Antonio Zerolo

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary street map

Antonio Zerolo Herrera (1854-1923) was born in Arrecife de Lanzarote, but moved to Tenerife and studied at the Instituto de Enseñanzas Medias de La Laguna, where he later became director and professor. He graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the Universidad Central. He spent seven years in Gijón, in charge of a Spanish Language and Literature chair at the Instituto de Bachillerato Jovellanos.

His literary career was very early and he won numerous prizes in contests and floral games in the Canary Islands and on the Peninsula. He contributed with poems, articles, speeches and prose to various publications in Spain and Latin America.

He was a very late romantic, who found in regionalist inspiration, in the exaltation of natural landscapes and Guanche legends, his favourite subject for enthusiastic, overflowing and verbose poetry. Like the rest of the lyrical production of the so-called Escuela de La Laguna, his verses could be understood as a modest attempt at identity legitimisation of the small local island bourgeoisie. Although one of his favourite themes is the Guanche, as an emotional conditioning towards a vanished race but alive in memory, he also sings of the fusion of races and the unity of the whole homeland.

[Extracted from the website of CEIP Antonio Zerolo]

 

“I want to die in peace with my conscience

(...) and let my dream be lulled in La Laguna

by the pines that crown the mountain

and the Atlantic sea that rocked my cradle”

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