The 23rd of April is world book day, because it’s the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (author of “Don Quijote”), the death of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness.
Actually Shakespeare died ten days after Cervantes, both on April 23rd.
How come? At the time, England used the Julian calendar, and Spain used the Gregorian one.
In Santa Cruz de la Palma, they set up bookstalls along the Calle Real. Many of them give a 10% discount. Now for me, this is frustrating. I drool over bookshops the way some of my girlfriends flip for shoe shops, but reading Spanish is slow, hard going. But one of the stalls has a few books in English.
And they’ll be there all week.
I can just see myself succumbing to the lure of another book, the way I do to “just one more chocolate…” If you want to get there before me, you’d better hurry.
