La Vera Boy's Literary Journey: A Life Forged in Words

Rilke once said that our true home is childhood, and we often return there when life feels uncertain. This story is about a boy named Juanito, son of Juana and Paco, who was born in La Vera. From a young age, he knew life would be full of questions. He struggled with doubts during sleepless nights by a ravine, and with his asthma. For years, his world felt confined to the Plaza del Charco. The damp air, he said, "conspired for me (an extreme asthmatic) to die at any moment." Yet, perhaps this very struggle allowed him to live with such intensity.

Then, everything ended and, at the same time, began. Countless stories emerged, tales to revisit, like searching for lost time with Marcel Proust. He remembers feeling lucky to still be alive.

This idea of fortune shaping life's pages brings to mind The Curious Case of Benjamin (Cruz) Button, a story Scott Fitzgerald wrote after Mark Twain's remark: "Life would be infinitely happier if one could be born at the age of 80 and gradually approach 18." In this journey back to the future, the child becomes younger through memory. In Puerto de la Cruz, in the late 1940s, Juanito's happiness was measured by returning home with a book by Unamuno in his hands. Time moved in a circle, bringing new surprises, like the day a radio arrived in his house. "There's a devil in there," his mother claimed, from whom he learned words. From the radio, he learned grammar. By age nine, he was listening, reading, and writing. Life and spring unfolded before his eyes like frames in a film as he delved into the magic of writing.

"Literature is where anguish finds rest." At eleven, he approached the City Council to ask Mayor Don Felipe Machado del Hoyo Solórzano, Count of Siete Fuentes, for a scholarship. The mayor asked his usher what the boy wanted. "He's here to ask for a scholarship to study." The mayor's reply: "Tell that boy the mayor doesn't receive beggars."

Despite this, the boy observed his surroundings and realized the world kept turning, and life continued to unfold. It was a factory of surprises, causes, and chances. The Beatles, without Lennon, arrived on the island in the spring of 1963, before they became the huge stars who would change music history. Within months, with Please, Please Me, they would top the charts. The Kiessling family opened Loro Parque in 1972, and in April 1977, César Manrique's El Lago Martiánez opened. Was the Puerto the boy left The Twilight of the Gods? The beginning is always the end, and a sunset is just an enigmatic new beginning.

He never doubted he would be a journalist. Times were changing, and Bob Dylan's music reminded him of this. On May 4th, the first issue of El País was published, directed by Ortega y Gasset's son. Juanito boarded that train and ended up in London. Past and future came together in a decision and a letter that remained unrevealed when the director of the newspaper El Día told Juana: "Don't let the boy go, that newspaper won't last." Decisions converged with the dawn of a new era. That boy was a miracle, though not the kind everyone expects to see. Life is a secret, a mystery. On the horizon, "Over the Rainbow," the voices of the past echo, where opportunities define lives. "A newspaper is a nervous city," he recalls Enrique Vila-Matas saying, "and a book a turbulent paradise."

His book, Crónica de la nada hecha pedazos (Chronicle of Nothingness Torn to Pieces), won the Benito Pérez Armas Prize, marking an endless journey of longing and a desire to discover new people, events, and words. Johan Cruyff debuted in 1973 with Barcelona, alongside "chicharreros" El Tigre Barrios and Juanito El Vieja, though Juanito was with Foncho on his journey to the heart of football. Foncho, a spectacular right-back, played in the ill-fated four-post (square) European Cup final in Bern. Before that, in the spring of 1961, he debuted in Cardiff, scoring a goal for Spain. In the past-present of the "crónica hecha pedazos," his mentor, Don Domingo (Pérez Minik), wrote: "The chronicle commits. A journalistic work that goes from news to chronicle, and Juan turns it into a novel." "Memory is in the present. The present is memory in motion."

The boy recognizes himself: "I am not separate from childhood. It continues to explain things about today to me. Sometimes, it sends me a postcard. I converse with that childhood every day. My mother in my imagination is the question, and she was the first to say: this boy spends his life asking questions." In one of his columns, he shared a phrase that is a story in itself: "When we had the answers, they changed the questions." The poet Jorge Enrique Adoum found that inscription, a mix of sarcasm and melancholy, in Quito. This magic of memory led this curious Cruz to leave another legend: "Don Domingo lived here a lot." This phrase was written as a tribute on the facade of Pérez Minik's house by the child writer and journalist, filmmaker Miguel García Morales, poet Arturo Maccanti, and painter José Luis Fajardo.

In the world of (Benjamin) Cruz, strange things happen, like something out of magical realism, or perhaps because of the vast amount of literature he has absorbed. Egos are stirred, hidden sides revealed, anxieties, ambitions, anguishes, and obsessions. Literary profiles, priceless anecdotes, intricate portraits of artists' fragility. "One is waiting for words in literature and in life, words both light and heavy. Life is a thousand interwoven memories." And childhood is sometimes the discovery of evil in a dark era. He walks 1,200 steps to return home, to the school where he played with his friends. There, he experienced pain, violence, fear, and hatred during his transition to adolescence. The important thing isn't how well you write, but what you feel when you do it. The recounted memory of an adolescent hurts with every blow, like recreating the Nouvelle Vague and Truffaut's debut film, The 400 Blows.

Is talent enough? You also need character. "Yes, now I know what it is to have character. I acquired it in that window of my house that opened onto life." And Scott Fitzgerald teaches (Benjamin) Cruz: "I don't know if it's important, but it's never too late to be who we want to be. There's no time limit, you can start whenever you want. There are no rules. We can make the most of opportunities or mess everything up. I hope you do the best."

The boy from La Vera continues to swing in the wonderful circus of existence: "I hope you see things that amaze you, that surprise you, that make you feel... Life is not measured in minutes, it is measured in moments. You never know what awaits you. You never know what will happen to you. And no one should tell you what you should do. You have to do what you are destined to be."

And the boy Cruz cannot help but immerse himself in Scott Fitzgerald's words.