There are those who claim that everything is explained in literature, perhaps it is so. Perhaps all the themes are repetitions of the previous and the next. Often the least important thing is the plot, what really matters is how to approach the text. All stories have their own arcs, mechanisms, impulses. Words pump with a certain rhythm, like the hearts that writers give life to. Sometimes the author graciously gives the texts an inner soundtrack that helps them be understood. The rhythm in which gypsies keep touching the table with their knuckles.
Raúl Quinto’s Shadow King Martinete, published by the Aragonese publishing house Jekyll & Jill, seemed like a revelation. Quinto has accustomed us to risky books, but he has a beauty that goes beyond us. For those of us who admire his literature, this new work is a step, a step towards the heart of pure literature in every sense. We are faced with the work of a silenced truth. On July 30, 1749, VI. Under Ferdinand’s reign and on the orders of the Marquis of Ensenada, the mass internment of the Spanish Gypsy population took place in what would be described as a failed extermination project, the Great Roundup. Quinto sheds light on one of the darkest periods in Spanish history. As Raúl accustomed us, this book is a hybrid of memories, history, story, poetry, tragedy… Like all his books, Martinete… is a summary of emotions and feelings.
King Shadow’s Martinete took me back in time to a specific moment in Spanish musical history. Juan Peña El Lebrijano, one of the great pioneers of fusion in flamenco, released an album called Persecución in 1976, together with the great poet and flamencologist Félix Grande, about the oppression that Gypsy people have been subjected to since that time. From the Catholic Monarchs to the present day, Martinete and Persecución are connected through time by an invisible bond, and I do not know whether the author of the novel himself is aware of it. It is interesting that Quintus fills the gaps of history’s forgetfulness with his mastery and beauty while editing the text, because there is nothing more cruel than covering up the darkness of history. But this is the mastery of the writer who confronts history and listens to what the voices that have experienced barbarism tell him. The El Lebrijano album could be the soundtrack to this book, which grows with each reading.
Raúl Quinto has outdone himself again. The Shadow King’s Martinete should be taught in schools and institutes. Studying where the craze of intolerance might lead could be a textbook case. Even today we live in a society where there is a high dose of anti-Gypsy sentiment. It is full of prejudices, we mark those who are different with our criterion and we do not empathize with what they think. Some television programs that feature clichés do not work either. Gypsy people, whose origins remain unclear, are largely unknown in a supposedly developed society. This book is a reflection of how these prejudices can lead us to barbarism. As in all his works, Quintus sheds light and chooses winding paths to show us the inside of history, the edges we cannot see, to give a voice to those who have no voice. Because those who are most proud of class are the classless. As El Lebrijano sings on the album Persecución: “Free as the air, free as the wind, like the stars in the sky./Like our peers and grandparents./Free as them/all our dead.”