Domingo Villar is still here

Domingo Villar Siruela Water eyes

When almost all of us arrived, Domingo Villar was already there. Since 2006, to be fair. With this novel, Ojos de agua, which Siruela is reissuing as part of its Colección Escolar (School Collection), with the hope that Villar will captivate younger readers. Domingo was there, waiting for us without expecting us, making room for us to shelter, and of course there were the older siblings, uncles and aunts, previous authors, who lived through the boom of the 80s and 90s. And also the author of the prologue to this edition, Lorenzo Silva, who was there before because he was faster at everything (publishing, winning awards, being successful, surviving, being competitive), but who was our same age. Domingo Villar arrived earlier and left much earlier than he should have. This small, great history of crime fiction, born in the 2000s, also has its untimely losses (Domingo, but also Antonio Lozano and Alexis Ravelo). We are left with the memory, his books, and his characters.

Silva's excellent prologue serves as an introduction not only to a debut crime novel with a character who reeked of classicism from the start (Inspector Leo Caldas), prose that set the stage, and a setting—Galicia—that shaped the way it was told, and a slow-moving and conscientious author, popular in literary terms, who prioritized honesty, rigor, and literary truth over the speed of prefabricated products and reckless awards, fads, and franchises. Domingo Villar was a great literary author who wrote in Galician so as not to miss anything along the way, but who translated himself from Madrid. I wasn't fortunate enough to be his friend because we only crossed paths at a couple of festivals, but I miss him. I miss him and the books he left us out of duty. With Leo Caldas and without him. In Galicia.

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