The history of the slave in rebellion Manuel Martínez has inspired the Spanish historian Suso Martínez to show, in a novel, the connection between Galicia, in northern Spain, and Cuba.
Suso Martínez is a popular Galician tourist guide who for years theatricalize his visits, in which he plays personalities from different eras, and who has just published The King of the Jíbaros (Eoditorial, 2025), which has as stages Galicia, Madrid and Cienfuegos, in Cuba.
The novel was born after reading, in a publication of the Galician Center of Havana, of a brief history of Manuel Martínez, “an immortalized character in Ciego’s songs, which were the ones that in the nineteenth century went from the fair at fair telling stories of popular heroes.”
From there he began to investigate this character, which “is in itself a legend,” he says.
The protagonist was a native of Ortigueira (A Coruña, North), “went to Cuba and made the revolution” but ended up becoming a Jíbaro, “the slaves escaped from their masters who escaped to the mountain”, although despite the title of the work it did not become king.
The author emphasizes that the book is the result of a mixture of reality and fiction and begins with a warning: “Do not try to look for the truth for the corners of a novel.”
However, Suso Martínez describes life in the 19th century Cuba and the impact of the Spanish emigrants who marched to America and returned to Galicia to show on their fortune.
