CAMAGÜEY.-  The Bulls of the Flatness needed extra-sports spices that completed the recipe of their big Series. One of these long-awaited dressings was the pet, a key personage inside the spectacle who was waited in "Cándido González" Stadium.

With the appearance of a picturesque bull, on Saturday, September, 21st the bleachers of the colossus of the Casino Campestre changed forever. Although the disguise was leaving much that to want, in that début it remained clear that the man inside was arming the show in “a fourth of ground”.

Then the name was known: Fernando, and another change of look to complete the "personality" of the man capable of raising to thousands of their seats with a simple baton movement. Some time later, and with the collaboration of several members of the Sports Club Camagüey Team, there happened the third transformation of his image, which makes him showier and agile. This superficial metamorphosis is part of another major transformation that takes Fernando Santos Cañizares every day to his new house, where there waits for him a public who does not already imagine without him.

Foto: Alejandro Rodríguez Leiva/ Adelante

“I presented to the call and the officials of the Inder put me to the test in the last game of the subseries facing Villa Clara. After this day, they decided that I was assembling all the histrionic qualities to be the pet of the team”.

To Fernando the fees of this office are not strange, since he has constructed a career in the stage that has led him to being a member of the company Teatro D’ Luz belonging to the Council of the Scenic Arts of Camagüey.

“I began to act since I was child in houses of Culture and fans' events, and to the time I decided that this would be my life. I was with the group of theater La Carreta, where I learned of big actors of the province. At present, I alternate the dramatic theater and the humor”.

Accentuating his mocking expressions he says to be “of the big scene”.

“I have been lucky to interpret small roles on the big and small screen. I acted in the movies Kangamba and El Mayor, in the last one as coachman of Amalia Simoni; in the novel Las huérfanas de la Obra Pía and in the adventure Hermanos. I enjoyed every moment and there is no one who removes me of the credits”, he says with laughter.

His current personage demands constant rubbing with the love and a lot of improvisation, but also went to a "school" for that.

“For 16 years I integrated several walk-ons as ballet dancer and the group of big dolls in our holidays of San Juan. This experience has served me for the pet work, because I spent years interacting with the people”.

Before coming already to the skin of the Bull, he was feeling popular, but he confesses that now “it is too much for my weight”.

“I never thought that this would be my most famous personage. Many stop in the street to greet me and to congratulate me on what I do in the stadium. They even ask me to take photos with me without the disguise. I love that and it makes me to be better in my presentations in every game. I have studied and seen videos in how they operate the pets in the world to enrich the repertoire of the Bull of the Flatness. I have to develop interaction dynamics with the public that create an agreeable and participative ambience”.

I confess that after looking at him dancing and acting in the stadium I become exhausted, but to my worry he answers with a perfect smile in his weakest face and the affirmation of which he cannot avoid his hyperactivity.

“I am realized doing this. I will accompany the team in the good ones and in the bad ones, as I did when I was one more fan in the bleachers. I follow Camagüey since I was a young man and have very good memories supporting them in areas of the whole country. I have only changed the roll; and they have modified me up to the name: now I am the Bull Fernando”.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez