Miracles Luis Brito: "Centennial should help make the entity more connected to people"

Miracles Luis Brito, vice president of CD Tenerife and coordinator of Centennial, lives this year in a special way. Not only because of the 100th anniversary of the Blue and White entity, but also because of the responsibility included at the organizational level to capture a century of history of a historic Spanish football team.

Very quiet and with a big smile aided by the beautiful moments experienced by the insular entity, attending Mundo Deportivo to resolve how a Centenary at least in the history of the Canary Islands comes to life from within.

How do you start preparing for the year when CD Tenerife will be a century old?

In review, contemplation and with intense enthusiasm for the strange moment. The consequences of the pandemic were in effect and at that moment I joined to do a project that, among other things, I liked because it gave me a period of time to develop proposals and activities. That approach of time and space gave me the assurance that a reasonably serious work of recovering the historical foundations of the evolution of CD Tenerife could be accomplished. So, we can recover a world, from my perspective, very much forgotten or unknown from the club’s past.

Third, working on the 100-year history of CD Tenerife is not only a recovery in the evolution of a sporting structure linked to football, but through this structure we have the possibility to rebuild in the Canary Islands 100 years of relations with economic and social, business history, a sense of identity, difficulties, moments of glory and endless other things.

What goals does CD Tenerife have in celebrating this Centenary? And Miracles Luis Brito?

Personally, to contribute all the capacity I may have to identify CD Tenerife. Not just the good moments, which no doubt happened, but the many difficult moments that needed to move forward.

As an institution, the goal is to bring back the island, which has given so much support to the club, and to the Canary Islands its history so they can learn and enjoy it; so that they can feel part of that process in history. There are several verses of the Centenary anthem that very well reflect here ‘The whole island is a box of honor’, Tenerife in some way wants the whole island to be a box of honor for all the evolution of football on this island.

In this line of thinking we conduct various actions: debates, exhibitions, Honor Committee … we deliberately scheduled throughout the year so that the activities become more permeable for the society of the island . We hope, above all, that we want to retain the amount of information recovered from documents, materials, newspaper sources or donations from emblematic families. We work for that, for them to stay in a museum or in a repository for everyone who wants to access that information.

Did anyone surprise you with the history of CD Tenerife? Are there some moments that you think people don’t know?

The work allowed me to delve into the use of the Heliodoro Rodríguez López installation. It was inaugurated in 1925. Every week we see reviews about the stadium, but it will soon be a century. It is an installation that, like few others in the Spanish scene, connects all of its development around one infrastructure. Only the evolution of the stadium and the entire atmosphere of the stadium itself is full of very little known data.

There is another line of work that proves extremely enriching, that of the Centenary audiovisual series. We were collecting testimonials from people, we wanted to reach up to a hundred, which became important to the whole club. We have Ángel Llanos who participated in the first Nacional ascent in 1953. Everything we can learn from him cannot be bought because it is not written anywhere. That experience of 50s, 60s or 70s players is full of data, on the one hand, and surprises, on the other. I was amazed at the spirit of sacrifice or at the relationships working at the club, how they organized trips that made two leaps to the African continent. The strike, the Maritime uprising, was also surprising, when they confined themselves to the previous promotion of 89.

It was full of surprises. There is also the sweetest part. There is one of those testimonies that is recorded and used, as in Figueroa, the kit man. They know everything. Whether the kit went to UEFA, Jorge Valdano increased his salary because he talked to the president to get a salary or he had a problem with Valdano himself.

One of the most critical situations regarding Heliodoro, is the influx of public. Do you think the Centenary events will help with rooting and, more importantly, attract more fans to go watch CD Tenerife?

Centenary activities should help make the entity more connected to the people and I say the entity to the people and not the people to the entity. They need to serve to open us up and show us how we are. Then there are other strategies for attracting fans and generating other content. Instead of looking back, which we need, we should hope. We must know how we count our Centenary for new generations. Last year, we presented a comic in four languages, the sole purpose of which was to reach the youngest sectors of the population, who are my future subscribers, partners, or fans. It needs to serve to get to know more, to get to know each other better and, if possible, to attend more.

What is the Centenary roadmap for the coming months?

The first semester we mostly focused on everything related to itinerant exhibitions and debate areas. Now we will have, right away, the central exhibition that we will specifically announce. We are working on this with the Caja Canaria Foundation. We will soon present a documentary on the role of women in the history of CD Tenerife. We also plan to hold an institutional event near the date of the club’s establishment.

The last week of July we would like to present the institutional book of the Centenary of CD Tenerife. I say institutional because this is the book that has supported the work of the last two years. I think this will be very interesting because it is not a diachronic story, but rather a structured and contextualized story that will serve to fill many gaps.

Then we plan to do some activity next fall in Madrid. We wanted to close the year with a documentary about this 100 years of history. Not losing sight of the fact that the exhibitions continue to spin and are likely to reach all municipalities because they all ask for it from us. And, every month until the end of the year, we have an Ángel Arocha debate forum scheduled.

Is there any type of Centenary -related action that is subject to promotion?

No, not Centennial. Well, if we play the playoffs, some of my teammates are wondering what to do to cheer it up and celebrate it. More than what the end result is, we need to celebrate it. But there is nothing here that I commented that is being done because we think we will ascend or we will not do it if we do not ascend. What we won’t do is close the book edition until we figure out how to end the 21/22 season.

What does it mean, in the Centenary year, to play the Canarian derby in the playoffs?

Another challenge.

And a promotion?

Honestly, I don’t want to stop to study it too much. I love to dream, but there are things that are very serious and this is it. What does this mean? Well, I think, now, I can say that it’s a great pleasure to say that, when he turns 100, he will play a promotion playoff in the highest category of Spanish football and, perhaps, in one of the three best. world leagues.

That in itself is important for the history of the club. We can see throughout the Centenary the hardships, needs or hardships that CD Tenerife went through. 100 years after that idea that those gentlemen who sat down and formed the club had, that entity that didn’t disappear any time, something that happened to so many peninsular teams, and that stayed alive, and closed his Centennial disputed a promotion to First which was a success already. If he comes up later, I don’t want to think about it.

Then, for an examination of the historical evolution of the club. For the island society it is a shot of encouragement and positive reinforcement. Whether the club is going up to Primera, for the world of sports, for the economy or for the foreign promotion of Tenerife and the Canary Islands, there will hardly be a better marketing campaign than that.