Do you have any particularly vivid memories of your grandparents?

I remember my grandfather Manuel Porto Porto very well; he lived at my house when I was very little, later bought a very nice house in El Cotorro, where all the Portos met almost every Sunday a little later on. Eventually, he sold that house and moved with my Aunt Lucía y her husband Joaquín Castro next door to us; by that time his Parkinson's Disease had advanced, his hands shook so much that he could not shave and I did shave him often while he sat on a rocking chair in the porch, looking at people going by on the sidewalk; he could still see well and his eyes followed any good-looking woman that walked by.

He was married three times, a widower for a long time. He first married very young in his village of San Pedro, in La Estrada, Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain, had a daughter named Dolores and his first wife died. He went to Cuba in 1901, when white immigration from Spain was encouraged, because they were hard workers and to dilute the percentage of blacks and mulattos in the country, that had experienced not only the arrival of many slaves from Africa, but also immigration from neighboring Haiti and Jamaica.

He married my grandmother Micaela Moreno in 1907, when she was fourteen, had four sons and three daughters, including my mother, then she died at age 33, he then brought a cousin from his village to help with the children, married her and had my uncle Pepe before she also died.

He was a master mason, one of those people, very respected at the time, who could shape huge stones into smooth surfaces that fit each other perfectly, to form buildings with very strong and durable characteristics. He made lots of money, also spent it fast.

Other than him, myI do not remember any other grandparent, only my paternal grandmother was alive when I was born, but she died when I was a year old, I do not remember her.

My uncle-in-law Emilio Villamil, husband of my father's eldest sister María, who lived very close to us, actually functioned as my grandfather, was the one that had the time and patience to talk to me and teach me many things when I was a child.

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