After receiving the Nobel Prize and elevating magical realism to the altars of universal literature, Gabriel García Márquez explained in all his interviews that the magic that emanated from his stories and novels was nothing but his Latin America and that of the rest of its inhabitants. The magic was there, in perfect harmony with his people, protagonists of a unique and special environment that Gabo was simply in charge of transmitting. As he said on more than one occasion: “Unbelievable things take on the character of everyday events and everyday events are clothed with the astonishment of unlikely things.”
Cartagena de Indias, where he began to write, is the best example of that wonderful world that we cannot stop contemplating without amazement. A unique colonial city that exudes fascination in all its colorful streets and corners and well worth not one, but countless visits. Finding its spell at the hand of the remembered author is, without a doubt, one of the best ways to discover it and to go far beyond colonial architecture and Caribbean beaches.
Founded by Pedro de Heredia in 1533 to become one of the main American ports of the Spanish empire and an emblem of the liberators since the beginning of the 19th century, Cartagena de Indias has managed to jealously guard its innate essence despite progress, population growth and the impact of tourism since the mid-twentieth century. It was at that time, first studying Law and then working as a journalist, that García Márquez began to spin his novels, many with references to spaces in this beautiful city.
Entering the old city, the main gate to access the majestic Plaza de los Coches, a foretaste of the city’s colonial charm, both for its architecture and its people, was the Clock Tower, which for years was where they entered and the slaves brought from Africa went out to their booths. The liberator Simón Bolívar also entered this door before he died, as Gabriel García Márquez exposes in his novel El general en su laberinto, from 1989. Attention, here we will also find the cafeteria of Juan Valdez, the one who, according to advertising, selected grain the best coffee beans.
García Márquez was very aware of the political aspects of the country, since in his works he mentions events related to the historical course of Colombia at that time, and many characters are part of them. “When the civil war broke out, the population took an active part in the conflict by sending a resistance army led by Colonel Aureliano Buendía (second son of José Arcadio Buendía), to fight against the conservative regime”, we read in One Hundred Years of Solitude .
These scenes took their inspiration from the Camellón de los Mártires, a few steps from the Clock Tower and, where a year before Gabo’s arrival in the city, a political demonstration took place in which the colonel who inspired Aureliano Buendía He came out to give a speech with a red flag.
Next to the Plaza de los Coches, crossing the popular portal de los Dulces in reference to its pastry shops, we find the nerve center of the walled colonial city. In this case, the Plaza de la Aduana, now renamed Plaza Rafael Núñez, houses the majestic building –also of colonial origin– that gave it its name and which today houses the headquarters of the City Council. There still resides the nerve of the city today. And, a little further on, almost annexed, we discover yet another square, that of San Pedro Claver, where stands the magnificent temple in honor of the Jesuit missionary who ensured the good treatment of the slaves torn from their homes and taken by force. to the city after a long journey in which many died.
In this square, the fair of the Galeanos was once held, those huge ships that came from Seville for commercial purposes. When these ships left, many inhabitants were sad and dreamed of emigrating. Gabo himself tells it in One Hundred Years of Solitude, where he also talks about the well-known palanqueras, women who walk around showing off their ability to carry a plate of local fruits on their heads in their wide dresses in the colors of the Colombian flag. They sell fresh tropical fruit and gladly accept a few coins to be photographed with visitors.
Currently called Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles, this street was the place where the wealthiest women in Cartagena de Indias walked, hence the nickname at the time. Here was the Hotel Suiza, to which Gabo went in 1948, recently arrived in the city, thinking that he had been invited by a wealthy friend of his. However, that day, this noble gentleman was out of town and the writer only had four pesos with him. Unable to stay at the hotel, he slept on a bench in the nearby Parque Bolívar, where he was arrested by the police and ended up spending the night at the police station. The Gabo Foundation is currently located here, which has recently inaugurated a room with multiple editions of Gabo’s works in different languages ??and with a small sample of the shirts this writer of humble origins used to wear.
This park where Gabo slept in the open, dedicated to the liberator and with its corresponding equestrian statue in the center, is surrounded by some of the must-see historic buildings in Cartagena, such as the Cathedral of Santa Catalina de Alejandría, crowned with bright colors and austere inside, the palace of the Inquisition and the Gold Museum, dedicated to pre-Columbian cultures.
As we can read in Love in the Time of Cholera, this was at that time the main square of the city and scribes were located there who wrote letters for a few cents, given that at that time only the wealthy classes and the religious knew read and write. It is here where the novel places the writing of Florentino Ariza’s love letters to Fermina.
The Navy hospital was once located in this square. In his role as a journalist, García Márquez interviewed in 1955, at the height of the military dictatorship, a sailor who had spent ten days at sea carrying contraband, which caused his boat to sink. Gabo compiled this episode in Relato de un náufrago, which caused a sensation all over the world. However, the Colombian government became angry with the writer for telling the truth about drug trafficking and he was forced to flee to Mexico.
Logically, there is life –and lots of it– outside the city walls. Leaving the old city through the Clock Tower we will find one of the most colorful and artistic neighborhoods in Cartagena de Indias, where references to Gabo and his world are continuous: Getsemaní. Its narrow streets and houses are a canvas for urban art, with murals and all kinds of installations that, once again, merge with the common life of its neighbors. In addition to discovering its surprising corners, it is worth visiting its small art galleries and restaurants, especially in the Plaza de la Trinidad, which complete the sensory walk.
In this neighborhood we also find the house of Fernando Botero’s daughter, Lina, a renowned interior designer who has recently turned this space into a delicious boutique hotel, maintaining the original colonial structure of the estate and placing a pool in the center.
The views of the sea or the modern city are more than recommended from any of the bastions of the wall, of which no more and no less than eleven kilometers remain, and which offer the best opportunity to mingle with the hospitable local population, the people de Gabo, as he himself defined his neighbors, who find their holidays in the bars and premises installed in these vestiges. A visit with a marked colonial flavor that can be completed in the area of ??Las Bóvedas, located between the bastions of Santa Clara and Santa Catalina, arsenal and prison before and after Spanish rule.
Gabriel García Márquez’s house used to communicate by a secret tunnel with the convent of Santa Clara, whose discovery the writer covered in his early years as a journalist. Father Cayetano Delaura would enter this tunnel when he went to see the servant María de Todos los Ángeles, the girl with the prodigious copper-colored hair. Unearthed from a niche due to building renovations, the little girl, possibly dead of rage, had 22 meters of hair that had not stopped growing postmortem in a surprising and inexplicable phenomenon of vitality beyond life. A metaphor of that life in continuous renewal of the Colombian pearl of the Caribbean, as narrated in Of love and other demons.
