Farewell to Antonio López Salgado: A Life Lived with Passion and Purpose

Antonio López Salgado, better known in Ourense circles as “Tatá”died last Saturday at the age of 85.

Man of strong character and sharp sense of humor, Antonio naction in the middle of the Civil War in the central Calle Lepanto. He grew up in the Puente neighborhood, and when he was almost a child he lived in the post-war period. the adventures of the coffee shopkeeper and truck spare parts with Portugal.

At just 19 years old He started working at the Provincial Savings Bank of Ourense, where he became deputy to the General Management and representative of the staff on the Board of Directors. During his more than four decades at the entity he held positions of responsibility in the areas of IT, accounting and marketing. He participated in the implementation of the ATM card, created the first commercial deferred payment card in the region, piloted the implementation of the Euro in the bank.

Passionate about motors in all its forms, Tatá was the right hand of his brother-in-law José Luis Garza at the Mercedes Benz Garza Automoción dealership.where he supervised accounting and participated in the company’s expansion strategy.

Cheerful, sociable, generous and tremendously loyal to his people, Antonio enjoyed working almost as much as drinking wine in his Manuel Pereira neighborhood or dissecting a crab with surgical precision in Baiona, his favorite spot facing the sea. He enjoyed himself like few others and loved a good party, which could end at dawn in front of a sack of oysters in the La Piedra Market in Vigo. “There are other lives,” he used to say with a mischievous smile in front of a good seafood platter, “but they are not really life.”

He loved his family fiercely., visceral and unequivocal, and after being widowed at the age of 40, he raised his three children with the help of his mother and sister. He taught them that responsibility is not incompatible with fun, that one forgives but does not forget, and that the greatest sin is hypocrisy.

Endowed with more patience for things than for people, and with an innate ability for crafts, he spent your retirement years building model ships, traveling with his second wife Matesa and watching his grandchildren grow up.

In recent years He rarely left his house, suffering from a lung disease that triggered other pathologies. He never complained, never lost his smile and never asked for anything.

When it was time for him to leave last weekend, he did so the same way he always lived: like a lordone of those that almost don’t exist anymore.

Have a good trip, dad.