Godo's Notebook

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1961 · Authors: Ignacio Aldecoa

Ignacio Aldecoa (Vitoria, 1925-Madrid, 1969) is one of the most important writers of Spanish narrative in the second half of the 20th century and over time he has continued to receive ever wider acclaim from critics and the public. He was an exceptional storyteller with clear, precise prose and a will for ethical denunciation but never moralising.

Ignacio Aldecoa dreamed, since his adolescence, of the islands. If the sea was his great passion, the islands meant the pursuit of a literary dream lived through reading. In search of that dream he discovered the Canary Islands, marking him forever. At the beginning of the 1960s the writer spent six weeks in La Graciosa and lived with its inhabitants a human experience of enormous value. He then toured the other islands. From this experience arose the book Cuaderno de Godo (Godo's Notebook), published in 1961, which blends literature, reportage and travel notebook, presenting an exceptional document for its beauty, its understanding intelligence and its irony. In its pages there is a brief allusion to Santa Cruz, which he describes as follows:

«In Santa Cruz there is a beautiful bullring, and the church bells in the evening provide the melancholic note of small peninsular towns. In Santa Cruz you hear roosters crowing, carts creaking and street hawkers shouting. A humble symphony that moves you. In Santa Cruz there are roofs, new buildings, very old buildings, slopes, narrow streets, wide streets and corners. And sea. Santa Cruz is closer to the Peninsula than the Peninsula is to Santa Cruz [...]»

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