Seafood Sauce Hibachi

The constable.

A July memories selection Catalá

Now in this February the 17th anniversary of his death I would talk about the beloved figure of Vico Manuel Serrano, Manuel or "Manolo" the sheriff was also popularly known by some.

are so many memories, stories, anecdotes about him I have that will be difficult to capture everything I wanted to tell. It would take a really fat book, so the profile of this great man, I will in two articles, both to remember. I will be lead by the heart to try to draw the most accurate approach to a man who all of a certain age armilleros sure remember fondly and that the younger, also I am sure, would have loved to know.

From the 40's, the postwar period, at 80 he worked at our City Hall, ( retired in 81) living on his premises with his family when the session was right in front of the church of San Miguel. Manolo, Manuel, was the "soul", that soul nearby, simple and generous, an institution that was at the head of a people very different from what is currently Armilla. A small town where the sheriff Manuel played multiple roles.

was a man who knew all along. I do not forget your figure with its distinctive walk (a war injury had produced a disability which resulted in a significant limp) with his gray uniform and peaked cap. My earliest memories, I was a child, associated with riding his old bike marching tirelessly from one place to another, or with a huge wooden ladder on his shoulder, going to change the "knobs" cast of street lighting (poor lighting, dim light bulbs sad they did that night, my people will be dark as pitch).

great friend of my father, he provided the successive volumes of The National Episodes D. Benito Perez Galdos, plenty of fine examples of historical novels bound in red hardcover (Manuel also tended with loving care funds books that had the Town Hall, you could say that was the germ of our current library). The most curious is that when my father finished reading the last one, again begin with the first ("Trafalgar", I remember it was called).

Man loved and appreciated by all and that everyone was from the utmost respect. His peculiar sense of humor and his fervent desire to facilitate as much as possible the lives of everyone who was stood in his way made him a character from here I offer my most sincere and humble tribute.

(continued)

-First in a series of three.

Photo: Manuel Vico with his daughter Nevis 1950.IMÁGEN FAMILY FILE.