Leyendas de África. Guad-el-Jelú (el Río Dulce). Tetuán (Tet-Tagüen)

Leyendas de África begins with the retelling of a legend about the origins of the founding of Tetouan, as told by the Moorish nobleman Abd-el-Kader. His conversation with General Ros de Olano lends a lyrical and legendary tone to the descriptions, in which the beauty of the everyday scenes is matched by the narrative voice’s understanding and respect for the Moroccan world.
The significance of Ros de Olano’s approach to the Arab cultural heritage and its literary expression lies in the internalization of the landscape, which acquires an undeniable pantheistic dimension. The magnificence of nature, “solemn and silent,” is exalted to the point of being identified with the spiritual abode of the world, in a pure correlation between “Arab education, the Muslim religion, and the contemplative life.” The dualistic alternative between this world and the Western civilization is evident: for Ros, the spirit of Arab society rests on simplicity and spirituality, in contrast to the materialism, pragmatism, and deceptive progress of the West. It’s not that our author is against the new ideology of progress. Like any good man of his time, he is a moderate liberal who will make the progress a perpetual currency of his political and military career, for his own benefit and the benefit of his party, the Liberal Union, but he laments the inevitable dehumanizing tribute it takes. Call it what you will, but this contradiction, this permanent unease between desire and reality, between the practical imperative of life and the corrective call of conscience, will be a constant throughout the work of Ros de Olano, a figure who is both writer and soldier, politician and businessman, public figure and fervent admirer of nature.
This meticulously annotated edition of Leyendas de África, edited by Julián Acebrón, has no other purpose than to facilitate a complete understanding of the text by Antonio Ros de Olano, since it places it in its political, social, cultural and literary context, also giving a full account of its publishing history.