There are books buzzing with the wind, stories wrapped in twilight, that seem to have been written by a being immersed in a dimension where love and pain surround everything, clinging to the heartbeat of nature and the indigo soul of a landscape. The place where the world integrates with humans. There are books like poeticized dreams, stories that are essays of a lyrical soul, spaces of a timeless novel in which the image of nature is imprinted on the reader’s soul and at the end it shines like the flutter of a wild duck’s wings. flies towards the light in the afternoon. This very enjoyable book Delta by Gabi Martínez (Barcelona, 1971) is one of those extraordinary stories in which memory and forgetting, love and hate take place in the cheerful image of a place (here the author speaks of the unique Ebro delta). The combination of a real, constantly boiling landscape where land and sea mate every day, its tenderness and pain, its silence and crystal murmurs. This is one of those unique essays that has established itself in the humanistic, anthropological and magical field, in which the landscape, which is the face of the earth, is beautifully blended with the brilliant people living in it, thus giving it a poetic character that transcends the literary matter. time.
The author had already published beautiful and important books, for example, Sudd (2007), Only for Giants (2011), The Defenses (2017) and his beautiful narrative essay A Change of Truth. Return to the origins in the land of the shepherds (2020). On the other hand, it was held for several years in Tamurejo, a small town in the Siberian province of Extremadura, and was attended by naturalists Joaquín Araújo and Miguel Delibes Jr. He is the director of the Literature Festival, where famous writers such as are dedicated to environmental issues. We have already paraded, thus collaborating to make visible the landscape and life of that underrated Spain, which manages to magnificently draw the spirit of nature in such essential books as the above-mentioned A Change of Truth and this beautiful Delta we have just seen. the light still shines.
When we focus on this unique work, the first thing we must emphasize, besides its literary beauty, is the deep, inescapable love that the author devotes to framing and highlighting, through an intriguing and important story, the geography of a natural area in danger of extinction. The Ebro delta has a vibrant fauna that has been mercilessly and mercilessly destroyed by the sea in recent years. And it is in this dialogue between civilization and the brutal force of nature that this beautiful epic love song to the land and the natural world takes place, in which the author travels with the admirable companion of dragonflies who poetize the harsh image of this place. .
When one dives into the poetry and anthropology-laden narrative texture of this magnificent article, one feels as if one is walking inside the skin of a novel woven with the emotions and dreams of the inhabitants of a primitive place who are now in danger. Where they live or survive, filled with love for the place that protects them under the tenacious veil of the timeless sky. This is how we see Simona, the foggy foreman of the mansion, where the author of this magnificent work settled for a year to give life to a poetic experience in the house of the Buddha (this is the name of the building). Birds, dragonflies, crabs and rice fields shaken and caressed by the sea that floods the land and nourishes its roots. In addition to Simona, very warm characters with a transparent soul appear; for example, Mateo, the owner of the farm, is a man full of strange kindness who forgives the arrogant and hostile Simona for the stupid things she often does. Every day. Also on stage are obscene people like Dylan and Vicen Tena, who devote themselves to working on the suffering of the land, and Pablo, a brave bull breeder who risks losing his life when he encounters the animals he encounters. in your care.
And above all, the expressive and serious voice of Gabi Martínez, with unusual mastery, presents us with a beautiful anthropological essay that can be read as a unique novel in which an extraordinary nature is in dialogue with its soul. Covered with love and honor for several decades, it is in danger of extinction.