Spain opens route in honor of writer

MADRID — A new tourist route on a Spanish-administered archipelago off the west coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean will soon be opened for Chinese travelers in commemoration of the late writer Sanmao, according to local tourism authorities.

The route, located on the Canary Islands and available from March, is dedicated to Sanmao, a female writer from Taiwan who lived there during the latter half of the 20th century.

The announcement was made recently by Alicia Vanoostende, tourism adviser to La Palma, one of the seven main islands of the archipelago.

Born as Chen Maoping and also known as Echo Chan in the English-speaking world, the writer adopted her pseudonym “Sanmao” from the name of the protagonist of a famous Chinese comic series created by caricaturist Zhang Leping in the 1930s.

Sanmao married a Spaniard named Jose Maria Quero Y Ruiz in 1974 and the couple lived on the La Palma and Gran Canaria islands between 1976 and 1979.

The newly opened tourist route is also aimed at promoting the places in which the couple had lived.

One of Sanmao’s most celebrated works is about her love story and adventures with her husband, who died in a diving accident in 1979 in La Palma, where he was later buried.

In 1991, Sanmao hanged herself at a hospital in Taipei after a cancer scare and the shock of losing a Hong Kong movie award for her script for the film Red Dust.

Quero Ruiz’s grave as well as the couple’s residences on both islands are preserved and are open to the public.

The sites have attracted a growing number of Chinese tourists in recent years, which is why local authorities have decided to design the route.

“At first I was curious because I always saw a lot of Chinese travelers visiting a normal house on our island, (and) many of them left letters in front of the house,” Vanoostende says.

“I asked them why and they told me that is where Sanmao had lived, a writer,” she says.

Ines Jimenez Martin, the counselor of tourism of Gran Canaria, says that since “millions of Chinese people know the Canary Islands through Sanmao’s work, we want them to be able to relive and experience the life of Sanmao in Gran Canaria”.