Echoes

Over the last few years, the Publications Service of the Cabildo de Lanzarote has offered us editions of notable quality, cared for down to the smallest detail. Among these publications, in my opinion, El objeto encontrado by Marianna Amorim, a book dedicated to the ethnographic value of Los Buches, Los olvidados, which collects social denunciation illustrations by Santiago Alemán, and the monograph Isla, dedicated to the work of Juan Gopar with the collaboration of the poet Alejandro Krawietz, should be highlighted. These works have contributed to preserving and disseminating our cultural heritage. Without a doubt, more can always be done. Perhaps a strategic vision is needed in this department, a more decisive commitment to certain areas and, especially, to literature. But today I do not want to dwell on what is missing, but rather to recognize a success: the publication of Ecos, the unpublished work by Félix Hormiga that sees the light for the first time.

I believe that this publication also has a profound symbolic value as it represents an emotional tribute to someone who did so much for the culture of Lanzarote. Félix directed the Publications Service for many years, promoted numerous editorial projects, reached out to young creators, and defended with conviction the role of literature in our society.

Knowing his great love for El Puerto, it should not surprise us that in Ecos, Félix Hormiga writes from Elguinaguaria, the ancient aboriginal name for the place we know today as Arrecife. It is a geographical reference, but it is also a declaration of belonging and memory. From this territory steeped in history, where the roots of Lanzarote and the contemporary life of its capital converge, the author constructs a voice linked to the island and its history.

In Ecos, precisely, those traces of the past resonate, dialoguing with the present, reminding us that literature is a fundamental way of preserving the memory of places and of those who inhabit them.

Ecos is a fabulous find, a gift for readers that, personally, has accompanied me with growing emotion throughout its reading. Several voices coexist within the author's own voice in the book. This plurality does not fragment the text, but rather enriches it, as if those "echoes" dialogued with each other within the same writing. And there is, moreover, a happiness difficult to hide in the discovery: the certainty that there was still something to be salvaged, that the work was not entirely closed, and that perhaps—who knows—unpublished pages of our unforgettable Félix Hormiga may still await us, still waiting to be read. Through a simple and poetic prose, in the form of correspondence, it envelops the reader in a love story.

In this regard, the following poem especially moved me: "When the years inhabit you/ beyond the blackness of your hair/ you will know a love. Do not forget that/ your years have been lived and that now,/ perhaps, you have no room left in your heart/ a small cave for suffering."

It seems to me that it condenses a mature perspective on time and life experience. Far from a melancholic vision, the text proposes a lucid acceptance of the life lived, as if the years were not a loss or a defeat. Love appears in Ecos as knowledge that arrives after the transit of experience, when we have already been transformed by what we have lived.

This work recovered from the past (although it seems to come from the future), this brief work "brought to life," allows us—despite its maturity—to glimpse the early voice of Félix Hormiga. In the pages of Ecos resides the freshness of one who writes with truth, of one who still looks at the world with intact wonder, turning everyday experience into literary material.

Reading Ecos is listening to a voice, the unforgettable voice of Félix Hormiga, which transcends the years to remind us that, despite the passage of time and life's uncertainties, love can be a beacon to guide our steps.