Alerto Pene, aquanaut of the streets

Despite the nice beaches that grace Gijón, with their smooth dunes and a sea that's never too cold, Alerto Pene liked to dive on the street:
yes, on the street, he just waited for the rain to fall, and when the lanes and avenues of the town contained water -enough or not-, Alerto plunged like a moron on the soaked pavement, moving his arms and legs desperately in the exiguous water.

 
In fact his real name was Alberto, not Alerto, but his mother hadn't lips, so she couldn't pronounce the "B" (the poor woman was viciously attacked by a frenzied orangoutang in the zoo of Barcelona when she was young, and the merciless ape devoured 2/3 of her face with macabre delight).

Alerto Pene repeated this epatante routine since his childhood, so all the neighbors knew him, and they didn't get surprised anymore by this incomprehensible paparrucha, even some shouted flippant words of mockery at him, like "pajero", "mamarracho", "impresentable", "mamotreto", "pata de catre", "cabeza de verga", "payaso", "badulaque", "tarambana", "tarugo", "pelele", "fantoche", "turulato", "bobales", "mentecato", "zopenco", "memo", "zoquete", "zapato", "pelmazo", "babieca", "papanatas", "tontainas", "farabuto" or simply "gilipollas", which was his most common sobriquet.

Unlike this jovial, slightly malicious and provincial familiarity that the inhabitants of Gijón showed for Alerto, the tourists or people from other regions stayed freaking out in confusion observing the street diver.
Some -even- got seriously scared and called the police, like a woman from Hendaye who decided to spend a couple of weeks in Gijón, and was shocked when she saw Alerto Pene diving on the wet crosswalk during a rainy day of August.

The panicked lady was myope, and took Alerto for an orca or a shark, or a sea monster, suffering a hysterical crisis followed by 9 chained heart attacks in 8 seconds, and falling exanimous on the sidewalk, deader than a jamón pata negra.

This funest incident frightened lots of potential tourists, so the visitors diminished from 10.000 a month, to 10 a trimester, because they got intimidated thinking that Gijón was a town of full of crackpots, crime and predatory beasts:

the sensationalistic tabloid from Madrid "¡¡ESTO!!" published a speculative article full of suppositions and inexact hypotheses entitled "Vampires in Gijón?"
Here's an abridged version of this insidious essay of yellow journalism


"... Apparently, ladies and gentlemen, what this woman witnessed, what this nice and genteel granny from Hendaye saw, was, effectively, a vampiro.
A bloodthirsty and callous vampire, ladies and ladies, an inhuman beast come directly from the ocean of Biscay, a very specific variety of bloodsucker, infra-human deformity that dwells in the appalling abyssal bottoms of those gloomy regions chastised by the typhoon.

We possess evidence enough to state that this kind of human chiroptera populates the town of Gijón, and you can find any of them at every corner because, besides obscene and coarse, these monsters are shameless and tricky, and the unaware tourist has to cope with this dangerous menace all over town -even in the middle of the day-, due to the great abundance of them overe there, so that, in Gijón, is very difficult to tell who is vampire and who is human, today.

And not only that, but these lethal monsters lay their eggs on the shores, and the beach it's all covered with this abomination, because the vampires are constantly copulating, and they are also helped by mutants, ogres and the deplorable witch, and the incautious tourist who -innocently- decided to spend his money on that ghastly village, is frequently harassed by these plutonic creatures, and has to escape as soon as he arrives, and many have been devoured alive there, or bloodsucked to death, because the vampire may suck the total volume of blood of a robust man in 6 seconds, and the human gets dry like a plancha de telgopor."

Pepe Mon, 5 Dec, 2007.



Considering the grave economic losses that Alerto Pene caused, the municipality finally decided to catch this weird retard, put him in a hermetic wooden box for gurillas, and send him par avion to the Isla de Pascua (Rapa Nui), which in fact they did, much to the dismay of his mother, who requested to be sent with his son Alerto to that antipodean and mysterious island of Oceania.
The municipality (ayuntamiento) also compensated her, buying a house at the island for them, and paying a facial reconstruction, lips included.

Due to the profound mental subnormality of Alerto Pene, he's still unaware of his brusque relocation 13200 km away, he thinks he's still in Gijón, and performs his usual routines diving on the streets of Hanga Roa, capital of the remote and insular region where he was confined, much to the discombobulation of the natives who cannot understand what the ack is that pelotudo diving on the pavement, or where he came from.
At 5 PM the mom prepares the milk and the cookies and calls Alerto for the merienda, who leaves the streets shuffling with his rubber swimfins on the hot and wet cement of Hanga Roa.

Be these illegible lines token and reminder for Pene, Alerto, a man who, in spite of his handicaps, mental disorder, innate idiocy and social maladjustment, provided a distinctive and picturesque je ne sais quoi to the populous and ordered commune of Gijón, so that, now, his old house was recycled, and it's a municipal museum, and in front of the door there is a statue, that immortalizes Pene, Alerto in bronze:

"Here lived a man, illustrious neighbor of Gijón, Alerto Pene Vergeret, aquanaut, eminent athlete, founder of cities, astronaut, padre de la patria."



































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