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Fernando Alonso
Malaga
Friday, 16 August 2024, 14:08
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He seemed immortal, but he was not. On Wednesday night, and unexpectedly, Zoilo Montero Álvarez, the owner of Ultramarinos Zoilo shop in Malaga city's centrally located Calle Granada, died at the age of eighty-nine. The following day became a continuous parade of friends and family, despite it being a national holiday, to pay their condolences to his wife Mari Carmen, his children Zoilo, Luisa and Ginés and his grandnephew Yeray.
After the retirement of Pedro Arribere (of the hardware store El Llavín), Zoilo was the doyen of Malaga shopkeepers. He had been behind the counter of his grocery store for three quarters of a century, watching life go by. As he said, he was even a witness to flooding when the water carried down the street the melons from the stall that was set up in front of the Astoria cinema.
He was born in May 1935. In fact, he showed his ID card to the disbelief of some of his customers. He was one of those who no longer had an expiry date. He was born in Herrera (Seville) and his father and grandfather were loggers, 'talaores', as he called them, as they were dedicated to the art of pruning olive trees and preventing fires with their felling. As he did not want to follow the trade of his ancestors, he came to Malaga with his maternal uncles. With Antonio Álvarez he learnt the trade of the grocery store, and sweated, as he used to say, doing home deliveries by bicycle. On one occasion he was going down the steep slope to the Colegio de la Asunción when his brakes failed and he was almost killed.
Another of his uncles, Isidoro, took over the grocery business opposite the church of Santiago and Zoilo went to work with him there in 1950. Six years later, when Zoilo returned from military service, he discovered his uncle Isidoro was in the process of a deal with an oil salesman to take over the shop, but Zolio convinced his uncle to let him to take over the business himself, even though he was only twenty-one years old. In 1956 Ultramarinos Zoilo was born. He had no timetable. He opened the shop when he got up and worked as long as his body could take it. He was young and those were different times.
He met his wife Mari Carmen, who was working in a shop two doors up (today a souvenir shop). Zoilo Montero was a born merchant land he mastered the commercial arts like no one else. He was kind and friendly, and never lost his smile. The customer was always satisfied.
His grocer's shop is one of the few traditional shops that survive in the centre of Malaga. The products he sold were the same as always and some of his suppliers remained the same since the early days. For example: the ham is the same one he ate at home when he was a child. Until recently, he still went down to open the shop every morning.
He used to stand at the end of the counter because of the draught. Although he sometimes caught a cold, nothing seemed to undermine his iron-clad health. After the pandemic, he tripped on a step in the doorway of his house and broke several ribs, but he soon regained his mobility and even became slimmer.
It was nice seeing the love with which he walked with his wife every morning. He told old stories about Malaga, and never spoke ill of anyone. Virtues to imitate. Malaga city centre and Calle Granada will be empty without his presence.
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