Works set in Extremadura

The reflection of Extremadura in literature

There are many works that are set in Extremadura or some that mention it for its lifestyle, customs, its attractive beauty that captivates anyone. Many writers who passed through these lands recall in their books and poems the sensations they experienced when they walked through the villages and meadows. Some writers tell the stories of their ancestors who lived a unique rural life worth remembering.

Hay muchas obras que están ambientadas en Extremadura o algunas que la mencionan por su estilo de vida, sus costumbres, su belleza atractiva que cautiva a cualquiera. Muchos escritores que pasaron por estas tierras rememoran en sus libros y poemas las sensaciones que vivieron cuando anduvieron por los pueblos y praderas. Algunos escritores, cuentan las historias de sus antepasados que vivieron una vida rural única digna de ser recordada.

Extremadura

In 1992, the publishing house Incafo published the book entitled Extremadura, a magnificent work that gathers a selection of texts by the writer Miguel de Unamuno belonging to his literature of travel through Extremadura. The book, prefaced by Pedro Laín Entralgo, is illustrated with an abundant and beautiful collection of photographs, of Extremaduran themes, by Juan Antonio Fernández, commented by himself.

In these texts, in prose and verse, Unamuno gathers the impressions of his travels through the lands of Extremadura, more specifically through Guadalupe, Yuste, Trujillo, Mérida or Las Hurdes.

Unamuno was a great fan of travel. He felt that the lands of Spain were about to be discovered and that one of the best ways to get to know them was to make trips with friends. The Basque writer and philosopher toured these parts of Extremadura and highlighted, in his writings, the positive aspects of this land and its people.

In the summer of 1913, Unamuno spent a few days touring the Cáceres region of Las Hurdes. In a travel notebook, Unamuno writes what he observes or what his companions say. After this visit, he wrote a series of articles that appeared in the press and, later, as part of his book Andanzas y visiones españolas, and that are collected in this book under the title of Las Hurdes. The reason for the trip was to know firsthand the region of Cáceres, which was so badly talked about due to its backwardness, misery and bad communications.

In 2004, as part of the Plan for the Promotion of Reading in Extremadura, a book entitled Viajes por Extremadura was published, with a preface by Professor José Luis Bernal, which gathers a selection of the writings of Miguel de Unamuno belonging to his literature of journeys through these lands.

Source

El balcón en invierno

The balcony in winter or El balcón en invierno is a work written by Luis Landero that reflects the time the country was going through at that time. It shows a childhood of farmers in Alburquerque, a town in Extremadura, and later an adolescence in Madrid.

It is also the story, sometimes of an implacable sincerity, other humorous, of why dark designs of chance a boy from a family where there was hardly a book manages to meet with literature and be a writer.

Luis Landero Durán is a Spanish novelist and writer. He began working from the age of fourteen in various trades: apprentice in a mechanical workshop, errand boy in a grocery store... The death of his father in 1964 led the young man to dedicate himself professionally to the flamenco guitar: together with his cousin he was a guitarist accompanying various singers for some years. Around this time, and despite having had a childhood in which books were absent, he began an almost obsessive hobby for literature that he would never give up.

He studied Hispanic Philology at the Complutense University of Madrid and worked as an assistant professor of French Philology. Source.

Alburquerque is a Spanish municipality, belonging to the province of Badajoz.

Its extensive municipal area, with 72 320 ha (hectares), is formed by mountain areas and others of more flat relief, large meadows of holm oaks and wasteland for cultivation, rivers and streams with variable flows, according to the times of the year. A peculiarity of this municipality are the so-called Baldíos de Alburquerque, 7500 ha of rich adehesadas lands, communal property, administered by the City Council.2

A good part of the Sierra de San Pedro, Protected Natural Area such as ZEC and ZEPA, belongs to the municipality of Alburquerque.

Source.

Los Santos inocentes

The Innocent Saints or Los Santos inocentes is a work by author Miguel Delibes that is based on the conservative Extremadura of the sixties. The work is about a servant named Paco who works in a farmhouse for a family subjected to a regime of almost feudal exploitation. Source.

The work is situated in such a way that the landscape goes beyond a mere stage, it is a world that influences in a decisive way the characters. This world is the cortijo, symbol and symptom of the latifundio, in it two parts are differentiated, the built area in which the social hierarchy is appreciated, The oppressed live in small mill houses and the oppressors who live in a large house and the area without building a natural environment in which the innocent are integrated and of which the lords dispose at will, as one more object. Source.

Typical contry house in Extremadura

Primavera Extremeña

Primavera Extremeña is a work written by Julio Llamazares in March 2020, days before the whole of Spain was confined. The author settled with his family in a house located in the Sierra de los Lagares, near Trujillo, in Extremadura. There they were held for three months in a place that gave them the most beautiful spring they ever lived.

During that time, nature, preserved from human intervention, was filled with light, bright colours and wild animals, as the tragedy of the pandemic spread relentlessly. Life, despite everything, manages to break through the cracks of reality, however narrow they may be.

In this book two languages are intertwined to narrate a spring as unexpected as cruel and beautiful: that of the suggestive prose of Julio Llamazares and that of the evocative watercolors of Konrad Laudenbacher, friend and neighbor of the author. Once again, as has always happened, art and literature appear to offer solace and a spell that tries to stop the pain of the world. The spring is recovered. Source.

This work represents almost the current Extremadura that leaves aside the conservative Extremadura represented in the poems of Unamuno or in the works of Landero. We managed to see an excellent evolution of our land reflected in literature.

Watercolors of Konrad Laudenbacher

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