Cunqueiro developed a somewhat forgotten literary resource, which is to make the description of food, more than the enunciation of a recipe, a transit through which the story and its characters eating, are diluted in the same flow: literature.
Rober Diaz. Peninsula 360 Press.
Álvaro Cunqueiro (1911-1981) is an unjustly forgotten writer, but no less erudite and entertaining for that. The delight of the self-confidence with which he approaches his readings makes him leave the dungeons in which political correctness has put him, his dazzling and passionate effect where the most bizarre themes could occur and juxtapose themselves with historical themes and famous characters, related to European lineages, fratricidal wars, extravagant customs, together with a culinary knowledge with which he created his own microcosm, make this writer, more than a way of writing, a category. A state of illumination that, for those who do not know his political affiliation, causes an almost automatic admiration for his themes, and his inventive way of approaching them.
Cunqueiro, born in Mondoñedo, Galicia, Spain, did not believe in inspiration. He was a writer who, in one fell swoop, wrote what he had committed to. He said that, if after that lapse, the work was not finished, it would be difficult, in the end, to see it finished. He said that one did not know for whom one was writing and, sometimes, one did not know exactly where the characters would end up, because patience, more than a virtue, is one of the main tools that a writer has.
In addition to being a novelist, poet and playwright, Cuaqueiro developed a somewhat forgotten literary resource: making the description of food, more than the enunciation of a recipe, a passage through which the story and its characters eating are diluted in the same flow: literature. He was an expert gastronomist and made his narratives about food a true delight; we leave here a small historical chronicle about «British Strawberries and Blackberries», from his book «Western Christian Cuisine», page 45:
«Brittany strawberries, Plougastel strawberries, have a history. They are Chilean and that is why they are called fraises du Chili. They were brought back in 1712 by a naval officer called Fraize, on his return from a voyage. They are short like amorodos —strawberries—, tasty and fresh. Officer Freize brought a parrot and beautiful orchids from Brazil. He lived in Lenvoual, near Plougastel, and is considered one of the Breton Tenorios of the 18th century. Freize himself taught the Bretons to eat strawberries with cream, a dessert that he had learned in Valparaiso, in the house of a lady who was a great judge and who was kissed and hugged by the Spanish sailor “Now back!” (sic). The English buy strawberries from Plougastel for their jams, just as they buy blackberries in September for blackberry jam. The Bretons like blackberries with sugar, cinnamon and Barsac wine; The best, a sweet, orange Château-Coutet.»
Cunqueiro added fictitious indexes of names at the end of his books in order to complete the profiles of the characters and to ensure that what he had not said would remain under the shadow of historical fiction. His books on food, as well as his assessments and evaluations of the most unusual and unusual dishes, filled the pages of Spanish newspapers in the post-war period.
When asked what Galicia was, he replied that for hundreds of years it was the end of the known world: Finisterri, beyond the rocks of its cliffs –the point of the world in Galicia that the ancients thought was the end of the world–, there was nothing but the dark ocean, with abysses where giant fish swam that ate their own tails and that, when the Romans came to conquer those lands, they believed they were facing the Lethe –that river that Dante said one crosses to the afterlife– because of the astonishing landscape, but it was Decimus Junius Brutus, who led the expedition, who reminded them that they were there only to conquer and the soldiers woke up from their dream.
The Galicians –he said– are always on the defensive, they have an enormous love for their land –surely there must be inhabitants of Galicia who have still owned their small lands for two thousand years–, being that end of the world and the harassment under which they lived, surely made them react to become ironic and scoundrels capable of dizzying whoever it was with their verbosity.
A fact: In 2015, the mayor of Madrid, Manuela Camarena, tried to change the name of a street that bears his name, in compliance with the Law of Historical Memory; the president of the Galician academic institution, Xesús Alonso Montero, replied: "honour and glory of the Hispanic Letters of the 20th century, he was a friend admired by many people in the Republican ideological panorama and a good man who never, in his intimate condition, identified himself with fascist violence; before and after 1936."
