Yegen es un pueblo alpujarreño, plácidamente recostado en una suave ladera rugosa, arañada por limpios regatos de aguas cantarinas, gratas al paladar. En el vivió Brenan varios años, entre 1920 y 1934, en busca de sí mismo, arrebatado por la sencilla espontaneidad de las gentes que lo pueblan. Las palabras, los gestos, los ruidos, el trajín, las creencias y costumbres de tipo folklórico, todo lo anota minuciosamente Brenan, lo contrasta, se documenta, se deja empapar día a día. El resultado es esta obra, un libro curioso en el cual admiramos tanto el primor con que están descritos los tipos y sus maneras y el marco en que se mueven como las originales interpretaciones que el autor hace de cuanto observa. Podemos decir que tenemos ante los ojos una valiosa monografía antropológica servida con un lenguaje transido de emociones. De ahí que el libro resulte incitante, tanto para quien busque la lectura placentera como para quienes pretendan una iniciación en el trabajo de campo antropológico.

UN INGLES EN LA ALPUJARRA

First person account of living in the Alpujarra, an impoverished, backward region of Southern Spain, in the years following the First World War. Good description of village life and the characters who lived there. ( )

This non-fiction travel book is as close to literature as travel books can get. Gerald Brenan, after serving in the British army in the First World War, decides to stretch his meagre savings as long as possible by living extremely cheaply in a very small village called Yegen in the mountainous regions in the south of Spain. This book, describing him living amongst these people in the 1920's, captures pretty much every conceivable angle of that village and its surrounding area, along with visits from famous arts figure friends from the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf.

There are two features that make the book so special. First, it describes a part of the western world that still carried its own unique identity, before the cultural and technological influx from the rest of the Western World homogenised it. Thus, the Yegen people are completely saturated with strange traditions, apparently Christian in many cases, but clearly owing their origins, in the main, to past pagan habits. The Islamic history of the place also plays a part, as does general superstitions. Whereas cosmopolitan places not too far away, such as Madrid, would have largely shed such primitive, but colourful, supersitions, Yegen seems still build on them. They pervade every aspect of life, especially that of courtship, which is even more formalistic and repressed than Victorian English rules of etiquette.

The second feature that makes the book so special is the eye of its author. Brenan was clearly both a tremendously robust, positive and adventurous man, which helped him fall in love with a place where medicine and education were so lacking. But he was also extremely good at both embracing the culture he was living inside, and remaining a distanced observer to it. Nowhere is this more apparent when he walks by a barred window and somehow accidentally seems to become a serious boyfriend of some young woman. This requires him to visit her window every evening from dusk, and spend hours talking with her. Only when he realises she is physically rather squat and unattractive after a possible promenade offer does he make his excuses, weeks later! But he notes carefully all the standard phrases she comes up with, as if she could be one of a thousand courting clones. But his eye for psychological detail brilliantly captures so many colourful characters in his time there that these are what elevate the book far beyond a normal travel book, and almost turn it, at times, into a Dostoyevskian novel (most apparent in his tour guide acquaintance who shows him round all the Almeria brothels - a man that claims he is riddled by STDs, but is still addicted to prostitutes despite this, even to the extent that he can't afford to feed his own children. All this is very dramatic and sad, but then it's revealed that the man is sexually completely non-functional, without any children, and it's all an act!).

Although occasional passages seem a little tedious, reverting almost to text-book level detail about the region's history, on the whole this is very easy and exciting reading. Told at times with a beautiful poetical style, this book is a pleasure to read, and gives a fascinating and immersive glimpse into a vibrant place and time that no longer exists. ( )

Interested in Spain in the 1920's and 1930's before the Civil War then this is a must.
( )