The Arguimbau Family’s Fishing Dreams

Miquel Àngel Limón Pons/Alaior - Needless to say, Menorca, by virtue of being an island closely embraced by the sea, has bequeathed to posterity seafarers of great distinction, if you will allow me the simple paradox.

We could perhaps find, here and there, a good number of weather-beaten and courageous men, daring and highly knowledgeable pilots. I shall focus, however, on a peculiar combination: a brave sailor with a keen eye for business. I am referring to the Arguimbau family of Ciutadella, whose fame, at a certain point during the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth, spread beyond the confines of the Mediterranean and reached the Atlantic waters off the Saharan coast.

One day, while enjoying the old 1907 newspaper El Eco de Ciudadela, I came across a remarkable account, written with a convincing and well-developed literary flair. This is what it said:

“There was a great commotion at the station, the doors slammed shut, the locomotive let out its cry of freedom and, while the train moved its iron serpent’s rings, my friend Arguimbau leapt into his compartment with youthful agility. ‘On to Madrid!’ he told me, his face reflecting the joy of a fighter who believes victory is close at hand. Arguimbau [meaning Francesc] is the classic example of the old Balearic seafarer. His position and career offered him a peaceful life without having to venture far from the coast, but his thirst for struggle led him to explore the shores of the Sahara.”

The genealogist Antoni Guasch Bosch states that Francesc Arguimbau Ferrer, born in 1867, was a native of Ciutadella married to Valentina Amengual Sanxo, born in 1873. Their marriage, celebrated in Ciutadella on 26 September 1894, produced five sons: Llorenç, Francesc, Conrad, Hilari and Joan.

Well equipped for the shipping business, Francesc Arguimbau “moved heaven and earth, chartered the fishing steamer Violeta from another thoroughbred Mallorcan, Bernat de Cette, and received a subsidy of 15,000 pesetas from the Ministry of State for his research voyage. Arguimbau travelled along the coast of Cape Blanc, studied lobster grounds, carried out deep-sea fishing, drew up maps and charts, observed the customs of the local population and wrote a report. And [now] an important colonisation company will place at his disposal three live-fish steamers of between 700 and 800 tonnes, similar to the Isleño, which will be capable of transporting 60,000 kilos of live fish from Cape Blanc in the Sahara to Europe on each expedition, completing the round trip in thirty-five days. They will have sixteen coastal feluccas for fishing. Lighthouses will be erected and buoying work carried out along the coast. A trading station will be established to deal with the Moors engaged in herding, agricultural work and commerce. As a by-product of the fishing operation, three industries will also be created: canning for dead fish, the production of glue and oils, and the manufacture of guano. These will strengthen the income of the vast enterprise, which Francisco Arguimbau estimates will produce 10,000 pesetas a day once expenses have been covered. Are the amiable sailor’s plans merely rosy dreams?” the writer of the newspaper article asked, ironically and doubtfully, and not without objective reason. I do not believe, however, that this entrepreneurial fever ever reached such heights.

“A colonisation company that knows the business,” the reporter went on, “welcomes them into open negotiations and risks a substantial amount of capital, while in Mallorca large stocks remain idle, yielding a derisory return. ‘No one is a prophet in his own land’ must be an old Balearic proverb,” the author finally remarked under the pen name Pedro Recio [El Eco de Ciudadela, 4 October 1907, p. 81].

During the years of the Spanish Civil War, the fame of the Arguimbau family remained very much alive in the figure of Llorenç, Francesc’s son. While travelling around the Italian island of Sardinia, Josep Pla heard of the extraordinary renown of this character. On visiting the Catalan-speaking town of Alghero, he encountered “a remarkable spectacle,” wrote the author from Girona. “I found myself before a myth. [...] When I arrived, he had been dead for fifteen days. He had reached Sardinia when he was very young, though no one knows how or why. Judging by the photographs I saw of him, he must have been tall, fair-haired and strong, broad-shouldered, with a noble and serene gaze and a placid yet tenacious appearance. The calmness and dry humour of the Balearic Islands: an island man,” the eminent writer from the Empordà concluded.

Pla then delved into the moral and commercial character —marked by an acute instinct for survival inherent in certain island personalities— of the man whose life became surrounded by enormous fame as il re della aragosta, the king of the lobster, in those Mediterranean waters.

“During the early years of his stay in Alghero, he had numerous romantic adventures and fathered several illegitimate children, without drama, in a domestic, calm and discreet manner. He made the country’s great discovery: he realised that, owing to the absence of transport, lobsters from Sardinia’s western coast could be bought at derisory prices. He considered the problem... He acquired an old, battered and rather dilapidated sailing vessel, pierced the hull and converted it into a floating livewell. Once the sails were raised, he filled the hold with crustaceans and, when he considered the cargo worthwhile, he trimmed the sails and, with the vessel half submerged, made his first voyage to Marseille. He sold the lobsters, which arrived perfectly alive, for a great deal of money, and the operation was a resounding success.”

Today, amid the frenzy surrounding lobster as a tourist delicacy and, at the same time, as a summer dream unworthy of Shakespeare, the lobster trade thrives in ways that the adventurer Arguimbau could never have foreseen. He was that singular human specimen whom Pla had christened, as an impossible figure to replace, the true and genuine re della aragosta.

All the others are, for the time being, merely kitchen assistants who peel potatoes and fry eggs to place on top of the red crustacean —red, rather, because its cheeks are burning with embarrassment at the thought of the customers.