The City Council recovers Diego de Torres y Villarroel’s visit to Estepona, one of the most peculiar writers of the 18th century.
Diego de Torres, who was a sacristan in Estepona, was known for his satirical criticism and for his autobiography detailing his life as a writer, poet, mathematician, soldier, medical student, astrologer and fortune teller.
The Estepona Town Hall has dedicated a space in the city to Diego de Torres y Villarroel, one of the most peculiar writers of the 18th century for his eventful life and satirical texts.
The author, who was a sacristan in Estepona for several years, will now be remembered with a plaque on the façade of the centrally located church of Los Remedios. This episode of his life was collected in his autobiography ‘Life of Torres Villarroel’. In that same text, very novelized according to the critics, he describes his childhood and youth marked by an adventurous life in which he was successively a hermit, dancer, alchemist, mathematician, soldier, bullfighter, medical student, astrologer and fortune teller.
Born in Salamanca in 1694, Diego de Torres y Villarroel became a very peculiar character in his time, since after the publication of his biography, magical powers were attributed to him. After one of his first exiles to Portugal, he undertook a program of voracious reading of books on natural philosophy, magic and mathematics. To make a living he set up a publishing business as a writer of almanacs and annual forecasts under the pseudonym of ‘The great Piscator of Salamanca’. From that moment on, many people turned to him to find out about the future.
Part of Torres’ legend has to do with his prophecies. In the Almanque of 1724 he predicted the death of the young King Louis I, he also foretold the Esquilache Mutiny and even the French Revolution.
From 1734 he began a quieter life in which he dedicated himself to his work at the University of Salamanca, to the writing of books and sonnets and to his stays at the Court of Madrid. He had a great critical success when he published ‘Los desahuciados del mundo y de la gloria (1736-1737), which was praised in the Diario de Los Literatos’.
In 1752 the first complete printed edition of his autobiography was published, something unheard of at the time and which informs of his great popularity.
With this plaque in the church of Los Remedios, the Estepona Town Hall wants to remember the passage of this interesting literary figure in our city.
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