THE ENDURING ORENSE

Notes: Vicente Risco

THESE NOTES, almost all of them of old Ourense, made by José Conde Corbal, so real and so evocative, were published, with the notes that I put on them, with the brevity that I consider my only merit, in the Ourense newspaper “La Región,” in its Sunday pages, during the year 1960.

The title “The Enduring Ourense” is due to our colleague Angel Huete, rectifying that of “The Lost Ourense” with which I previously headed my memories and anecdotes of our city in this same newspaper.

The fact that they were read by the “fillos do pueblo” (children of the village), the high steem in which the evocations of Ramón Otero Pedrayo and the historical notes of Jesús Ferro Couselo were held, and the success of exhibition of watercolors by Conde Corbal  on the same subjects, that took place in the Romanesque courtyard of the Arqueological Museum, moved the painter to collect those drawings in an album, with the “captions” of my authorship with witch they were published in “La Región,” and with the historical illustrations of  Ferro Couselo referring to the content of each of the plates.

No one, like Ramón Otero Pedrayo, such a profound sculptor of the soul of Ourense, to prologue this book that we dedicate, with so much affection to our city.

And this is the story, the exposition, and the justification of our work, which we modestly offer to the good people of Ourense and to the grateful visitors.

VICENTE RISCO