Gregorio Fuentes
Gregorio Fuentes (born July 11, 1897 in Arrecife , Spain , † January 13, 2002 in Cojímar , Cuba ) was a Spanish-Cuban sea captain. He emigrated to Cuba from the Canary Island of Lanzarote at the age of six .
Fuentes was initially a mate and then later temporarily the second captain of the motorboat Pilar , on which he drove through the Caribbean with his friend Ernest Hemingway after rescuing him from distress in 1928 . Gregorio lived in Cojímar, a fishing village twenty kilometers east of Havana. Hemingway's motorboat Pilar also anchored there in the harbor .
Like the first captain of the Pilar , Carlos Gutiérrez, Gregorio was the source of inspiration for the "old man" Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea . After Hemingway's death in 1961, Fuentes was given control of the Pilar in the port of Cojímar until it came to Finca Vigía , Hemingway's property converted into a museum.
Gregorio Fuentes, an attraction in Cuba particularly popular with foreign journalists and tourists, was 104 years old. In 2001 he regained his original Spanish citizenship. He died in 2002 in Cojímar on a cancer .
Web links
- Portrait of Gregorio Fuentes Gregorio Fuentes, Hemingway's captain
- Obituary on Spiegel Online : Hemingway's "old man" is dead
- Obituary on the BBC website : Hemingway's 'Old Man' dies in Cuba
Individual evidence
- ↑ El pescador que inspiró a Hemingway 'El viejo y el mar' recupera la nacionalidad española, in: El Mundo from January 31, 2001, accessed on February 5, 2017 (Spanish)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fuentes, Gregorio |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Cuban sea captain |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 11, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lanzarote , Spain |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 13, 2002 |
| Place of death | Cojímar , Cuba |