The Presa Canario Dog: It's true origin
Manuel Curtó Gracia
La Laguna - Tenerife
1991
Said Jose María Ortega y Gasset, and thus left it writing, that to understand the present reality is essential to have a clearly knowledge of how it has been the past, and only thus we will be able to glimpse the future that approach. Clear that Ortega talked about the passed reality, not about the written history. Thus, then, to understand what happens in the Spanish Club of the Presa Canario dog and why, it is essential to have intensely lived the liking to the Presa Canario Dog in Tenerife and in Gran Canaria,to had known most of the old and new fans who have coexisted in these ten last years, to had seen in person the last traditional units of presas, to have compared exemplary photographed of twenty, thirty, forty, or more years.
At the moment hears one with excessive frequency to unexpected people speak of such-and-such dog that they had in their house when they were young, of how it fought, and how the father or the grandfathers buried the pipe in the plowed field and once returned at home he commanded to the dog to look for it, or the keys, or the sickle; or how it lay down in the blanket and did not leave anybody approached, and of how intelligent it was, that did not need more than to speak, and thus, these men, or ladies -there is always some lady-, without knowledge, nor data or works, they call themselves authorities, and they speak, and they opine.
And of course that they cant tell us if that multitude of canine units that were born, lived and died in the Canary Islands corresponded by their type, if they were Spanish Mastiff brought to the islands by the conquerors and colonists, if they were crossed of mastiff and English dogs, etc. etc.
I remember that only five years ago, very frequently came by my house the actual secretary of the Spanish Club of the Presa Canario, Mr. Manuel Martín Bethencourt, to speak with me, to ask me what was that of the Presa Canario dog, that he remembered that when he was young he had seen some that another great and bigheaded dog walking behind the carts thrown by oxen in the zone of the La Laguna and Las Mercedes (Tenerife), and asked me for their characteristics, and was excited when I said him that there was need to recover the breed, no matter the cost, although if for that aim we need to make use of some foreign unit. Immediately this man posed me the necessity to found the Spanish Club of the Presa Canario Dog. Clear that he did not know that already some years ago one had written a letter to the Spanish Central Canine Society to obtain information for the foundation of the club, letter that never was answered, if bad nonmemory. Soon we did not do anything on the matter because we considered -some fans in Las Palmas-, that there were few presas, and that was indispensable, for the foundation of the club, to have three or four basic families who allowed us to work. Thus I had said it to Manuel Martín, but he answered me: Listen Curtó, if we did not found the club, Juan Quevedo Martinón with his friends will founds it, and the standard of the breed will be elaborate taking like model his dog Felo. By the commentaries that made me, the today secretary of the Spanish Club of the Presa Canario, did not feel any type of affection towards Mr. Quevedo, and I did not explain me why. Soon, seeing that for me the foundation of the Club was irrelevant at that moment due what it really worried me was the recovery of the breed, he did not come more by my house. Soon after, Mr. Martín Bethencourt was united to the small group of Mr. Quevedo, and without too many preambles they founded the club - the statutes, according to what I have known later, was elaborated by Enrique Fajardo, with the collaboration of Jose Enrique García, both whom nothing they had to do with the presa, nor believed in the breed-.
First we must breed, select, to cross if it is necessary, and to fix a genetic base the most ample as possible with the existing dogs in Gran Canaria and Tenerife, and later the foundation of the club, "because if we founded the club now -I said him- without having the necessary units of recognized type, we will make the ridiculous in front of the official judges in the exhibitions".
They founded the club fast and running and have made the ridiculous. And among them the disputes have been fearful. Small groups have been created -the C.E.P.P.C. is not more than a small group of friends with their endogamous small dogs- and most of the fans and breeders, with their dogs, we have remained outside. The difficult thing is the certainty in the breed, the selection, and to begin again. And the easy thing is to let itself take by the eagerness to be protagonist.
Tenerife, November 1984
Nicolas de Vera with his "presa canario", in the 1930s, jurisdiction of La Laguna, Tenerife.
