The story of the brothers
Oscar
and
Juan Gálvez
is also that of almost three decades of
Road Tourism
: between the competitions of 1947 and 1961, only one did they miss the title.
The surname has enough weight to mention it in every conversation about Argentine motorsports.
But the weight of his memory is also traded on the illegal metals market.
On the morning of March 3, at the meeting for the 61st anniversary of Juan's tragic death - already 34 years after Oscar's - the Gálvez family found themselves in a violent situation:
the bronze plaques
that commemorate them in the mausoleums of their tombs in the Chacarita Cemetery.
The news was spread by Juan's son and Oscar's nephew,
Ricardo Gálvez
, who told
Clarín
that it is not new since the first time was in 2021, but that now
"they are destroying the cemetery
. "
This time it wasn't just one, but they took them all.
Only those who remembered their father were 21.
Oscar Gálvez's tomb stripped of its plaques.
"This is not a thief who jumps at night. The walls of the Chacarita cemetery are impossible to jump over, let alone jump over them again on the other side with the weight of bronze
," Gálvez analyzes with common sense.
In the
Personalities Enclosure
, the neighboring tombstones of Alfonsina Storni, Quinquela Martín, Luis Sandrini, Francisco and Julio de Caro, José Amalfitani, Roberto Goyeneche, Adolfo Pedernera, Osvaldo Pugliese and Aníbal Troilo, were
also left without the bronze
.
"We are talking about thousands of kilos that have been taken. It is something impossible to understand unless a van comes in... Someone opens the door! And it is not once, twice or ten times, this is permanently," he said
. Galvez.
The Chacarita Cemetery is almost 20 times the area of the Recoleta Cemetery and in its
95 hectares
are the remains of Pocho La Pantera, Adolfo Castelo, Jorge Porcel, María Gabriela Epumer, Juan Verdaguer, Leonardo Favio, María Elena Walsh, the jockey Irineo Leguisamo, aviator Jorge Newbery and Osvaldo Soriano, among others.
"
They are plundering the cemetery
. They told me that they took a bronze statue that weighs more than 100 kilos. They have taken busts of people's heads. How can it be that for years no one knows anything, no one sees anything and no one cares? "Here are the feelings of someone who has their loved one there and people leave their plaque as a tribute. It is really very sad, but even more sad is the ineffectiveness of the people who are caring there,"
he lamented.
A few days after learning of the theft, the Argentine Association of Flyers (AAV) chaired by
José María Traverso
issued a statement in which it repudiated what happened.
"From the Argentine Association of Volantes we regret and repudiate the theft of all the bronze plaques from the mausoleums of the tombs of Juan and Oscar Galvez and of course also the theft in all the tombs and monuments with similar characteristics in the Chacarita Cemetery "the entity complained in a statement.
"We ask for respect for the memory of those who are not here and that the authorities provide the corresponding care," the AAV closed its statement.
Who were the Gálvez brothers?
Although they stood out separately, they started together.
First in the workshop and then on the track.
The duo debuted in the first Argentine Thousand Miles organized by the Avellaneda Automobile Club in 1937. Oscar was 24 years old and had already debuted in the
Turismo Carretera
;
Juan, 21, and until then he had stayed under the car, focused on the mechanics.
In 1939 - the year in which they won their first victory,
the Argentine Grand Prix in which Juan Manuel Fangio debuted
-, they broke the differential and tied it with wire, while in 1940, after a sudden fall off a cliff in the Gran International Prize of the North, Oscar began to participate with a parachutist helmet and Juan got one of those used in war tanks.
Oscar Gálvez won the two championships in 1947/48 and 1953/34 and in 1961 with his Ford coupe and crossed the checkered flag first on 43 occasions.
Juan.
In '53, he raced a Formula One Grand Prix aboard a Maserati.
For his part, Juan - who was encouraged to act and starred in the 1950 film
"Bólidos de Acero"
- won nine Road Tourism championships: the four in a row from 1949 to 1952, another poker from 1955 to 1958 and the one from 1960.
He participated in 153 races and won 56 opportunities.
The last one was in the IV Vuelta de Laboulaye in 1962 aboard a Ford.
He died a year later in the Olavarría test at the age of 47.