By Silvio Rodriguez September 25, 2026
Giraldo and Aimé in the Galápagos
Today we woke up in Seville, Spain. At 11 a.m., I was alone and took the opportunity to play a little guitar (tomorrow we have the first of two concerts we’ll be giving in this ancient and beautiful city). At 11:44 a.m. local time, I received a message that left me speechless: in Cuba, in San Antonio de los Baños, our hometown, Giraldo Alayón García, my oldest friend, had died.
We met when we were both three years old, on the day our mothers walked down the hill together to take us, for the first time, to the public preschool—which back then was called kindergarten.
In 1951, I moved with my parents to Havana, and we didn’t see each other for a few years, but when we were 11 or 12, we began a second phase in which he would take me to explore caves and I would teach him to swim in “El charco del negrito.”
Silvio Rodriguez, in concert in Oakand CA. 2010 foto: Bill Hackwell
From then on, each of us going about our own business—he in the village and I in the city—we more or less kept up with each other’s lives. He was studying biology and I was doing my military service; he was becoming an entomologist and I was trying my hand at songwriting; he was making all of Cuba proud by becoming a world-class spider specialist, and I was in my own world of songs.
Almost every time we met, we’d end up walking by the river and getting upset at how neglected it was. We made plans and talked about our little battles, which generally didn’t come to fruition until, many years later, the Ariguanabo Foundation became a reality.
Right now, I’m not in a position to put together an exhibition that does justice to his tireless research work. We had agreed that I would help him publish a book of articles that, whenever I asked him about it, he kept expanding. We’ll have to work on that.
I’m leaving a photo I took of Giraldo and Aimé in the Galápagos, which I used to illustrate an interview I published in Segunda cita when he was named “Maestro de Juventudes.”
Source: Segunda Cita, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English