Hoyle Cela Pascual Duarte
Three studies on the novel
Finally, for the time being, my first view of the front on Don Jesus’s house in 1971, along with a kindly chemist in his pharmacy in Almendralejo, rather similar to the one the transcriber describes in his second note.
13/12/2023
A view by the roadside on the southern side of the village where Duarte’s home or hovel is situated, next to the brook in which the eels swim downstream from the nobleman’s house alongside the church, whose spire can be seen top left. Plus a view of the road out to the station on the eastern side, where Cela relocates the cemetery in chapter 17.
Pascual describes his village as straddling a main road as flat and long as a day without bread, “el pueblo […] agachado sobre una carretera lisa y larga como un día sin pan”, as in the two slides from 1971, before the road was resurfaced.
Four more. A better photo of the outside of the old cemetery in 1971, plus one of the inside which is the scenario for the ending of chapter 5 in the novel. The third shows the disused cemetery in 1980 with a warning to the mayor daubed on the wall. The fourth from 1988 shows the open space where the cemetery had been, with the ”g” spelling on the road sign.
13/12/2023
Another photo/slide from 1980 with Juan Flores holding my five month-old daughter Emily. The later one of the main road from 1988 confirms the name was the Café-Bar Flores, though Cela spells it Flórez in his Memorias (p.279)
On the later (and last) occasion that I visited, in 1988, I took a slide of the main street which clearly shows the “Café Bar Flores”.
Cela spelt it “Flórez” in his Memorias … (p. 279).
On the 1980 visit Juan Flores is seen holding my five month-old daughter Emily.
5 photos of ancient slides just posted. From 1971: the wall of the old cemetery at the entrance to Torremegía (or Torremejía) approaching on the road from Mérida; and my field research headquarters at the bar of Juan Flores. From 1980: two of the mayor Benito Benítez Trinidad at the doorway of the town-hall (“Casa de la Villa”). From later (1988) the plaque commemorating the visit in 1982 of Cela on the occasion of his novel’s fortieth anniversary.
21/11/2023
My out-of-print 1994 Critical Guide to La familia de Pascual Duarte is now viewable in a new online edition at:
My 1981 article on Pascual Duarte and the cemetery of Torremejía is apparently worth reviving. Read it online at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cebZNbQ1lO4psmYxtsXuapTkU4s6rThD/view
To it I have added a postscript explaining the context then and since, readable online at:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vddbbCAmDMfQkgg4c3hvKaDtqJx8NUMx/view