Story The speaker took a sip of water, looked out In Spanish- 500 million people looked back, then pick-ing up where he left off, he emphasised theimportance of Gabriel García Márquez’sat the audience filling the auditorium, nearly speaking novel El Ingenioso Hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. In a plac inMacondowhose , e name he did not wish to remember, Colonel Alonso Quijano recalled the distant after- lands noon when his father took him to see ice. Words are with us at birth, they sit by our cots to lull us to sleep, then get up, mount their horses, find a ship, set sail, cross the seas and skies, and finally set foot on land to live in the shoes that open the path as Luis García Montero they walk. Yes, a path is made by walking, Director of the Cervantes Institute a wonderful verse by César Vallejo, an idea that the speaker used to highlight the world of the modern novel opened up by the ad- ventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. He then expresse his admirationford Mario Vargas Llosa, whom he imagined hesitating over his writing, pen to his ear, elbow on his desk, hand on his cheek, before beginning the storyofFortunata y Jacinta. Stories of love and heartbreak in 19th-cen- tury Mexico filled the plot with haunts for dreaming or for suffering defeat. The speaker loved poetry as much as novels, 130