of absolute precision gears are submitted every week to a professional visit. And now, almost 30 years after that other, it will undergo something like a complete ‘lifting’: piece by piece by piece, cleaning and polishing, and again.
López-terradas has been working in the Sol Tower for days. The part of the machinery dedicated to the sound of the hours, the so-called Sononería de Horas, has already been dismantled; All the pieces went to a box, and from there to the watchmaking workshop, where dentated wheels and levers were checked; The fat with fine brushes was removed, liquids were used to clean each piece, they were verified individually and rectified when needed. “There have been many hours of work to disassemble and review it.” And then, everything was remembered.
Now, they appear polished, bright and with the appearance of newly released, unlike those that are still pending the operation, which look darker and opaque, with footprints of the passage of visible time for those who understand. The clinical eye of the watchmaker, such as that of the doctor, observes and analyzes each nuance, each change of color and even sound; All are signs that indicate if something is out of the ordinary in that unique time machine.
There is no place to error here: every lever, pin and screw must be in place and the necessary pressure, without anything missing or anything about. «All the pieces there are, of course, but although there is a sketch, I do not need, I know how to reassemble it; This is a profession, ”the watchmaker is proud, almost as historical already in the house as the mechanism itself.
Without breaks
Since this sonería was disassembled, the bells do not sound to give the hours at the Puerta del Sol. Yesterday everything was placed again in place, and now looks brilliant and with the appearance of newly released, despite its more than 160 years of life. The next step that starts now will be to disassemble the sonería from the rooms, so they will also stop ringing. “But the needles will continue to function,” explains López-terradas, because the part of the mechanism dedicated to movement continues to walk.
It is almost amazing that the Clock of the Puerta del Sol, which has been operating for 30 years uninterruptedly, morning, afternoon and night, has not needed the renewal of any piece to date. There was only one that suffered wear, and now “it has been corrected and left as when it was manufactured.”
The most spectacular part of the repair that is being carried out will arrive in a few days, when the piece of the movement is disassembled, which will assume that the clock stops. In the exact time in which this disassembly occurs. A time when time will freeze in the busiest square in Madrid, and that will leave the four spheres of the clock stopped at that moment, marking the same time for several days.
«The needles will get stiff; They have some counterweights so that they do not fall, because that would also affect the accuracy of the clock ». Contemplating the watch standing from the Puerta del Sol will be something very unusual for Madrid, accustomed to this heart of the city will never stop beating. But it will be temporary: no more than a week, calculates the expert watchmaker. Then, all parts of this puzzle will return to their place, it will be proven that it works with the same accuracy that is usual in it, and will start again. Even there are those who take some grapes to celebrate how the first ‘new bells’ deserves that of the renewed sun clock when their maintenance tasks are finished.
The greatest danger to a machine of these characteristics, confesses the expert, is that someone “who knows a lot ‘, and spoils it,” but that is something that does not happen in this case, because not anyone can touch this machinery. «Every week we come some of Losada’s watchmakers to see it; It doesn’t matter if it is Holy Week, the month of August or Christmas, because the clock is never stopped ». Neither day, nor at night. And “if you don’t give your rope, I stop.”
It is not metaphorical: the rope is not such, but a steel cable rolled in a bovine, which rises a counterweight and allows everything to be worked. “If it weighs it, the clock stops.” So there they have the three experts of Losada by turning on their vacation, so as not to stop attending their mechanical creature or a single week of the year.
Another 30 years
Once the works that are now being carried out, the clock will be “like new” and could work as well as until now for the next 30 years, without problem, trust López-terradas.
It will then be necessary to solve another enigma: the one that unites this line of watchmakers with the machine of the Puerta del Sol for decades. There is no relief, for the moment, for them, although they already comb gray. “When we leave the three, others will come,” López-terradas predicts. It will be difficult, in any case, to find artisan experts with their knowledge of ancient watchmaking, capable of approaching almost to the anatomy of a clock so special that it is already history.
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