A new sculpture located at the roundabout at the entrance to Lanzarote’s Marina represents one of Lanzarote’s most celebrated links to 20th century culture.
The Fisherman with Marlin is a sculpture by Jorge Isaac Medina which represents a scene from The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of a duel between a fisherman and a huge marlin.
The protagonist of Hemingway’s novel, Santiago, is believed to have been based on Gregorio Fuentes, who Hemingway contracted as a skipper and who became his companion on his several voyages around Cuba.
Gregorio Fuentes was born by the Charco de San Ginés in the fishing barrio of Valterra, Arrecife, but left the island at the age of six with his father, who was looking for better prospects in Cuba. On the journey to the Caribbean his father died, and the boy had to live off charity when he arrived.
In 1999, Michael Palin interviewed Fuentes at the age of 101, for his series Michael Palin’s Hemingway Adventure. The old man died in 2002, at the age of 104.
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