Miracles Luis Brito, second vice president of CD Tenerife and coordinator of the Centennial, lives this year in a special way. Not only because of the 100 years that the blue and white entity is celebrating, but also because of the responsibility that entails at an organizational level to capture a century of history of a historic Spanish football team.
Very calmly and with a big smile helped by the great moment that the insular entity is experiencing, attends Mundo Deportivo to unravel how a Centenary that will go down in the history of the Canary Islands is lived from within.
How do you begin to prepare for the year in which CD Tenerife turns a century old?
With analysis, reflection and with great enthusiasm in a strange moment. The consequences of the pandemic were in force and it was at that moment that I joined to work on a project that, among other things, I liked because it allowed me a period of time to develop proposals and activities. That approach of time and space gave me the certainty that a reasonably serious job of recovering the historical bases of the evolution of CD Tenerife could be carried out. Thus, we could recover a world, from my point of view, very forgotten or unknown from the past of the club.
Thirdly, working on the 100-year history of CD Tenerife is not only recovering the evolution of a sports structure linked to football, but through this structure we have the possibility of rebuilding in the Canary Islands 100 years of economic and social relationships, business history, a sense of identity, difficulties, moments of glory and endless other things.
What objectives does CD Tenerife have with the celebration of this Centenary? And Miracles Luis Brito?
Personally, to contribute all those capacities that I may have so that CD Tenerife is known. Not only the good moments, which there have undoubtedly been, but the many difficult moments that it has cost to move forward.
As an institution, the objective is to give back to the island, which has given so much support to the club, and to the Canary Islands its history so that they know and enjoy it; so that they feel part of that historical process. There are some verses of the Centenary anthem that reflect it very well ‘The whole island is a box of honour’, Tenerife in some way wants the whole island to be a box of honor for all the evolution of football on this island.
In this line of thought we have been carrying out the different actions: debates, exhibitions, Honor Committee… we have intentionally scheduled throughout the year so that the activities could be more permeable for the island’s society. We hope, above all, that we want that volume of information that has been recovered from documents, materials, newspaper sources or donations from emblematic families to remain. We work for that, so that they stay in a museum or in a repository so that everyone who wants to can access that information.
Has anything in the history of CD Tenerife surprised you? Are there certain moments that you think people don’t know about?
The work has allowed me to delve into the use of the Heliodoro Rodríguez López installation. It was inaugurated in 1925. Every week we see reviews about the stadium, but it will soon be a century old. It is an installation that, like few others on the Spanish scene, links all its development around an infrastructure. Only the evolution of the stadium and the entire environment of the stadium itself is full of very little known data.
There is another line of work that is proving very enriching, which is the Centenary audiovisual series. We are collecting testimonials from people, we want to reach up to a hundred, who have been important throughout the club. We have that of Ángel Llanos who participated in the first ascent to Nacional in 1953. Everything we can learn from him is priceless because it is not written anywhere. That experience of the players of the 50s, 60s or 70s is full of data, on the one hand, and surprises, on the other. I am surprised by the spirit of sacrifice or the working relationships they had with the club, how they organized the trips making two jumps to the African continent. The strike, the Maritim mutiny, is also surprising, when they lock themselves in the previous promotion of 89.
It is full of surprises. There is also the sweetest part. There is one of those testimonies recorded and in use, such as that of Figueroa, the kit man. They know everything. The kit man who went to UEFA, Jorge Valdano, managed to get his salary raised because he talked to the president to get his salary raised or he had a problem with Valdano himself.
Milagros Luis Brito in a moment of the interview
One of the most criticized situations regarding the Heliodoro, is the influx of public. Do you think that the Centenary events can help rooting and, above all, attract more fans who go to see CD Tenerife?
The activities of the Centenary should help link the entity more to the people and I say the entity to the people and not the people to the entity. They have to serve to open us up and show us how we are. Then there are the other strategies for attracting fans and generating other content. Rather than looking back, which we must, we must look forward. We have to know how we count our Centenary for the new generations. Last year we presented a comic in four languages, the only objective of which is to reach the youngest sectors of the population, who are my subscribers, partners or fans of the immediate future. It has to serve to identify more, to get to know each other better and, if possible, to attend more.
What is the Centenary roadmap for the coming months?
The first semester we have practically focused on everything that has to do with itinerant exhibitions and areas of debate. Now we will have, immediately, the central exhibition that we will announce specifically. We are working on it jointly with the Caja Canaria Foundation. Very soon we will present a documentary on the role of women in the history of CD Tenerife. We also plan to hold an institutional event close to the club’s founding date.
The last week of July we want to present the institutional book of the Centenary of CD Tenerife. I say institutional because it is the book that supports the work of the last two years. I think it will be very interesting because it is not a diachronic story, but rather a structured and contextualized story that will serve to fill in many gaps.
Then we plan to do some activity next fall in Madrid. We would like to close the year with a documentary about these 100 years of history. Without losing sight of the fact that the exhibitions will continue to rotate and will probably reach all the municipalities because they have all demanded it of us. And, every month until the end of the year we have an Ángel Arocha debate forum scheduled.
Is there any type of act related to the Centenary subject to promotion?
No, not Centennial. Well, if we play the playoff, some of my teammates are already thinking about what to do to cheer it up and celebrate it. Beyond what the final result is, we have to celebrate it. But there is nothing of this that I have commented that is done because we are thinking that we are going to ascend or that it stops being done if we do not ascend. What we will not do is close the edition of the book until we know how to finish the 21/22 season.
What would it mean, in the Centenary year, to play a Canarian derby in the playoff?
One more challenge.
And a promotion?
Honestly, I did not want to stop to analyze it too much. I like to dream, but there are things that are very serious and this is it. What would it mean? Well, I think that, today, I can already say that it is a great satisfaction to say that, when he turns 100, he will play a promotion playoff to the highest category of Spanish football and, probably, to one of the three best leagues of the world.
That in itself is already important for the history of the club. We are going to see throughout the Centenary the difficulties, needs or miseries that CD Tenerife has gone through. 100 years after that idea that those gentlemen who sat down and formed the club had, that entity that has not disappeared at any time as such, something that has happened in so many peninsular teams, and that has remained alive, and that closes his Centennial disputing a promotion to First that already a success. If he goes up later, I don’t even want to think about it yet.
Then, for the analysis of the historical evolution of the club. For the society of the island it is a shot of encouragement and positive reinforcement. If the club goes up to Primera, for the world of sports, for the economy or for the foreign promotion of Tenerife and the Canary Islands, there could hardly be a better marketing campaign than that.