Gregorio Fuentes

Gregorio Fuentes (July 11, 1897 – January 13, 2002) was a fisherman and the first mate of the Pilar, the boat belonging to the American writer Ernest Hemingway.

Fuentes was born in Arrecife on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. He first went to sea as deck boy with his father at age 10. As a teenager, he worked on cargo ships out of the Canary Islands to Trinidad and Puerto Rico, and from the Spanish ports of Valencia and Sevilla to South America. He migrated permanently to Cuba when he was 22. He attempted to reclaim his Spanish citizenship in 2001.

In 1938, Fuentes replaced the Pilar The Old Man And The Sea and how Gutiérrez's assistance proved vital to the story's creation and evolution in a letter written in February 1939 to his editor, Max Perkins:

Fuentes would spend his later years charging tourists $10 or $20 to take his picture and regale them with stories of his domestic partnership with Ernest Hemingway.