by Antonio Giz (GaliciaDigital manager)

The project "Manuel Rodríguez López, emigrante galego, poeta obreiro", born with the aim of making the figure and work of our friend Manolo known, will be 8 years old in 2020. 8 years since it was presented at the Casa de la Cultura de Paradela, at Christmas 2012. In that moment, the project began to move, and gave many fruits, some of them projected from the first moment, many other pleasant surprises that we found along the way, thanks to a lot of friends, collaborators and entities that hosted the traveling exhibition.

But this year, the damn pandemic got in the way of the project's usual run, and made it impossible for the traveling exhibition to be moved to any of the places that were projected. That, however, does not mean that the virus has managed to stop our project. Precisely, this forced paralysis in one of our lines of work made it possible for us to dedicate ourselves to other tasks, which we will describe in detail below.

Itinerant Exhibition

The Itinerant Exhibition about the life and work of Manuel Rodríguez is made up of 16 information panels, which can also be viewed in full on the project's website.

Although this year we have no news about it, it should be remembered that, since the exhibition was presented in Paradela 7 years ago, it has already toured practically all the important cities and towns of Galicia, as well as the Galician Centers of Barcelona, ​​León, Salamanca, Vitoria, Valladolid, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Llodio, Seville, Pamplona or Santander, the Universities of Cáceres, Granada and Bilbao, and the Casa de Galicia in Madrid. In Portugal, it was at the Galician Center in Lisbon, at the Lúcio Craveiro da Silva Library in Braga, hand in hand with the Universidade do Minho, and at the University of Faro. In total, 47 sites distributed throughout the peninsula, and more than 20,000 kilometers traveled.

And while we go through the forced rest, the efforts continue to resume the usual rhythm in 2021: Burela, San Cibrao, Lalín, A Estrada, Narón, As Pontes, Ortigueira, Redondela, Logroño, Zaragoza, Valencia, Oiartzun ... We trust in being able to take the traveling exhibition to many of these places next year.

Web

The Manuel Rodríguez López web portal, one of the most complete websites that a Galician writer has, collects his complete work and the most remarkable information on his existence, and continues to receive more than 100 visits a day. More than 3 Gb of information in a wide collection of documents, photographs, videos, audios and press clippings that reflect the intense literary and intellectual activity of Manuel Rodríguez López.

This website has just undergone a profound transformation, aimed at adapting it to new technologies and trends in web design that have appeared in recent times. Thus, today we can announce that we have a new project website, with a completely renewed graphic design, adapted to all types of mobile devices, and with a new structure of the stored information, which aims to make the web more accessible.

Publications

There are already 16 books written by Manuel Rodríguez López in the GaliciaDigital Virtual Library. Step by step, we are incorporating new titles, both published and unpublished works, and we will continue this way until we have his complete works in our Library.

But these are not the only works related to Manolo that were published this year in the GaliciaDigital Virtual Library. It is worth highlighting the publication of "Exposición Itinerante Manuel Rodríguez López 2013 - 2020", the work of Santiago Rodríguez and Antonio Giz, in which they give an account of everything achieved with our exhibition, from its presentation at Paradela in 2013 to the last visits made last year. The length of the work (650 pages) gives a fairly clear idea of ​​the amount of work done by the entire project team, and all their achievements.

Towards 2021

We believe that it is demonstrated that the year 2020 was not a lost year. It was a year in which we suffered especially complicated circumstances, but in the case of this project they served to reinvent ourselves, to review everything we had done, improve many things, and put the seeds for the year 2021.

Our intention is, therefore, to resume the normal operation of the project, if circumstances permit it, convinced that the best is yet to come. This conviction comes from the security provided by all the people and entities that continue to collaborate with the project: Institutions (Paradela City Council, Lugo Provincial Council, Real Academia Galega and Xunta de Galicia), friends (Xesús Mato, Xosé Manuel Mato, Xesús Alonso Montero, Valentín García ...), collaborators... They form a team that is growing year by year, and that contributes with their work and enthusiasm to continue working for the memory of Manuel Rodríguez López. Thanks to all of them.