Faycán

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1945 · Authors: Víctor Doreste

Faycán: memories of a stray dog is the best-known work of the multifaceted author Víctor Doreste (1902-1966) and also one of the most widely read novels in Canarian literature. In it, a dog named Faycán narrates the adventures experienced throughout his life, constituting a particular portrait of the customs and, at times, miseries of the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and its inhabitants. In this excerpt, the origin of the dog sculptures in Santa Ana square is told in the manner of a fable.

[...] «When man arrived with the stick raised and the stone in his right hand, when the best and purest of our race was to be exterminated, an unknown and supernatural power, something beyond our knowledge and that we will never be able to understand, turned into bronze what was once living flesh. Men raged in vain. The stone split in two; the stick splintered; the machete chipped... Finally, they were abandoned to their eternal, green and hard silence.

—Times passed; and a good and just man placed them in a public square, near the ravine, opposite the large stone house with towers and bells. There they will live in bronze, until the sun goes out and the moon stops silvering the backs of cats.

There was a wonderfully brief silence; and profoundly long. Cicerón laid his long ears on the ground. A question hung in the air.

—Their names? —he asked me.

He paused briefly and looked at me with serene emotion.

—Never forget them: Aterura, Mogano, Doramas, Tindaya, Bentayga, Tenoyo, Tirajano, and... Faycán. You can recognise your ancestor immediately: he is missing half an ear. He lost it in a glorious fight; and the bronze respected what was for him a pride. When you see them for the first time —were Cicerón’s last words— do not insist on the impossible. They smell of nothing.»

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