The story of Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi is striking. He was himself a man of ears – music, rhythms, libraries – but his intimate biography is illuminated by the image: the Spanish mother who knew of embassies and salons and who, nevertheless, wanted … His son has one homeland and one language. The decision that their children should never learn their mother tongue, Spanish, was perhaps drawn from the wisdom of another age, although it left a thread taut in the Palermo household: Spain remained in things, not in the mouth. And it remained in his heart strutl Quevedol Calderon; in the familiar motto—“In fide et iustitia”—attached to the bookplates; I stayed in the silent image of that woman and in the way the curtains were opened so that the light would not harm the oil paintings.
Gioacchino grew up in this sidelight, and for him Spain was at first a tangible geography: the dry etching of gold letters, the fine dust stirred up by old pages, the silent music of titles. Language, on the other hand, remained closed like a garden behind a fence. It was not a harsh ban. It was a caring: mother –María Concepcion Ramírez de Villa Urrutia, Conchita, Countess of AsaroHe believed that he saved his son from the torn borders by teaching him only one language, the language of his home, the language of Palermo, and the language of his father. But underground rivers always find a way out: later, with Lampedusa as home tutor, as teacher, and finally as adoptive father, Spain returned to the readings. The Prince of Reading taught him how to look in his private classes and Gioacchino learned with him that there are countries that are also traveled through reading. And from all of this was born a delicious little book called “Lampedusa and Spain‘.
The first public life of this book was Italian: in May 2024, Sellerio Editore Palermo presented the volume as “racconto critical affascinante”, thus emphasizing the dual aspect of the text: an intimate portrait of Palermo’s Lampedusa and a small “romanzo di formazione” by Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi himself, which reconstructs the afternoon Spanish readings with his tutor and adoptive father. On the cover, the image of the mother, Conchita, in Proust’s mind acquires great intensity: she not only shows the elegance of the world; He refers to the inheritance that Gioachino will receive as a rumour.
Only one year later, these Italian maps found an echo in Spain. Acantilado is now publishing Lampedusa and Spain. The book arrives in translation Andres Barba Munizwhose literary relevance—and its affinity with the European tradition of the catalog—allows Lanza Tomasi’s memorial beat to breathe in Spanish with the same precision as in the original.
When considered together, Celerio and Acantilado trace a continuous editorial line: from Lampedusa novelist to Lampedusa reader of Lope, Gongora, Calderón, or Quevedo. The result is more than just a reissue: it is an expansion of the picture and an affirmation that the Sicilian-Spanish dialogue is still alive.
In this sense, Lampedusa and Spain is, as some critics suggest, an image revealed by slow exposure, where the dark room is the dark room of memory. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa The photographer is his son, Gioacchino. The volume progresses through the accumulation of flashes—anecdotes, preferences, and connected vessels—rather than through systematic presentation. His humility is his strength.
The center of gravity in Lampedusa, the avid reader of Spanish traditions, and the greats The golden age And already in the twentieth century, especially Lorca. Lanza Tomasi notes a clear tension: for Lampedusa, Spanish represented decorum and cohesion, a counterweight to the eloquence he saw in cultured Italian. That idea, barely touched upon, reorganizes the workbench of the author of The Leopard: Reading Spain to Get an Idea of Form. In that interior of Palermo, Lampedusa established a curriculum: reading and teaching how to read; Collecting books is like someone rebuilding a house.
Gioachino, who had learned to love a language he had not learned, lived Spain through the rhythm of words. In the palace, the library is still breathing. On the shelves, his mother’s Spanish bookplates repeat his motto: “In intention and honesty‘. Faith in what was achieved, and justice in what was not. Between that faith and that justice this story moves: Italy by design, Spain by desire, and between the two a paper bridge placed by a book that made time its measure.
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