The Túbal children

The Spanish … one of few peoples of the world that treat his identity like a problem, up to the point of which earlier they prefer to be considered to be Andalusians, Galicians, Catalans or Castilians to call to him themselves the same Spanish.

Peoples with an identical world view that, paradoxically, it leads them to separating instead of joining, and to create nacionalismos that take the radish for the sheets to demonstrate his respective “distinguishing facts”. Opposite to this, there are those who get into debt in demonstrating that Spain already existed before Reyes Católicos, before don Pelayo, before Viriato, before the Altamira men … your hypothesis is that the Spanish thing is not Roman, I do not even christen, either Arab, or Jew, or visigoth and not Celtiberian, but something previous to all this and that it has survived all this, although he has suffered alterations so deep that today it is almost unrecognizable.

To dive in the past trying to recover the vernacular Spanish thing is what Antonio Ruiz Vega does in The Túbal children. Hispanic mythology: gods and heroes of the ancient Spain (The Sphere of the Books, 2002). Others did it before him-D. Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, especially - and of course others will do it later.

The Túbal children it consists of five chapters devoted to the founders, the mythical places - with special mention to Numantia and Tartessos - the heroes, the gods and, the last one, what stays of Spain, where there is done a revision of the ancestral traditions that still survive, between which the cult emphasizes, how it was of waiting, to the bull represented today by the national holiday. Famous legends parade his pages, as that of Túbal, grandson of Noé and the first king of Spain; Gárgoris and his son Habis; Hércules, more or less historical personages, as Indíbil and Mandonio, Viriato, Sertorio, next to other more improbable less well-known and some histories. But the important thing the historical, always slippery truth is not, in addition to manipulable, but the unchangeable psychological reality. In the prologue, Fernando Sánchez Dragó, recognized teacher of the author, says:“ Antonio takes us to the yesterday … To a yesterday that is today in the Time without time of the unconscious group. His gods and heroes of the Spain Antigua proceed come from our dawn and float in the amniotic liquid and genesíaco of a country that happened and it has not been“.

I would have liked commenting on this book at the moment of be publishing, but two years ago I did not have blog I am not a collector of autographs and dedications: Antonio Ruiz Vega is one of the poquísimos writers of that I have a dedicated book: it is a question of The Magic Soria, that Antonio signed me in the bookstore of his father, on August 15, 1986, as I have just stated. That book, on customs and traditions of the grounds sorianas, was including the map of The magic and legendary Soria, which today remains framed and hung next to the door of my office.

Category: Books, Literature and language

Tags: Spain, History, mythology, soria