Alfredo Nan de Allariz, Poet and Playwright from Xinzo in Havana

Alfredo Fernández, who signed his work as Nan de Allariz, was born in Xinzo de Limia and died in Madrid on 26 May 1927. He was a writer in Galician and Spanish, in a costumbrista style, as well as a poet, playwright, actor and composer, and one of the most notable representatives of regionalist dramatic writing ^[1].

The date of birth

The sources do not agree. Galician Wikipedia says he was born on 13 May 1875 and died aged 52 ^[1]. The xinzodelimia.eu page gives 13 May 1874 as the date and, in another paragraph, the year 1869 ^[2]. That last figure comes from an article by Nan himself about Cástor Méndez Brandón: they say the two were baptised at the same font by the same priest, five years apart, so Nan would be five years younger than Cástor (born in 1864) ^[2]. That calculation would give 1869, which does not match the other two dates. The safest course, therefore, is to read «1874 or 1875» until the baptismal record turns up.

Emigration and theatre

He emigrated to Argentina, where he worked in trade, and contributed to El Eco de Galicia. He returned to Spain, finished his secondary studies and began a law degree without completing it. After touring American capitals as an actor and playwright he arrived in Cuba in 1904 ^[1].

In Havana he was secretary of the propaganda section of the Galician Centre and secretary of the Asociación Iniciadora y Protectora de la Academia Gallega, which was founded on 1 June 1905 with Manuel Curros Enríquez as president ^[1][2]. He directed Esperanza Iris’s company in its early days, managed the Teatro Nacional in Havana and was a corresponding member of the Royal Galician Academy. In March 1908 he was part of the commission that took Curros’s body from Havana to Galicia; he regarded Curros as his teacher and friend ^[1].

Work

He composed zarzuelas, costumbrista pieces and operettas (Sangre vienesa) and wrote O zoqueiro de Vilaboa (1907, a sketch for a Galician one-act zarzuela) and Recordos d’un vello gaiteiro (a monologue in verse, 1904) ^[1][2]. His book of poems Fume de palla (1909) was condemned by an edict of the Cardinal Archbishop of Santiago, José María Martín de Herrera; Nan thanked him sarcastically and included the edict at the end of the second edition, published the same year ^[1]. He also published A golpe de hacha (1913, in Spanish) and Del salón al sotabanco (1920) ^[2].

In Havana he edited the weekly Follas Novas and in 1914 he founded O Tío Marcos, a short-lived bilingual paper inspired by O Tio Marcos d’a Portela, published in Ourense by Valentín Lamas Carvajal ^[1]. He owned the tobacco factories La Flor de Lis and Galatea ^[1]. He asked Ourense city council to name streets or squares after Lamas Carvajal and Curros ^[1].

He left Cuba in 1919, settled in Madrid and worked in a theatre run by the impresario Antonio Méndez Laserna ^[1]. A portrait of him at the age of 39 was painted in Madrid, in May 1913, by the Galician painter Felipe Bello Piñeiro ^[2].

Links

• Parish: Xinzo de Limia
• People of A Limia
• Cástor Méndez Brandón, the other poet from Xinzo he recalls
• Xinzo de Limia

Sources

1. «Alfredo Nan de Allariz», Galician Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfredo_Nan_de_Allariz
2. «Alfredo Fernández Martínez», xinzodelimia.eu (Wayback capture). http://www.xinzodelimia.eu/alfredo_fernandez.htm