Introduction by Ian Watson

I first met Luisa at the Madrid Book Fair in 2003 for the launch of my novel The Fire Worm in Spanish, translated by herself.  Beforehand, she’d warned me modestly that she didn’t actually speak much English apart from saying such things, in her job as an English teacher at the secondary school in Canjáyar, as, “Open your books.”  However,  immediately I discovered that’s she’s a complete chatterbox in English as well as Spanish, and practically bilingual!  In fact, she’s much too modest about lots of her achievements, so it’s jolly good that our Hungarian friend Peter Michaleczky forced her to have a website as a birthday present. Achievements such as taming wild horses and training them.  Or such as composing and performing Christmas carols, which won first prize two years running so that the sponsors gave up the competition because obviously Luisa would win it every year.  This, and other songs, almost resulted in a record contract; but she decided not to be a professional singer.  Or such as dancing flamenco to a professional standard, for she received training from a major artiste in Granada. 

Or such as drawing comic strips very spontaneously and quickly – but please don’t look at the one about eggs, A Fry-ghtening Eggsperience!   However, the lovely wordplay in the title reminds me that Luisa translated lots of obscure northern English dialect in The Fire Worm by instinct and got it all absolutely right, and that she also translated Robert Burns’ Scots dialect poem “To a Mouse” (beginning “Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie…”) into Spanish overnight as a challenge.  This is almost impossible, and most English people can’t understand a lot of the poem; but Luisa carried it off perfectly all on her own.  In fact Luisa writes extremely good poetry of her own, although she can be a bit absent-minded about where she keeps the poems afterwards.  Well, she has so many things to think about!  Fortunately Canjáyar has an array of loudspeakers on the town hall, so if she forgets her keys somewhere in the village she can be alerted. 

in memory of  the gentleman Don Quijote,
who described the Pygmalion Effect
long before Professor Higgins:

Sonnet dedicated to the peerless
Aldonza, otherwise known as
Dulcinea of Toboso,
by Don Alonso Quijano,
who is said on his death-bed to have
dictated it to Sansón Carrasco

Only my love for you endures
now that I’m cured of illusion,
knowing all my fantasy to be delusion
except for you, glorious and pure.

They say that my adoration
was a mad hallucination
so immoderately did I try
in the ugly beauty to spy.

My only worth was to peel away
your rind, sad, homely, grey
that others saw, and to display

how every woman in my sight,
howso squalid her life, bright
within is her very own Dulcinea.

And for good measures here it is in Hungarian, translated by Peter:

Don Quijote, az úriember emlékére,
aki Higgins professzort sokkal megelőzve
leírta a Pygmalion-effektust:

A szonettet a páratlan Aldonzának,
más nevén tobosoi Dulcineának
ajánlotta Don Alonso Quijano,
aki a halálos ágyán mindezt Sansón Carrascónak mondta tollba.

Csak a szerelmem marad végtelen,
csillapszik bennem a kór, az illuzió,
már tudom, elmúlik minden vízió,
csak te nem, ki ragyogsz szeplőtelen.

Úgy tartják, csupán őrült látomás
a bennem élő tisztelet és rajongás,
hisz a szépséget csak akkor láthatod,
ha csúf héjat előbb eltávolítod.

Életemben egy volt a feladat:
lehámozni kérget, szomorút, szürkét,
mit mások láttak. Megmutattam

mivé lesz minden nő szememben:
ha a nyomorúság héját lefejtem,
ott belül, Dulcineámra találok.

Or achievements such as being able, at a moment’s notice, to do simultaneous translation at the Madrid Book Fair for a round table about science and science fiction before a standing-room-only audience – a cloudburst had chased umpteen extra people into the big tent.  Luisa carried this off with poise, for of course she had also been an actress.

The second of her fantasy stories was of such calibre that it grabbed the cover of Galaxía magazine, and other stories which I’ve seen in progress are equally compelling and original.  Indeed, each story seems quite different from other ones, as if the author is a kaleidoscope of persons. 

By the way, she also cooks rather well -- and she does most things very quickly, often out of necessity two or three things at the same time, such as cooking and thinking of a poem and running up and down stairs to see to the children and repairing the computer simultaneously.   And I was very happy to see her as Pregonera for her village in 2004, which involved reading out an address, composed by her, in the village square to kick off the main fiesta of the year; although then she had to walk slowly in procession around the village, which isn’t her usual pace.

So, welcome to the whirling kaleidoscope of Luisa María García Velasco.