Nine Hours in Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Year: 1864 · Authors: Benito Pérez Galdós

The great novelist Benito Pérez Galdós (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1843-Madrid, 1920) wrote in 1864 a travel diary entitled A Journey of Impressions . Only the writing of the first two chapters of this diary is known, although at the beginning of the text the titles of the remaining twenty-two chapters appear. From its structure it is deduced that it was written upon the author’s arrival in Madrid, after leaving his hometown on his second and definitive journey to the Peninsula. In it, he narrates the two days that elapsed from his departure on the ship Almogóvar from Las Palmas bound for Cádiz, with a stopover in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

In the second chapter of the diary titled "Nine Hours in Santa Cruz de Tenerife," a 21-year-old Galdós offers us a brief description of the Santa Cruz he found in that September of 1864. To recover from a painful crossing from his native island that had left him dazed by seasickness, he went to eat at an inn; then, he intended to visit the Casino and finally, he met an enigmatic acquaintance of his in the middle of Marina Street.

«Finally, they took us to lunch; we were already longing for it, and so as soon as the servant had left, we hurried to the dining room: in such a state of emaciation were our poor stomachs.

As soon as we finished, I asked my companions:

—Where are we going? because I think you do not intend to spend these few hours idle.

—No, no, they answered unanimously, to the street.

—I am going to buy some trinkets.

—I to make two visits.

—I to see friends.

—Well, gentlemen, I am going to the Casino, then for a walk, and then to the boat. So, goodbye.

And we rushed down the stairs. One went to visits, another to his trinkets, that one to his friends, and I with two or three headed to the Casino.

We crossed the square, turned a corner and found ourselves on Marina Street. Two steps ahead I bumped into an old acquaintance, a man of phlegm, if there ever was one, a friend of his friends, a great joker; where there is no brawl he is not, no fight that does not break us up, no neighbourhood baptism for which he is not godfather, no candlelit dance he does not attend, no countryside tour in which he is not present. He has no profession, nor obligations to hold him back, and without being a capitalist, far from it, he likes horses, seeks and buys dogs of the best breeds, and as a crown and complement to his strange inclinations he pampers English cats and breeds Canarian birds.»

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