Alvaro Cunqueiro

Álvaro Cunqueiro Mora (Mondoñedo, December 22, 1911-Vigo, February 28, 1981) was a Spanish novelist, poet, playwright, journalist and gourmet, a master of fantastic narrative and especially valued as a bilingual Galician author of the 20th century.

Biography

He studied high school at the General and Technical Institute of Lugo), where he began a good friendship with Evaristo Correa Calderón and Ánxel Fole. He enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Santiago in the 1927-1928 academic year, where he was until 1935-1936, although he was not enrolled during all those years. At the time, he dedicated himself to literature and journalism, appearing as editor and contributor to various newspapers and magazines, such as El Pueblo Gallego. During his time in Compostela, he regularly attended gatherings at the Café Español. At that time, he counted among his best friends Francisco Fernández del Riego, Domingo García Sabell, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Ricardo Carballo Calero, Carlos Maside and Xosé Eiroa, and he was one of the first members of the Galeguista Party. In October 1936 he entered as a teacher at a high school in Ortigueira, where he joined the Spanish Falange during the Civil War.

Starting in 1936, he collaborated with various Francoist publications. In 1939 he settled in Madrid to work as editor of the newspaper ABC , until in 1943 he left the Falange; In 1944 his journalist card was withdrawn, ending his collaboration with the dictatorship there. In 1946 he returned to Galicia and dedicated himself to collaborating with the main Galician newspapers. Thanks mainly to Francisco Fernández del Riego, he began to collaborate in the pages of the Compostela newspaper La Noche, while his articles were common in El Progreso, La Voz de Galicia or La Región. He began collaborating with the Faro de Vigo in the 1950s, becoming a staff editor in 1961, deputy director from 1964 to 1965, and director between 1965 and 1970. During this time, Álvaro Cunqueiro wrote hundreds of articles with various pseudonyms: Patricio Mor, Álvaro Labrada, Manuel María Seoane, etc.

Work

He was a multifaceted writer, and his extensive literary work spans journalistic, poetic, narrative, and theatrical fields, as well as translation work. Following an avant-garde line, he published the collections of poems Mar ao norde (1932) and Poemas do si e non (1933). Cantiga nova que se chama Riveira (1933) is written under the influence of medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. In the 1940s and 1950s he began to focus mainly on narrative, publishing three relevant novels: Merlín e familia e outras historias (Merlin and family and other stories), As crónicas do sochantre (The chronicles of the sochantre) and Se o vello Sinbad vuelvese ás illas (When old Sinbad returns to the islands ). He also published some books of short stories, such as Xente de aquí e de acolá and Escola de menciñeiros .

Statue of Cunqueiro sitting, observing the cathedral of Mondoñedo.

He received the National Critics Award in 1959 for Las crónicas del sochantre, a translation of the work into Galician. In 1961 he entered the Royal Galician Academy. He won the Nadal Prize in 1968 for the novel A man who looked like Orestes , and for Herba aquí ou acolá , a collection of poetry, the Frol da agua en 1979; the Galician Narrative Critics Award also came that year, for Os outros feriantes. As a journalist, he received the Conde de Godó Award. In 1991 the Day of Galician Letters was dedicated to him.

The first Cunqueiro was fundamentally a poet, in an avant-garde, neo-troubadour and culturalist way, and after the Spanish civil war he dedicated himself, above all, to narrative and journalism, leaving countless articles in newspapers such as Vallibria, La Voz de Galicia, El Progreso and Faro de Vigo (a newspaper that he also directed). Outstanding among his theatrical works is O uncertain Mr. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1958).

It was his express wish that the textual phrase and in Galician appear as an epitaph on his tomb «Eiqui xaze alguén, who with his work, fixed Galicia to last a thousand more springs» («Here lies someone who, with his work, made Galicia last a thousand more springs"), which currently appears in his tomb, along with another that reads, verbatim and in Galician, "Loubado seña Deus that allowed me to face myself home in this great kingdom that we call Galicia" ("Praise God, which allowed me to become a man in this great kingdom that we call Galicia»).

Works

In Galician

Statue in Bouzas (Vigo).

Poetry

• Mar ao Norde (1932);
• Poems do si e non (1933);
• Cantiga nova que se chama Riveira (1933);
• Dona do corpo thin (1950);
• Noite vai eats a river (1965);
• Words of the eve (1974);
• Herba here and herba (1980).

Prose

• Merlin and family (1955);
• As chronicles do Sochantre (1956);
• If or hair Sinbad returns to the shores (1961).

Theater

• Or incert Mr. Don Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1958);
• Noite vai eats a river (1960).

Story

• Escola de Menciñeiros (1960);
• Xente de aquí e de acolá (1971);
• Feirating outros (1979).

Essay

• Tesouros novos e vellos (1964);
• To cociña galega (1973).

In Spanish

Inscriptions in the grave in the ancient cemetery of Mondoñedo.

• Laureates (1940). Co-author: Antonio de Obregón;
• Choices and songs (1940);
• Balada de las Damas de tiempo pasado (1945);
• Chronicle of the defeat of the nations (1954);
• The Mocedades of Ulysses (1960);
• Flowers of the year thousand and beak of bird (1968);
• A man who looked like Orestes (1969);
• Fantini della Gherardesca life and escapes (1972);
• The year of the comet with the battle of the four kings (1974);
• The other people (1975) (Imaginary Portraits);
• Tertulia de boticas prodigiosas y escuela de curanderos (1976);
• The Christian cuisine of the West (1969);
• Fables and legends of the sea (1982);
• The other ways (1988) (Selection of articles between 1952 and 1979);
• The passenger in Galicia (1989);
• The story of the knight Rafael (1991) (Incomplete Byzantine novel and selection of other texts).