“Africa begins in …”: Donato Ndongo Bidyogo’s and Francisco Zamora Loboch’s Transatlantic Cartographies

This essay takes as point of departure the well-known expression “Africa begins in the Pyrenees,” to evaluate the ways in which two postcolonial authors from Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Zamora Loboch (1948) and Donato Ndongo Bidyogo (1950) express the double consciousness that molds the writing of those living in exile in Spain, displaced by brutal dictatorships. Particular attention is paid to the transatlantic cartographies delineated by Donato Ndongo’s El metro (2007) [The subway], as it dramatizes the negotiation of Africanness in the city of Madrid, an emblem of present-day Fortress Europe. In Francisco Zamora’s case, the essay Cómo ser negro y no morir en Aravaca (1994) [How to be Black and not die in Aravaca] and his 2009 novel Conspiración en el Green (el informe Abayak [Conspiracy in the green (The Abayak report)] demarcate the transatlantic cartographies questioning Spanish social and cultural practices that legitimize violence against Blacks.