Many of our readers got to enjoy their daily dose of “Tales to Stay at Home” during the quarantine period, all of which were written by our greatly admired Santi Lorente. They were quite popular too, getting over 10,000 hits!
For us, and for many, they were stories that needed to be taken out of the digital realm and published on paper. So, all of us here encouraged him to do so, and he finally did! The book is now available under the title “Los Cuentos del Confinamiento”.
He honored us by asking us to help him lengthen the book, which we proudly accepted. So, in the introduction, you can read this:
Santi Lorente is a Navarrese from La Ribera of whom we’re especially fond. We met him through his blog, because we discovered a project of his, guided tours of Tudela, called Tudela me pone (Tudela Turns Me On). It’s a very interesting project that takes on a wonderful historical tour of this southern Navarrese city with a very fresh perspective
We liked it so much we even dedicated one of our “Viewpoints” entries to that part of the country. There we met him and, really, “to know him is to love him”. That visit turned into not just one but two entries, one to Tudela itself, and the other to the Bardenas.
Since our visit in 2017, this Basque’s ability to promote projects in La Ribera has never ceased to amaze us. And as can be seen on his website, he offers a fabulous range of routes to learn and enjoy. And they always end in a pintxo and a glass of Navarrese wine.
During this lockdown we’ve had to live through, he dedicated himself to another passion of his: telling stories. It turns out he’s not just a fascinating person to talk with in person, he’s also an amazing storyteller. His stories combine picaresque, a sense of humor, a love of Navarre and its defense, the recovery of historical events, imagination, and the importance of facts in day-to-day life.
During those long, hard weeks, he wrote a story per day. We loved them so much we asked him for permission to share them on our blog, so that they can become a part of that group of articles that seeks to bring the history, and the stories, of the Basques closer.
His stories mix reality and imagination, and also imagination with intuition. When we read them, we remembered that “magical realism” that some Latin American litterati offered us, where what we’re given as obvious and fiction itself are mixed so deeply that it’s difficult to distinguish them, and that gives us a fresh outtake. Perhaps because truth can be stranger than fiction, these fictions become more “real”.
When he’d finished telling his tales, we were part of that large crowd of readers who encouraged him to transform those stories published in the “virtual world” online into a book that could proudly take up a slot on our bookshelves, and in our hearts.
And now you have it in your hands. These stories, born of that “strange time” when the world was always on the other side of the window, offer us humor, hope, and a great deal of passion.
Enjoy!
About Basque Country
The book has been available for a few weeks now, and it’s been warmly received. We couldn’t let that news pass by without mentioning it on our blog. It’s a kind of conclusion to those many weeks when we were wondering, “What’s Santi going to tell us today?”
We’ll leave you with some of the references and reviews that have appeared in the media, and the email you can write to if you’d like to get a copy. The book, written, designed, and printed in Basque lands, specifically in Navarre, deserves a space on our bookshelves, and the stories a space in our hearts.
By the way, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Santi Lorente has also regaled us with another series of articles, these a bit rougher, but equally as important, which is intimately linked to the recovery of our Collective Memory. This series brings to life all those who were murdered and persecuted by the Francoist insurgents in the first few months of Franco’s uprising in the Navarrese Ribera region: “700 Killed in La Ribera: the Three Months of Terror“.
Would you like to buy the book (in Spanish)?
Just write to this email address: [email protected]
Diario de Noticias de Navarra – 10/8/2020 – Euskadi
Santi Lorente: “Tudela es una fuente de riqueza histórica inagotable, cada calle, cada rincón tienen un sin fin de historias reales”
Pocas personas conocen tantas historias de Tudela como Santi Lorente. Reinventado varias veces, su última aventura fue la creación de una empresa de guías de turismo, Tudela me pone, toda una declaración de intenciones. Sus paseos explicativos tenían tanto éxito antes de la llegada del covid-19 que todas las mañanas se le podía ver en la plaza de Los Fueros relatando las aventuras de los más de 1.200 años de historia de la ciudad.
(Follow) (Automatic translation)
Onda Vasca – 13/8/2020 – Euskadi
Descripción de Santi Lorente convierte su ‘Cuentos del confinamiento’ un libro
Santi Lorente, promotor de la iniciativa de visitas guiadas ‘Tudela me pone’, escribió durante el confinamiento 50 cuentos y que ahora reune en un libro con el título ‘Los cuentos del confinamiento’. Realidad y ficción se mezclan en estos relatos que ahondan en la historia de Tudela
Last Updated on Dec 20, 2020 by About Basque Country