Some absences fall upon the chest like a slab of lead, sinking us into the deepest desolation, where words and memories are no longer of any use because death has stormed into the house of life, taking forever the warm hand of Francisco, Paco, Santana; and it is soul-shattering to think of the cold silence that now dwells beside Teresa, of the blind trembling of his daughters’ tears as they search in vain for his embrace in the half-light of the corners, and of that old child who has died so slowly, his hands still worn by the iron of the docks and the bitter dust of the roads, knowing that the light in his eyes will never again shine at the table of his colleagues in the Canary Islands’ port community, leaving everyone exposed to this endless, cruel and orphaned wilderness where the sea continues to roar its indifference against the stones and the earth swallows, without pity or memory, the only truly beautiful thing we had.
Francisco ‘Paco’ Santana (1940–2026) embodied, as few others did, the economic transformation the Canary Islands underwent during the second half of the 20th century, moving from the postwar subsistence economy to the globalization of heavy industrial markets. His death at the age of 86 in Las Palmas brings to a close the life story of an atypical businessman who distrusted port offices and entrusted his success to the harshness of the terrain and the weight of a given word.
Born in the mountainous hamlet of Arbejales, in Teror, Santana inherited the pragmatism of his forebears. The grandson of a pack-saddle maker, he absorbed from childhood a principle he repeated like a mantra throughout his adult life: the rigor of daily effort and the acceptance of the burdens necessary to stay the course. That work ethic led to an early start in the labor market. At 14, the young Paco left school to join Finanzauto, the historic Caterpillar machinery distributor, as an apprentice. For 24 years, he combined daytime mechanical training with evening studies, climbing the ladder step by step until he reached management positions at a company that measured its strength in tons of steel and hydraulic power.
In the late 1980s, prompted by a suggestion that he should strike out on his own, he left the corporate structure to establish his own importing business. His commercial instincts immediately aligned with the construction and port development that transformed Las Palmas, as he supplied the heavy mobile equipment that excavated the foundations of the major solid infrastructure we know today. However, the 2008 financial crash exposed the fragility of a monoculture model and forced Santana to look beyond the archipelago.
His response to the contraction of the domestic market was bold. Taking advantage of the commercial contacts he maintained with the tuna fishing fleet berthed at the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou, he crossed the continent to enter the mining industry of West Africa. In Mauritania and Guinea, territories where infrastructure was conspicuous by its absence, he built gold mines, camps and mechanical workshops from the ground up for multinational companies such as Red Back Mining and First Quantum Minerals. Through his company Canarylog, he came to mobilize workforces of up to 400 employees and generate annual revenues of around €20 million, competing in the large-scale export of industrial inputs and minerals on a transcontinental scale.
Despite managing fleets of enormous trucks and extractive operations where profitability was measured in milligrams of gold per ton of rock, Santana always retained the perspective of the craftsman from Arbejales. He believed his true asset was not traded on the stock market, but lay in the network of relationships cultivated over decades. A few months before his death, he gathered around 100 friends at an establishment in the capital to celebrate his anniversary alongside his wife Teresa, his daughters Cristina and Paola, and his granddaughter Lucía. Far from solemn protocol, the businessman asked for a farewell guided by lightness and the festive remembrance of camaraderie. With his passing, the islands’ industrial bourgeoisie loses one of its most genuine figures: a global operator who never forgot the sound of the anvil or the value of sincere friendship.
And perhaps, once all the lights on the docks have gone out and the last echo of the engines has vanished forever into the dark immensity of the ocean, Paco Santana will finally become once more that barefoot boy who climbed the roads of Teror at night, with the cold of the summit in his pockets and his hands stained with grease that no deck of life will ever be able to remove; and then, finally free of the trucks, the gold of Mauritania and the burdens of the world, he will pause for a moment to look at the stars, searching with tired eyes for Teresa’s face in the mist, knowing, now with absolute certainty, that the only true homeland that saves us from oblivion is the warmth of a friend’s hand accompanying us, in silence, to the final shore of the night.
The article Obituary: Paco Santana, Finanzauto’s leading figure at the Port of Las Palmas and creator of the Canarylog empire was first published on canarymaritime.com.
