Asombro y desencanto

We do not travel to evade reality but to recover it. We live in an increasingly virtual world that falsifies sensations and empties the meaning of words. If, as Bustos believes, the truth of the journalistic profession is always born from a journey -walking, seeing and telling- then nothing will be more urgent and true than to ignore the frenzy of current affairs and embrace the stillness of lost steps and awakened senses. With humor, lyricism and an absolute command of language, Bustos narrates two journeys facing each other through space, time and a gaze that always oscillates between disenchantment and amazement, between French and Spanish, between traditionalism and enlightenment. From the ardor of the plateaus to the Breton temperance, from the corral of comedies to the Versailles opera, from the madman who thought himself Amadís to the madman who thought himself Napoleon, from the Quixote Museum of El Toboso to the Louvre selfie fair and from the honored Valdepeñas to the majestic Bordeaux, the refined writing of this book quenches that thirst for concrete things that Josep Pla demanded from the best literature: observation, reflection and confidence.