Diarios de viaxe inéditos de Valentín Paz-Andrade

Abstract

The notes that we are releasing as the travel diaries of Valentín Paz-Andrade (Lérez, Pontevedra, 1898 – Vigo, 1987) had remained unpublished for sixty years, kept in the drawers of his marvellous library, in his house Pousa Nova do Mar in Samil, Vigo.

The author of these notes, a poet, journalist, economist and businessman, and also a Galicianist politician, travelled across the New Continent, from Canada to Chile, in the 1950s; and he did so in his capacity as a FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) delegate for Latin America, as he was a renowned specialist in fisheries economics.

The results of this experience were compiled in a number of texts, the vast majority of which had remained unpublished so far and which are characterised by their extremely rich prose, combining the poet’s intense lyricism with a deep, accurate analysis of the places, people and events he was finding in his way. The places to which the texts bear testimony are: New York; Mexico: Guanajuato, Jalisco, Pátzcuaro; Colombia: Valle del Cauca, Gorgona Islands, Cali, Tumaco, Buenaventura, Cartagena de Indias; Brazil: coast of the state of Pernambuco; and his eventual arrival in Santiago de Chile.

Sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed, these notes were discovered thanks to the efforts and the support of the Consello da Cultura Galega (Council for Galician Culture) towards the organisation and digitisation of the author’s personal archive, as well as the kind willingness of Valentín Paz-Andrade’s family, so that the author’s personal collection would be available to researchers in 2012 as a result of the celebration of Galician Literature Day in his honour.