Historic inquiry on "Pepe Leches"(4)
By
Pedro Malo
Translated by J. G. Provencio
| The historiography related to optical topics has been very little — almost nothing— when studying the connections between the bad-sight handicaps and popular sayings referring to them. |
| The phrases like "ver menos que un gato de yeso"(1), "que un pez por el c... "(2) or to see worse than certain man's body part "liado en una toquilla"(3) , contain the realism of the things easily proved in their very conceptual way of being expressed . Rather different it is when dealing with the so-called "Pepe Leches", a man who was famous because of his bad sight and who everybody brings up spontaneously but without any exact knowledge of his true existence. |
| Being interested in his popularized fame, I asked the wisest historians on traditions for the "Pepe Leches" origin, finding out the greatest ignorance about the matter. |
| I looked up the "Indice de Personajes Populares [ Popular Personages Index]," by Julio Ontañón; "El Tratado de Frases Castizas [The Treaty on Pure Phrases]," by Cortázar, and "Personajes Curiosos Españoles [Curious Spanish Characters]," by Fernández of Hinestrosa. I didn't find the slightly reference to the name which is our matter; not until I found a little brochure of eight pages with the title "No hay prenda como la vista [there is not garment like the sight]," in an old bookshop in the Cuesta de Moyano (4), published in 1903, and anonymous. This brochure, apart from some hygienic advice, relates the whole "Pepe Leches" story —that occurs by the middle of the past century, few years after the foundation of the Civil Guard. |
| José Fernández Albusac, José and Crescencia's son, was born in Leganés and was a warden for the Excelentísimo Ayuntamiento de Madrid [The Madrid Council]. He is described as an average-height male with a stingy mood. It's believed that he had an "iron" hand when solving street quarrels and this fact was what made him the nick "Pepe Leches"(5) —this way being how that time low-class people referred to slaps. He was healthy but for an eye-illness known as "ojos tiernos"(love-eyes) which causes the eyelids to be red and the eyes to cry. His —the eyes, I mean— being really myopic and not treated with eyeglasses in order avoid dishonouring the uniform. When he "soltaba una leche [slapped somebody] ," and using a rather rude expression, there was no security about the guilty one would be the receiver ; anyway, as he would say, "none is absolutely innocent when two quarrel." Mr Fernández, the Guard —Pepe Leches— had some "country-like" moods, which added to the suspicion of the affair between his wife and the sergeant under the orders of whom he was working, led him to join the recently created Civil Guard, being sure he would be given a village as destination where he could be a respectable man and where he could farm pigs and hens as well as being far enough from the seducer sergeant. His knowledge of the world and the contact with top-class ambience, both supplied by the working as a council warden in the Court, gave him advise on going straight to the "head" of the Benemérita(6), and so —making profit of the presence of the Ahumada Duke during a charity party where he was sent to service— he wanted to show his arrogance all on, making sure that some simply little words will save the troublesome arrangements required for the entrance in such a noted Force. Addressing towards the Duke's group, he fired a hot cajolery about his own justice sense and his country-love; but his little sight made him to say it to a gypsy-dressed girl— the hosts' daughter— whom he mistook for Ahumada. The last one saw the acting gaily and, being as tactful as possible, convinced Mr Fernández on the impossibility of his admittance in the army, because of the need of a perfect vision for it. The Guard Fernández — "Pepe Leches" — died some years later when a funerary cab run over him, he thinking that was coming across his nephew, as the witnesses found out later having listened to his saying "how rude you are, Manuela." During the mourning, his rudeness was translated into the complete absence of the usual praising in such a situation. Only the sergeant he suspected so much dared to say: " Poor Fernandez, with such a good handwriting he had . . ." |
| Experienced scientists do know of the coincidence in time of different outputs concerning the undertaken investigation. Short from the brochure finding —with Mr Fernández's life— I got news from another "Pepe Leches", native of Granada, who died during the Civil War while trying to milk a bull-sire from the Frias Hermanos Cattle. Being nearsighted when a child, he learned how to improve the other senses and, in 1932, he was found as a "piononos"(7) taster in La Flor de Pinos-Puente, a prosperous sweet-shop in that town —which fought for the piononos fame against the classic ones from Santa Fé (we maybe should explain that "a pionono" is the famous sweet from Granada and that it consists of a cake covered with cream, rolled and then bathed —according to the kind of it— in syrup until this becoming "crystallized"). The "Pepe Leches" nickname was the result of the frequent falls due to his unwillingness of using glasses and the fact that the less cultured-classes of the andalusian society, used to say the phrase "darse una leche" when somebody falling down after loosing their balance. |
| As cherries tied up when taking one out of the basket, other "Pepe Leches" are found lately, but we think that the eponym belongs to the Guard José Fernández Albusac , as we will proof in an article coming soon. |
| (1) All these phrases and sayings are related to a really bad sight. The literal translation of this one is something like: "to have less sight than a chalk cat" |
| (2) This will be: "to see less than a fish asshole " |
| (3) "to see less than a cock tied in a jacket" |
| (4) Calle de Caludio Moyano: A street in Madrid better known but that name. |
| (5) Pepe is the nick for José and Leche[milk] is the informal for "guantazo" |
| (6) Another name for the Civil Guard, a special army in Spain. |
| (7) A kind of sweet described later. |
