The sea, indifferent to the disappearance of its witnesses, will continue to strike the coastline with that mechanical and purposeless persistence which is, ultimately, the only form of eternity we can aspire to. The world, in its relentless process of standardization, has lost one of those last rugged pieces that prevented reality from slipping into absolute void. Fernando Rivas has died in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, a city that, like so many others, strives to conceal its decay beneath a layer of tourism and sea salt. He was the chief engineer at Fred. Olsen, a position that demands a technical communion with metal and fuel, far from the superficial aesthetics of modern cruise ships. Rivas, from the north of Gran Canaria, conducted a total graphic monitoring. Bureaucratic issues prevented him from freely operating with his high-quality hobby in the port environment. He was a good person. Rivas understood that life, like the pistons of a diesel engine, reduces to a monotonous cycle of explosion and material fatigue. Juan Carlos Díaz Loreno in ‘Puente de Mando’ recalled this Wednesday his ‘thunderous voice’, forged in union struggle, was but the last echo of a Merchant Marine that believed in collectivity before being devoured by algorithmic management. ‘He managed to unite the interest of a significant number of followers from the sector, who nourished his considerable photographic archive’, remembered the writer and journalist.
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