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MAY 02 / 2024

Meeting again under the mast: Paco Sangorrín

Paco Sangorrín is 66 years old, married and has three children and six grandchildren. He has a degree and a doctorate in Hispanic Philology and was a teacher at Gaztelueta for 21 years. What time do you wake up every morning? Around 7:30, usually without an alarm clock. What is your best moment of the day? Many, but at this stage of...

Paco Sangorrín is 66 years old, married and has three children and six grandchildren. He holds a degree and doctorate in Hispanic Philology and was a teacher at Gaztelueta for 21 years.

gaztelueta reencuentros sangorrin

What time do you wake up every morning? Around 7:30, usually without an alarm clock.

What is your best moment of the day? Many, but at this stage of life I'd like to meet any of my grandchildren and see how they leave what they are doing to run and give their aitite a hug. Unique moments in life!

Your favourite film? You make it difficult for me, but, given the context in which we find ourselves, I would choose "The Dead Poets' Club".

Which historical figure would you go to dinner with? Perhaps with any of the greats of the Renaissance... A little cliché to say with Shakespeare or Cervantes... In no case with Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

What would you eat at your last meal? In this same place, I read the wise advice of the maestro Ángel Ramírez that "something light". But just in case, and because "no eye has seen, no ear has heard", I would have a full stew, preceded by some torreznos from Soria, with a good txakoli from Bakio and a Reserva Rioja. For dessert, rice pudding and, if it comes to it, a good whisky, without ice, as I heard Roland Fisher say so many times, accompanied by some Zuricalday pastries.

A phrase that has left its mark on you? A lot of them. Two Latin sentences I love: Fortuna audaces (or audentes) iuvat y Non multa sed multum. But I especially remember the final quotation from a book by Jean Guitton ("Intellectual work") that José Luis Mota suggested to me when I first arrived at Gaztelueta, back in September 1981: What is given to you in this moment, accept it, improve it, deepen it. Then you will live.

gaztelueta reencuentros sangorrin2

What has been the best thing about your time at Gaztelueta? Many things. A process of training as a teacher and educator that has marked my whole life, especially in my early days. But above all the contact with many colleagues and great professionals. I don't want to name names because it would fill many paragraphs, but the nightly get-togethers with José Manuel Tapia, the first board of governors I met, Juan Antonio García Novo, José Luis Mota... extraordinary teachers. My three years as head of studies at the Poli were the best of my professional life... The colleagues from the early days, unforgettable: Roland Ficher, Antonio Osuna, Michelo Gª Sanchidrián, Luisfer Goyeneche, Alberto Morcillo, José Ignacio Risueño... and several dozen others. Not forgetting some phenomenal students. I think I've been very lucky: I've always had the best students; I remember most of the first years with some accuracy.

gaztelueta reencuentros sangorrin3

Which event do you remember most fondly? So many. The preparation of sports festivals, the rehearsals of the "Polifónica docente" for the Christmas festival, the equator steps, COU farewells; I have very fond memories of the teachers' meetings we had one day a week in the then music room, now gone, behind the stage of the Pabellón Central. It was there that I gave my first talk to school teachers in 1982, I think, at the suggestion of Luis Bollaín: my legs were shaking and I was on the verge of freezing up. 

With whom would you watch a sunset under this mast? Again you make it more difficult for me. I have mentioned a few names above, to which several dozen more should be added. Always with Luis Crovetto (when I have followed his advice I have done well in life, I remember some times when I have not and I regret not having listened to him). Also with all my former students, but if I had to choose, I would stay with the 30th class: with those who were in the 7th year of EGB in September 1981 and with those who were added up to COU, many of them already bald and with a certain paunch, but all of them unforgettable.

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