Awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize for Literature, Camilo Jose Cela has long been recognized as one of the preeminent Spanish writers of the twentieth century. Journey to the Alcarria is the best known of his vagabundajes, Cela s term for his books of travels, sketchbooks of regions or provinces. The Alcarria is a territory in New Castile, northeast of Madrid, surrounding most of the Guadalajara province. The region is high, rocky, and dry, and is famous for its honey.
Cela himself is the traveler, an urban intellectual wandering from village to village, through farms and along country roads,...