On June 6, 1944, the Allied army launched an offensive on five Normandy beaches. It was an operation planned and prepared for two years and, on the appointed day, in command was General Eisenhower of the United States and General Montgomery of Britain. 226,000 Allied soldiers, 20,000 civilians and 220,000 German soldiers died that day. The military value of that fact was important, but almost more the symbolic.
Perhaps some of the individuals who, before seven in the morning, bet at the entrances to the beaches on our coast, are descendants of some of those who gave their lives against Nazism. Is possible. Look at that empty look, looking ahead, those nerves in tension, the total absence of conversation between them, the fear of defeat similar to the longing for glory. But most of the women and men who bet are national products, so their mythical will not be Normandy but perhaps something less epic like the first day of sales at El Corte Inglés or getting on the bus first to get a seat .
What is likely is that, seeing the determination, the speed on the sand, the peripheral vision and competitiveness, in the allied divisions that took the beaches of Normandy, they would not have had a couple of retired divisions like ours left that, early in the morning, they look for a place on the beaches to set up a chair and parasol. They don't do it for them. They do it for their own, which is how wars are won. morning Get there before the others. To run. draw Fight and push. calculate Unsheath, nail, drill and open the sunshade. If some of their doctors in the CAP saw them, they would be cross and withdraw much of the medication they request and already take out of simple greed and addiction.
What are the old ones for? In summer, this question answers itself, especially if you spend your summer on the coast. There is a parasol and under it a senior gentleman or lady keeping things. It is time for lunch and it is always the grandmother who has gone up to the apartment to make the salad with tomatoes previously bought at the street market. And if you need to get up in the morning and take a beach, there is an old man or an old woman, while the young people sleep off their hangover, the adults act as if they were still in the city - same hours, same wifi, same visit to the fair, to buy - . In the summer, on the coast, the old man is where he should be: taking care of his own.
And focusing on the morning beach take with parasol placement, a fact that in strictly sporting terms is known as Para-Sol Senior, this type of event is regulated by the ordinances of the place. The most ambitious – and restrictive, it must be said – was that of Algarrobo (Málaga), which fixed timetables and sanctioned their abuse. The ordinance - which later inspired that of other towns - indicated that once the parasol was nailed down, its shade had to be used immediately and for the entire time it was deployed. In other words, it wasn't worth the grandfather's artifice of putting up the parasol at 7.03 in the morning, going to the apartment for breakfast and having the young people come to the parasol at 12.25 hours that morning. The penalty could be up to 300 euros.
Another aspect that was also regulated by the different ordinances is that no one could enter the playing field – the beach – before seven in the morning. This was done to let the cleaning tasks finish and to prevent a grandfather from sticking a parasol in the belly of a tourist, in a coma from the previous night's bottle. There is a start and end to the game and an authority – municipal in this case – who sets the rules. The development of the meeting is something else because there is no head of everything. Consider that, despite being aged bodies, some of them have titanium prostheses under their skin, mechanical legs or arms, pacemakers, anti-depressants, remnants of chemo, and others are literally alienated from the possibility of being useful again, of winning the other old ones, that human nature is what it is. There's shoving, swearing, cheating and crazy pelvises. Nothing sea water can't cure.
Unfortunately, the clothing of the players is unfortunate, but you know that anything goes in the summer. Parasols, in many cases, are simple, but in others, they have benefits against the wind, and of rooting in the ground. The traditional and manly climbing of the parasol pole on a sand which, at the same time, allowed and rejected such violence, in accordance with Greek mythology and the Talos mentality of the country's staff, is fortunately falling into disuse.
This sport – beach catch and senior parasol climbing – has a long tradition. The first parasols from 3,500 years ago were Egyptian and consisted of palm leaves attached to a pole. But it was from China – like covid – that it became popular. The idea of a parasol became like a high-class distinction, whereby if you bought a parasol, you got a built-in slave. There were parasols in Rome, Greece and Persia. Also with a servant, because in Rome carrying the parasol yourself was a sign of good manners.
All this changed when Jean Marius, a Parisian merchant, improved the parasol by making it light. The new model delighted Louis XIV, who granted him an exclusivity contract for five years. After these years, there were 300 sellers of parasols and umbrellas. And the fact is that the world of the parasol was similar to that of the umbrella, but while this was more in a civilized environment, the parasol was relegated to the beach. Part of the blame lay with Coco Chanel, who took to flaunting a tan when the standard was white skin, because it meant you didn't work outdoors. Coco Chanel also explained, in favor of her tan, that in the factories where the workers worked a thousand hours, the employers already made the slaves a little pale.
The tournaments of this senior sport are usually in the months of July and August. The sixties saw similar happenings between mods and rockers on the beaches of Brighton in winter. All this only affects the tribute to what is symbolic, the importance of taking an enemy beach for future generations.
