A weariness came over me and cast its shadow. That was when my ordeal began. At the entrance to the company there are always volunteers who smile at you, wearing that pathetic look of people who love every living creature. In those days, such treacly displays still offered me some comfort. On the way home I could always stop at … Read more →
I admit I have been a consumer of mystery-industry products, especially in their radio format. The amenable manner in which they were presented on La Rosa de los Vientos, and the distance its host kept from the things being told there, made the programme an inviting way-station for the curious. Nothing like the sensationalist unease radiated by products such as … Read more →
The perennial tradition — perennial philosophy, perennial wisdom, or eternal tradition — is supposedly the common substratum of all historical knowledge from the very origin of human culture: that which links together the great philosophical, religious, ethical, moral, and spiritual ideals, and so on. Well, this tradition does not exist. There are, of course, contents that may be shared, or … Read more →
It is almost a tradition that certain figures who appear often in the media — actors, artists, journalists — should declare with a crystalline smile and a victorious pride that they are lucky enough to practise the most beautiful profession in the world, and that ever since they were tiny children they had known their vocation was to tell stories. … Read more →
When El Fary appeared on television, my grandmother used to say: “That man is a great artist.” I will not deny him his talents — who lacks them entirely? — but what interests me here is the heterogeneity of contexts in which the label artist gets applied. El Fary is one, of course, and so is every imaginable Spanish folclórica … Read more →
With the help of a small fortune and in the strictest secrecy, Dr. Julio Puertas built a time machine that ran on plutonium. Such an achievement was the culmination of a childhood dream he had never abandoned. He studied engineering, earned a doctorate in physics, and secured well-paid positions to fund his project — all of which he resigned in … Read more →
In ancient Rome, Greek was the language of culture, so much so that even the emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations in it. The empire, however, was Rome, and Rome gave its tongue to the lands it conquered — one of whose descendants, through another empire, the Spanish, reached further still. English too has had its empire, and still has … Read more →
There was once a painter who wandered through places where no paths have been written, in search of the perfect light. One day, a ray broke through the clouds and spread like a fan across the distant hills. Beneath that light, everything came alive anew. The painter was enraptured by that sky, but when he tried to paint it, the … Read more →
The photograph that illustrates this text is the only known image of Isidoro Magaux. His legend has it that he lost his family very young in a blizzard. This is the only uncertain detail in his biography. Everything else bears the iron stamp of invention. The first thing is his name, which he traced over the wreckage of his shipwreck. … Read more →