It happens with unfortunate frequency and for very different reasons that the biography of certain people with a certain public relief at the time, the exemplary nature of their civility and moral conduct throughout their lives, the meritorious and brilliant professional career, go unnoticed and until totally ignored by the vast majority of the following generations of the city that saw its birth. Even more common and almost inevitable, that the simple passage of time does something to redeem them from this unjust ignorance, and that therefore their life and work cannot even be described as oblivion.
This is the case of Civil Engineer José Miguel Hernández Vázquez, whose death was ten years old on February 24 of this year.
Born in Toledo, in 1938, his family home was located in the most central area of Alcaná in the Jewish quarter of the old Castilian city. Greater Toledo pedigree, impossible. It was the first house on Calle Chapinería or Calle La Feria on the immediate corner of that misnamed Plaza de las Cuatro Calles. In reality, for strange reasons of the disagreement between the Toledo street and the urban parts, surely only known by the unforgettable Don Julio Porres, that "quartet" is now made up of the five streets that converge at that historical -and also literary- point .
Also the most appropriate point, in the opinion of Don Gregorio Marañón, to contemplate all the immense beauty of the Monstrance of Arfe in its annual procession in Toledo on Corpus Christi day. This was the most immediate urban landscape of the child, adolescence and the first youth of José Miguel.
Our families professed a very sincere friendship and his father, Don Julio, who was one of the most typical characters of that urban environment, with footsteps and countrymen still recognizable at that time, shared good times to meet and talk with mine.
Like me, he was a student at the old Marist Brothers College, which lasted so long on Calle Alfonso XII, and although with that distance and that almost reverential respect that one has with classmates in higher classes -he was from a year above the mine– I have a very affectionate personal relationship with José Miguel.
After a few years, although each one with their life trajectory in other ways, this friendly affection increased. It was because of my much-needed reinforcement of knowledge of the subject of Physics, a key discipline in the entrance exams in the Engineering Schools, and of which I should not have too much left. During some summer vacations in those years, José Miguel acted as my provisional teacher in private classes that in a short time became familiar (!) with such basic concepts of Mechanics such as the hodograph or the equation of simple harmonic motion.
But by then, the life of José Miguel had changed the origin of coordinates. Without his love for his native Toledo fading in any way, from very early on Madrid was his main point of reference. His intellectual concerns and his initial fervor for democratic change distanced him from an excessively provincial Toledo, from the languid routines and the almost total absence of cultural initiatives. For the rest, his early entry, in 1968, very shortly after finishing his career as a Civil Engineer, in the Ministry of Public Works and Urban Planning, was also an almost obligatory reason for his absence.
From those first steps of his professional career, his value as an engineer and his complete humanistic training made his progression constitute a dazzling career of positions of high responsibility in the Public Administration: Project Engineering in the Public Company INITEC, Director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Public Works, Luis Ortiz, of UCD, and already in the governments of Felipe González, General Director of Hydraulic Works, with Julián Campo Sainz de Rozas, and Secretary of State for Defense, with Julián García Vargas.
At the same time, his moderate and dialogue character, together with his democratic convictions and his commitment to the fight against the dictatorship of that time led him to become a member of Professor Tierno Galván's Popular Socialist Party, PSP.
José Miguel's professional life was actually a continuous example of service to democracy. If we look at the level, both intellectual and moral, of a large part of high political positions in public life today, even more so their deplorable mediocrity, and we compare it with the personal and professional stature of José Miguel Hernández, we have an exact idea. of the deterioration that from then until today our democratic life has experienced.
From that distance, only physical, that time and personal circumstances had established between us, the controversial matter of the Tagus-Segura transfer came to be the one that led to a happy reunion. From the first moment of consuming this mess we got in touch. One of the first achievements of the Tagus Defense Team was the publication of a fouto, with a modest editorial claim but very compelling reasons, which from the most radical Toledo opposition to the transfer soon became a saint and sign of the entire movement against this work. .
The first pages contained a list of all the people who had participated in its preparation and writing, and although José Miguel barely participated directly in the areas of the Tagus Defense Team, his inclusion in it was considered essential for various reasons.
The first, born in Toledo, a Civil Engineer with a brilliant career, her number on that list added to the anti-diversion cause a stamp of genuine authenticity and undeniable testimonial value. As for the rest, I was well aware that he had always had very serious objections to this gigantic work of hydraulic surgery, even though he never manifested it as a frontally radical opposition.
Endowed as he was with great intelligence, his prudent and relatively lukewarm position in this regard was determined by his highly qualified position on the political-administrative scale of those first UCD governments, in the Democratic Transition. Identified with the social-democratic or, in another sense, more liberal wing of this formation, his proximity to people like Francisco Fernández Ordóñez or Joaquín Garrigues Walker –who succeeded Luis Ortiz in the Ministry at the time– any extremist discrepancy could be sustained as disloyalty to those politicians, supporters of a hydraulic project of such magnitude, of which they also consider themselves uncomfortable heirs and, perhaps to their regret, guardians of its irreversible nature.
All of this had determined that José Miguel's relationship with the Tagus Defense Team was almost solely and exclusively the one he had established through this personal friendship with me. I had believed, delusional that such a high-level contact, no less than the General Director of Hydraulic Works!, would be essential to still try to fix that nonsense of the transfer, and that an influence of such significant rank, in the immediately close to the Minister, he could at least get some of our reasons to count.
The truth is that at that point the transfer and that no matter how much the good will of José Miguel and his passion for Toledo had been, both of which I never doubted, there was no turning back. It was worth, yes, our frequent and friendly relationship to have very first-hand information on the progress of the last sections of the gigantic work, the fabulous amount of its budget and the details of the legislation that was being passed on rates and compensation. elaborating But little more, no matter how much I went in and out of the most carpeted offices of the Ministry like Pedro in his house, and what I thought, once again led to my visceral optimism, that my modest strategy of integrating José Miguel into the Team Defense of the Tagus could could be a way to commit him to our cause, when the reality was that our cause was already a lost cause.
José Miguel Hernández, with more than enough merit, although younger, could form a trio with two other of his colleagues, the flagship Civil Engineers, both also from Toledo, who in the last century gave luster to their profession, and who do not know They distinguished themselves precisely because of any enthusiasm for the transfer. Quite the contrary.
The oldest was Mr. Raúl Celestino Gómez, who among many other merits on his curriculum, stood out as alma mater of the formidable business emporium of Dragados y Construcciones, Corresponding Academician of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and Historical Sciences of Toledo and profound researcher. of the history of the hydraulic works of the Roman era.
Not much, but somewhat younger, also with a very brilliant professional career and meritorious political record –Deputy and Senator for the province of Toledo in several Legislatures– Mr. Manuel Díaz-Marta Pinilla distinguished himself for his abundant and highly reasoned studies and report of opposition to transfer.
To the multivalent culture of José Miguel Hernández, his wide-ranging humanist spirit has the most refined of his creative intelligence that could not be foreign to literary concern. Thus, a good example of this, he left two titles of novels, Sakharov is dead and A grave in Tuscany, in which he reveals the quality of his excellent narrative.
On this date of the tenth anniversary of his transit, it is well worth recording the impressive professional value and extraordinary human worth of this eminent Civil Engineer, a good person and exemplary citizen who should figure on his own merit in any relationship of illustrious sons of the Imperial City.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ricardo Sanchez Candelas
