The book Benito Perez Arms. canary stories, published by the Yaiza City Council and Remote Editions constitutes a literary legacy that fulfills the express will of the writer, politician and journalist, just 85 years after his death in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. That’s how he explained it alexis de la cruzcompiler of the stories of the Yaicero author, including nine unpublished texts in book format, contained in the first edition of the work that was presented this Monday in the courtyard of the emblematic Benito Pérez Armas House of Culture in the town of Yaiza.
“It’s the icing on the cake, we are doing what he wanted,” said Alexis de la Cruz, noting that in the process of documenting this complete collection of Benito Pérez Armas, which collects his stories as they were published in the press of At the time, he discovered a friendly confidence from the author to Leoncio Rodríguez, where he stated the desire to gather his ‘Cuentos canarios’ in a single work, “to bequeath them to his children, as a reminder of all his devotions to the land”, the verbatim words of the chapter that Leoncio Rodríguez dedicated to Pérez Armas in the book ‘Profiles’.
Elena Gortazar Perez Armasthe writer’s granddaughter, thanked on behalf of the family for the effort and interest of the Yaiza City Council and Ediciones Remotas to make that wish come true, only spoiled by the death of her grandfather.
“An Open Mind”
The writer’s granddaughter, who signed the Town Hall Book of Honors at the invitation of the mayor, Óscar Noda, summed up key aspects of the personality of an illustrious man like Benito Pérez Armas: “his broad-mindednesshe was characterized by an open and inclusive mind in which everyone had a placehis sense of Canarian identity, the appreciation of customs, he was a pioneer in Canarian costumbrista literature, his narrative is a faithful testimony of the uses, customs and sayings of the time”.
And this is reflected in the fragments of the stories read by prominent writers from the municipality of Yaiza who participated in the presentation of the book, JAime Quesada, Miguel Aguerralde, and Manuel Concepcion.Y Stephen Rodriguezwho is the Official Chronicler of Yaiza.
In the story ‘Things from my childhood’, for example, Pérez Armas narrates that “The residents of the town of Yaiza slept peacefully. The mass of the church could be distinguished, in the semi-darkness of dawn, among the little houses in the square, like a giant surrounded by dwarfs. The only market that was open was that of Aunt Rosalía, an old woman who used snuff and was a widow without having married.
The mayor of Yaiza stressed that “Benito Pérez Armas is a much-named but perhaps lesser-known figureand in this direction of knowing better and disseminating values of the municipality and of the Canary Islands, in this case, one of the most relevant writers of the twentieth century, the joint initiative of the Yaiza City Council and Remote Editions is headed, which was born from a conversation that I had with mario ferrerresponsible for the publisher.
Ferrer moderated the event and reviewed the book’s research and production process, which has exciting aspects in its documentation. The first story, ‘The last hug’, was tracked down and found in a cultural corner of La Orotava, in Tenerife, by Alexis de la Cruz, who had almost resigned himself to not including it in the book, but insisted until the last minute to knowing that it was a reference literary piece that should be in the anthology of Benito Pérez Armas.
The event in Yaiza was also attended from Tenerife, Luis Gortazar Diaz Llanos and Ricardo Fernandez de la Puente Martingreat-grandson and great-great-grandson of Benito Pérez Armas, respectively, relatives of the author residing in Lanzarote, neighbors of Yaiza, people linked to the world of culture and education and the Deputy Minister of Education, Universities and Sports of the Government of the Canary Islands, María Dolores Rodriguez.
Yaiza and Remote Editions commemorate with this publication the 150th anniversary of the birth of Benito Pérez Armas (Yaiza, 1871 – Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1937), a man who “never felt the vertigo of height, neither at the peak of his popularity nor at the height of his influence”. The two entities promoting the publication encourage the people of Lanzarote to delve into the literary world of the writer by reading ‘Benito Pérez Armas. Canary Tales’. The book will be presented soon in the city of Arrecife and on the Island of Tenerife.
