Portal de Turismo de Castilla y León

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October 31, 2025

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I have to tell you something, Blanca . With these words begins the dialogue between Juan and Blanca, two old acquaintances from the town of Villafranca del Mentidero, who meet by chance after many years without seeing each other. Juan, with a distraught face, asks Blanca to sit on a terrace so he can tell her something very important and tinged with tragedy. Thus begins his account, in great detail, of his stay of several weeks working as a botanist in the Canary Islands, which ended in disgrace... But he will tell us all this from his own mouth, just as we will discover important passages from the history of the islands (what motivated the ancient Romans to settle in the archipelago and maintain the first trade between the islands and the mainland, the eruption that ruined the most important port in Tenerife, or who introduced the banana to the New World); We will meet famous people (the conquistador Jean de Béthencourt; the explorer Olivia Stone; the botanist Sabino Berthelot; the botanist and explorer Jeanne Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the world on Bouganville's expedition; among others); we will learn what a blowhole, a puddle or a volcanic tube are, as well as more technical concepts in fields such as meteorology (calima, panza de burro and sea of clouds, trade winds, the Foehner effect...), volcanology (what a malpaís or a caldera are and their types), zoology (unique and native animals, spiders, goats or lizards that arrived to the islands floating), and, of course, botany (the Canary Island pine that arrived from Europe, the laurel forest or the origin of the araucaria); and also various curiosities (such as the influence of Portugal on Canarian culture; the origin of the place name "Montes de Tenerife" for the visible face of the Moon; the history of the ancient meridian of El Hierro; the history of past industries, from sugarcane mills to the production of natural dyes); we will even learn something about Greco-Roman mythology (Atlantis, the Hesperides, or the Elysian Fields); all this while his acquaintance Blanca is completely unable to imagine what she could have to do with all this history until the end.

Sergio Rodríguez Espejel ( Valladolid, 1996) is an architect by profession and a writer by passion. Since he typed his first story at the age of 10, he has written numerous short stories, poems, and other texts, including his first novel, "Como cada verano" (Like Every Summer) (2017), which condenses the atmosphere of the patron saint festivities of an imaginary Castilian town, Villafranca del Mentidero, into a single August day and night. Most of his work is available on his blog, "Versos sin concierto ni orden" (Verses without Concert or Order).