El bosque animado: Wenceslao Fernández Flórez’s Magical Galician Forest Where Pines and Trout Speak
The Galician village of San Salvador de Cecebre has a fraga, an ancient woodland, whose inhabitants are all alive: the pines talk, and so do the trout and the cats. The author says so himself: "This is the book of the fraga of Cecebre." El bosque animado ("The Animated Forest", 1943) is one of the most charming novels in twentieth-century Spanish literature.
Author: Wenceslao Fernández Flórez (1885–1964)
Title: El bosque animado (1943)
Format: Spanish paperback (Austral), 304 pages
Scope: Novel of linked stories set in rural Galicia
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/8467034114 (ASIN 8467034114)
The People of the Fraga
The forest is home to a highwayman, Xan de Malvís, known as Fendetestas; the wandering soul Fiz Cotovelo; the mole Furacroyos... Every being, human, animal and plant, has its place in the fraga. And in the background runs the moving love story of Geraldo and Hermelinda.
Nature and the Human Soul
San Salvador de Cecebre is a Galician parish, wide, leafy and pleasant. Fernández Flórez manages to capture all the stories that unfold in the forest and to tell them in a delightful and profound novel. The reader discovers in this magical narrative the workings of the human soul in harmony with nature: a portrait full of light, magic, beauty and humour.
The Author
Wenceslao Fernández Flórez (1885–1964), born in A Coruña, was one of the most popular Spanish humorists and journalists of the first half of the twentieth century, famous for his parliamentary chronicles, "Acotaciones de un oyente", in the newspaper ABC. Among his novels are Volvoreta (1917), Las siete columnas (1926) and El malvado Carabel (1931). He was elected to the Real Academia Española. His humour is gentle and melancholy, often turned against human vanity, and nowhere is it more tender than in this book.
Galician Folklore
Many of the forest’s inhabitants come from Galician tradition. The wandering soul of Fiz Cotovelo, condemned to roam until someone accepts the burden of his penance, recalls the beliefs surrounding the Santa Compaña, the procession of souls said to walk the paths of Galicia at night. Fendetestas, the forest’s highwayman, is a comic figure, a bandit so poor and kind-hearted that his robberies rarely succeed. Each chapter, or "estancia", is almost a self-contained story, and together they form a portrait of a whole small world.
On Screen
The book has been filmed several times. José Luis Cuerda’s 1987 film, with Alfredo Landa as Fendetestas, won the Goya Award for best film and is a classic of Spanish cinema. In 2001 it became the first Spanish feature-length film made entirely in 3D computer animation, which also won a Goya.
For Learners of Spanish
The prose is rich in Galician-flavoured vocabulary and rural detail, so it suits advanced readers; the Austral edition includes notes that help.
The Reviewer’s View
The original review loved the book’s warmth and its quiet wisdom about the passing of life, and that is its essence: a comic, tender and slightly sad hymn to the Galician countryside and its people, written in the hard years after the Civil War.
Everything Flows
El bosque animado makes us see how short life is. Everything is born, everything flows and everything dies, and so do we. But there is hope, because life goes on. It is a warm novel, with simple characters who move us and make us laugh: an unreal, magical world whose spirit wraps around you and which you do not want to leave. It is also a portrait of the customs of rural Galicia, which the author knew and loved, and an unforgettable book of Spanish literature. I have not found an English translation, so I link the Spanish edition.
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