On 10th March of this year, we marked the centenary of Unamuno’s arrival in Fuerteventura to fulfill his exile order. On 8th July, the centenary of Miguel de Unamuno’s physical departure from the island where he remained for four months was celebrated, having received amnesty on 5th July.
Unamuno has been linked to the islands since 1909 when Domingo Doreste ‘Fray Lesco’, while in Salamanca, commissioned him to come to Las Palmas as the maintainer of the Floral Games that the “Sociedad El Recreo” had organized in our city. Since then, Unamuno entered the islands with his literary personality and became a central figure in the collective imaginary of Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura. Doors opened to him in the realm of the island’s cultural society, which gradually enriched itself with his presence, his personal attitudes, articles, lectures, and reflections on our landscapes, the social environment, and references to writers and various characters. It is no wonder that Eugenio Padorno goes as far as to consider him as a “Canarian author” and suggests that his biography should acknowledge the “African aspect” of the Basque writer.
In the days leading up to the announcement of amnesty that included both Unamuno and Rodrigo Soriano, both confined for political reasons, they toured the villages near the capital. On 25th June, Henry Dumay from Puerto Cabras, director of “Le Quotidien”, arrived. On 12th July, they reached Las Palmas and stayed at the Quiney’s hotel located in Plaza de San Bernardo. They had to wait until 21st when Soriano and Unamuno, along with Fernando, his eldest son, and his daughter-in-law, boarded the Port of La Luz in Las Palmas on the “Zeelandia”, a Dutch ship bound for Cherbourg, with a prior stop in Vigo, Lisbon, and Porto.
It might seem unusual to commemorate the end of confinement; however, these dates, when traced in the character’s biography, help to place the figure in history. Unamuno’s presence in our collective memory could be established at various points in his penetration into the sociocultural life of the islands.
His first stay in 1910, on the occasion of the Floral Games, was preceded by a stay in Tenerife, documented in the article “La Laguna de Tenerife” published in the book “Por tierras de Portugal y España.”
In the city of Las Palmas, he came into contact with the intellectual class and attended an evening gathering at the home of the liberal doctor, Luis Millares, located near El Museo Canario.
His one-month stay facilitated an understanding of the island’s interior through an itinerary that was based in the town of Teror. From there, he made a memorable excursion to the island’s peaks and the Tilos de Moya. The article “La Gran Canaria” is a luminous essay on our reality. Unamuno’s process of nominalization in his view of the external reality and introspection, in which he is constantly immersed, shows us the unique pedagogy that the rector of Salamanca exerted on those who delved into his creative works.
In 1915, he wrote the prologue to “El lino de los sueños” by Alonso Quesada and maintained a correspondence with his island hosts such as the doctor, Luis Millares, in Gran Canaria, and ten years later, after his pardon, with Ramón Castañeyra.
We could identify three key moments in Unamuno’s relationship with Canarias that are consolidated into specific icons:
In 1964, on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, a monument was erected at Montaña Quemada, a work by the Galdar sculptor, Borges Linares, carried out at the initiative of the Agaete poet, Chano Sosa.
In 2010, the centenary of his first stay in Canarias was celebrated, and in 2024, the centenary of his confinement in Fuerteventura.
The significance of the first stay began in February 1999 with the creation of the Unamuno route, Teror-Cruz de Tejeda-Artenara, considering the centenary of the Generation of ’98, a date that marked a literary milestone nationally with the landscape as a reference theme.
As a consolidation of the route, an important step was revealed in 2010 when the centenary of Unamuno’s stay in Canarias was commemorated. This led to about thirty events being held in various locations in Gran Canaria and La Laguna (Tenerife). These events included lectures, exhibitions, the placement of commemorative plaques, reissuing of works, event catalogues, and the collaboration of twenty intellectuals in the booklet “Words and Horizons,” along with the celebration of the XXXVI National Congress of Official Chroniclers focusing on the landscape theme and held in Gran Canaria and Tenerife.
The work “Island Agonies of Miguel de Unamuno” by Professor Bruno Pérez is published, as well as the story “Stone Storm” by José A. Luján. Additionally, a route is carried out in which nearly 200 people participate in a memorable excursion, following in the footsteps of Unamuno through the summits of the Island. Furthermore, the project “Unamuno and the Landscape” is developed over twelve years, involving thirteen Autonomous Communities, with around 2000 secondary education students, in addition to four editions of the route with students and teachers promoted by the Cultural Vice-Rectorate of the ULPGC, with a total of 150 participants.
Unamuno himself expresses: “I arrived in Fuerteventura on March 10, 1924, after tearing myself away from my home, days I spent between Cádiz, the voyage, a few hours in Tenerife, and eight days in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria”.
The confinement represents Unamuno’s identification with the majorera island from an existential point of view. As a result, he writes “From Fuerteventura to Paris, an intimate diary of confinement and exile poured into sonnets, dedicated to ‘don Ramón Castañeyra, from Puerto Cabras, on the Canary Island of Fuerteventura’, with the edition dated in Paris on January 8, 1925.
In Puerto Cabras, he takes part in a gathering, with Rodrigo Soriano (also confined), Ramón Castañeyra, and other residents. In any case, Unamuno carried the majorera island within his soul. “Fuerteventura! I am almost nostalgic for Fuerteventura! Unforgettable island! For me, Fuerteventura was like an oasis, an oasis where my spirit drank from life-giving waters and I emerged refreshed and strengthened to continue my journey through the desert of civilization”.
As sociocultural icons, it is important to highlight both the creation of the “Unamuno Museum” and the “Unamuno Chair”, coordinated by Professor Marcial Morera and linked to the University of La Laguna, which every year, during the month of February, carries out activities centered on the intellectual figure of the Salamancan rector.
Unamuno, from island and back. It is a literary reality in the Atlantic island context that ranges from the personal discovery of the meaning of the term isolation, verbalized in Los Tilos de Moya in 1910, where he would like to stay, to the experience of confinement in 1924, which is a return to the island as reality and as a concept. In this fourteen-year period, a rich aspect of Unamuno’s biography unfolds while the islands adopt a literary son who endures over time.
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