The legend has forged its stories and created its fables evoking in the present those times lost in the distance and in nothingness. The legend is the poetry of history, the favorite song of the peoples of the world; the living source that will not cease, as generations drink from it as if wanting to find themselves at their origins.
Today the dead do not come out, nor do witches walk on brooms. Neither do the goblins bathe in the lagoons: it is clear that progress has pushed back the wonderful mythological fauna that populated the most curious places on the planet, but the legend still refuses to die.
This is a book of stories and legends that I wrote to thank our Eternal Creator for blessing me with my grandparents and parents from Asturias, Spain, and the Canary Islands. My Hispanic origin has allowed me to see life differently and has always encouraged me to investigate our past; to better understand the present and the future.
It is set in the city where I was born and where I lived for three decades. In the next chapters, the reader will be able to learn about the myths, legends, and nonsense that surround the foundation of the town of Santa Clara (Villa Clara, Cuba), on July 15, 1689, after the departure of a group of founding families, located in the town of San Juan de Los Remedios; just as it brings together the chronicles of the city that I later wrote in Caracas, Venezuela, my adopted homeland, and in the United States, a country of which I am a proud American citizen.
True Freedom is “the right that every honest man has to think, speak and write without hypocrisy”, respecting the other, but I have only enjoyed that freedom when, like my grandparents and parents, I became an emigrant.
Angel A Cristobal.
Kendall, Miami-Dade, January 12, 2023
Bilingual Community Newspaper 