«Spanish» Writers Borges, Márquez, and Coelho (based on the results of a survey)

Abstract

For the last four years I have been conducting a survey of Russians who do not speak Spanish. 155 people were interviewed. The main question was: «What Spanish writers do you know?» The answers confirmed my initial hypothesis: the readers confuse Spanish literature with the literature written in Spanish. Along with the answer «no one» (54 respondents), people named Cervantes (65), García Lorca (33), Lope de Vega (25), Pérez Reverte (11) and other Spanish authors, as well as García Márquez (47), Borges (13), Cortázar (9), Coelho (6) and other foreigners. That is the specificity of the perception of Spanish literature in Russia, its difference from the image of other literatures. In the case of Russia and Spain, the border of cultural communication almost exactly coincides with the language border.