The year was 1973 and José Marí Colom, who had been an Olympic canoeist in México 68, was working with his boss, the sculptor Enrique Torres Gómez, on the slope of the Cullera mountain. Both placed the boulders and marked them with white lime, trying to draw huge letters with the place name of a town that, at that time, had the ambition to grow as a tourist destination.
“Now it may seem easy, with new technologies and current media, but back then, since there were not even mobile phones, we had to place the stones and go down to the road to see if the letter was well made or if it was necessary to move the stone,” explains José. Marí to La Vanguardia.
“I remember that Enrique had a Simca 1000 and for three weeks we went down and up the mountain four or five times a day until we squared the silhouette of the letters,” he recalls in a conversation with this newspaper. Finally, after almost five months of work and 4,500 kilos of lime, the team led by Enrique Torres and José Marí Colom managed to paint the seven letters of Cullera, each one 35 meters high and 15 meters wide. Just for comparison: the iconic Hollywood letters, which were placed in 1923 (50 years earlier) measure 15 meters high and 9 meters wide.
This weekend, the town’s City Council is celebrating the anniversary of the 50th anniversary of its Letters of the Mountain with a varied program of events and activities for all citizens with the intention of “praising this innovative project promoted at that time.” by Enrique Torres from Cullero”, who will precisely receive the ‘Distintitu 9 de Octubre’ posthumously this year.
An initiative that has its history as stated in the report made by the Cullera chronicler. He says that, after the approval in 1965 of the first General Urban Planning Plan of the town – which designed the transition from a pre-tourist city to a tourist city -, a business proposal arose that proposed making a large sign on the mountain with the name of the city, but with the company’s advertising. This option, with a location and dimensions different from the one we know today, was rejected.
It was then when Enrique Torres proposed his idea; Instead of a sign, he would paint the letters on the mountain because he defended that the Cullerenca coast was hidden from motorists traveling on the national highway from Valencia to Alicante. A public tender was held, municipal sources explain to this newspaper, but it was declared void since the proposals that were presented did not agree with the objective.
It was then that Torres offered to carry out the action himself, assuming the status of contractor for the municipal Administration.
The documentation of the Cullera chronicler tells that, “the Plenary Session of the city council, given the positive report of the municipal architect and the favorable opinion of the Urban Planning Commission, in the session held on May 26, 1971, unanimously agreed to contract directly with Enrique Torres Gómez.” Among the conditions imposed by the document is a definitive guarantee in the amount of 6,000 pesetas.
But also, the same sources explain, the specifications required the contractor to be in possession of the construction company card, a requirement that Enrique Torres could not justify. Finally, the city council accepted as a valid formula that a businessman with a construction license endorsed the sculptor Torres in writing and took co-responsibility for the execution of the project. This businessman was Pedro Ribes Martí, manager of Ribes Martí SL.
It was then when, with the Simca 1000, Enrique Torres and the canoeist went up the mountain. At that time, Torres was a sculptor and Colom was a kind of apprentice. Since I was 14 years old working with him, during which time I had trained in the gym he set up. “In Cullera we had the river, Enrique brought two canoes and in 1966 I won the Spanish championship. In Mexico 68 I reached the k1 semi-final,” he recalls. Years later, in 1984, Colom was national coach at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
When he worked on the lyrics, Colom was 22 years old and young people like him were necessary for a complicated project that required physical strength. In addition to squaring the letters, we then had to color them. To do this, they had to clear the existing undergrowth on the side of the mountain. “The stones were easy to paint, but to fill the earth with lime you first had to put concrete,” he emphasizes.
However, carrying the mixture and making the mixture in the middle of the mountain was not easy. And sometimes they slipped or fell down the slope, causing protests from the neighbors who lived at the foot of the mountain. “The iron paste where the concrete was made would fall four or five times,” he says.
The letters were painted with lime, a lime produced by a calero from Carcaixent, Alfredo Faus, and which was produced in a traditional stone kiln.
With a hose they filled in the letters and with brooms they finished spreading it so that it was homogeneous. “When we went out, we quickly had to cover the target with dirt.” Working in the mountains was not easy either. Colom remembers that at that time there were many scorpions in the area and tells how one of those who worked with them got stung on the foot. “We had to take him quickly to Don Fernando’s clinic and he had a black foot for several weeks.”
Now, painting these letters that occupy an area of ??875 square meters and have given so much visibility to this tourist municipality is much easier. Self-cleaning mineral paint is used due to the effect of rain. The approximately 1,000 liters of white paint used are a gift from the local company Fraycar, which always has the tradition of giving it away every time the letters are repainted.
Letters with a lot of history that have been competing with the Hollywood sign for half a century.
