Presa Canario Dog. Words of Manuel Curto Gracia

The Presa Canario Dog: It's true origin
   Manuel Curtó Gracia
La Laguna - Tenerife
1991

PROLOGUE

Several years ago I decided to write a book on the dogs of presa that were in the Canary Islands, and for such aim I began to obtain data, references, photographs, and to search for dogs by all the Canary Archipelago. This was at the beginning of the Seventies. The thing was not easy. Short after I left the project. There were not presa dogs, no longer were fans of them. In fact the dogs of presa and the dog fightings were already thing of the past. I could see, yes, some that another mestizo (mutts) to whom they called dog of presa, in Gran Canaria first, and in Tenerife later.

It is clear that these mutt, just like to the presa of the past, were not called Perro de Presa Canario, they named them only presa, and within that denomination were all the dogs that had certain appearance of presa, foreigners or of the land, crossed or no.

Those dogs that I saw in those years were products of recent crossings of English Bulldog, Great Dane or Boxer.
I turned and returned by the different islands,-excepting La Palma, that I do not know why, always was out of my route-I interviewed a good number of old people that had had dogs of presa, and the result in all the occasions was disheartening. There were not already dogs of presa of those of before. And soon come the confessions, excuses (but why?) because no longer they had dogs, and if they had them were not like those of before, really of presa, of those of the land. And I requested them photographs to see how they were really, those dogs of which they spoke.

In short, there I went, one and thousand times, in search of the mythical dog, from town to town, from house to house, from man to man.

Later, with the just released State of the Autonomies, and by the influence of the new fashion denominate cani-culture, appears again in the Canary Islands the liking to the dogs of presa, and, as it could not be of another way, arisen as fungi by all the insular geography, improvised breeders of presas, which one more informed and competent.

And with the breeders born the associations of preseros, also named clubs. The liking is big, the euphoria greater; the confrontations between the fans, the other associations, between both provinces, cause that the Perro de Presa Canario shows the snout in all the insulars homes, and in some peninsular ones, like saying, do you see me?
   In front the outlook that was taking the events (we will see later) around the canine reality, born the critics, the denunciations, that appear published in the daily press of both canary provinces. And the commotion arrived, begun the controversy, the most sounded (surely) that has been able to occur around canine breed some.
  My reader friend, courage and carry on with this book, that if formerly I decided to write one that deal with the presas canarios dogs, that for reasons that already were exposed, I abandoned such project; now, without proposed me that, I am (you are) with this one in the hands, that more than an usual book of dog, is a compilation of article, and a couple of works, and some that another letter -I have a good assortment of them, of diverse authors that exert in national cinofilia, eloquent letters, compromising some, but we are going to leave them where they are, that, what is one going to obtain with their publication?-. Articles in which the denunciations are repeated, the prose repeats, everything is repeated, as it happens in some novels of our time, that when reading them seems that we don’t advance, or in the best one of the cases, what is said/read in them, is like gibberish, but once is read the whole text, and after a length period of time we realize that the novel was not absurd.
   It is possible that after read this book, somebody says, that what little gentleness the one of the author with some of the people who are mentioned in articles, and I say that the problem is not mine but of them, that they have appeared in scene voluntarily; nobody ordered them to leave their houses and their professions to be breeders of Presas Canarios, recovers of a breed that no longer was there, that no longer exists, saying that yes with premeditation and treachery, and to sell mongrels as if they were of pure breed.
   And I don’t say nothing more, reader. I let you alone with what follow here, and draw your own conclusions.

The Author