The 3 April 1526 Sebastian Gaboto, an Italian at the service of the Spanish Crown in the Discovery company, departs from Sanlúcar de Barrameda heading to the Americas invested with the highest marine authority that existed in Spain: that of Senior Pilot.
After stopping in the Canary Islands and the Azores, The expedition crosses the Atlantic and reaches present-day Pernambuco, where do you find, due to travel hazards, to two Christian survivors of a previous expedition whose testimonies confirm Gaboto's hopeful suspicions: there are precious metals heading south.
Disobeying the orders of the crown, The Italian enters the Río de la Plata and finds another survivor who corroborates the existence of precious stones and numerous riches following the course of a river... Gaboto leaves part of the crew in two improvised camps, build a caravel and a galley, and in June 1527 hand in hand with fantasy begins to ascend the Paraná River.
Disobeying the orders of the crown, The Italian enters the Río de la Plata and finds another survivor who corroborates the existence of precious stones
He is the first Westerner to enter those waters. Several miles north, about 50 kilometers from what is now Rosario, He founded the first settlement on the mainland that existed on the banks and continued sailing upriver., driven by the unbreakable dream of gemstones, that becomes the bone marrow of the first river exploration.
Almost 500 years later, Alexis Grinberg, oceanographer of the newborn Rosario Aquarium, guides us through a modern space flanked by windows several meters high and state-of-the-art laboratories to a room where, swimming in huge vessels of advanced technology, piranhas welcome us, catfish, vogues, palometas and in the last fish tank, undulating like ballerinas, the typical freshwater rays of Paraná.
We are in one of the most modern research centers in Argentina, in the city of Rosario, which today combines legends of sailors with impact research, cinemas with secret theaters, and barrier culture rooms with craft beer factories. It's a surprise. A city that we imagined full of merchant ports and nostalgia for discovery has turned out to be a niche for unexpected revelry and an epicenter of sensory culture..
A city that we imagined full of merchant ports and nostalgia for discovery has turned out to be a niche for unexpected revelry.
Before being at the Aquarium we have been at the El Círculo Theater, where Lucia, a student with a sailor shirt, half a shaved head and lemon yellow hair he told us on stage. "Shhhh.... Do you hear that?”.
"The fact that?”, asked.
"That", she says, pointing her head toward the ceiling..
Several meters above our heads stretches a vertical darkness interspersed by stretches of emptiness., frayed curtains and galleon ropes. It seems that there is a treasure hidden in that rectangular hole from which sounds similar to crickets in the dark night and bee buzzes emanate..
“They are bats”, clarifies. And is that, in the celestial vault of the Rosario theater lives, accepted after reports and conclaves of its owners, a colony of bats that, in their inertia to comply with trophic functions, effectively eliminates any temporary moth.
Several meters above our heads stretches a vertical darkness interspersed by stretches of emptiness.
In that same frequency of sensory culture and search for jewels that Gaboto left marked in the territories of the shore, We go to the Oroño fair and we get tangled in Chilean wicker baskets, Creole crafts, traditional braided and brass dollhouses; We go to the artisanal ice cream fair and raffle off mountains of local beer ice cream cones, dulce de leche and irreverent caipirinhas; We are going for a walk along the riverbank and we end up taking photos to the rhythm of Rosario rock in a summer setting.
And finally the time has come to put our feet in the water., to climb, in single file, to the tourist boat that takes us to rock excitedly like children and explorers on the temperate surfaces of the river. Leaning over the railing, with the body hanging, We fill our faces with sea breezes and extend our hands as if, in an attempt to make waves with my fingers, we could caress the waves of the water.
What primordial and primitive adrenaline swamps you when you get on a boat. What a mysterious secretion of adventure and fear, respect and fun. We talk to travelers, we take photos, We run from bow to stern in an attempt to extend the little time we have before reaching the San Andrés bench., where idle Rosario residents bathe and drink explosive mojitos. A charming island where the concepts of paradise and rest are combined with the Coca Cola umbrella and the plexiglass lunch box. It seems that there is a school on the San Andrés bench where the children of the few families that live on the island go., many of whom have never visited Rosario. Every morning, A ship full of teachers from Rosario docks on the coast and every afternoon that same ship brings them back home..
Leaning over the railing, with the body hanging, we fill our faces with sea breezes
It also seems that the people of Rosario claim the territory and that the province of Entre Ríos also claims it.. For the man who guides us to a beach bar “it is as if it were the line on the map”, suggestion that makes us return to the betrayed imperialism of Gaboto, who returned to Spain recounting wonders of impossible coins and jewels that he never saw.
But that river still smells of adventure and the desire to know more, and although the precious stones we are looking for today are actually beaches that are dispersed in the delta, if one manages to escape Luis Fonsi and his surrounding rhythms, to the skyline of Rosario and the freshwater selfies... if one manages to keep in one's chest the creative and singing power that cities with culture and horizons deliver to play, then, frankly, We are filibusters of those times that we entered with our fantasy intact, disobeying the Crown in the waters of the Paraná.
