Text by Jorge Luis Borges written as a tribute of the well-known Spanish writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna upon his imminent arrival to Buenos Aires. In a literary prose, Borges mentions a number of writers, including himself, that consider the discovery of different aspects of the city as poetic matter: in his case, the corners of the Palermo Area, the lower-class tenement houses by [Evaristo] Carriego, or the Rosedal Park by Bartolomé Galindez Ward. From this same point of view, Borges states that America will be discovered by Gomez-de la Serna, and consequently, October 12 (America’s Discovery Day) would be celebrated this year on August (at the moment of the Spanish writer’s arrival). He then goes on to list everything that that the writer will reveal.

Martín Fierro (1924–27) obtained a distinguished position amid the avant-garde journals booming in the 1920s Argentina, more specifically in Buenos Aires. It was led by Evar Méndez, even though in 1925 Oliverio Girondo, Eduardo J. Bullrich, Sergio Piñero, and Alberto Prebisch also participated in its direction. Great Argentinean writers, such as Girondo himself, Ricardo Molinari, Leopoldo Marechal, and Jorge Luis Borges, among others, were contributors of its pages; and this include artists such as Emilio Pettoruti, Xul Solar, and Norah Borges. Martín Fierro ceased to exist when the managing group—upon facing the political candidacy of Hipólito Yrigoyen to the nation’s presidency—was split between those who proposed to introduce politics into the journal’s pages and those who refused. This internal bickering caused the folding of the publication. It should be noted that Martín Fierro was read at that time as the representative of the “avant-garde” in Argentina.  

This text by writer Jorge Luis Borges was part of a supplement that was a tribute to Ramón Gomez de la Serna, (1888-1963), a key figure in the Spanish avant-garde, upon his expected arrival in Buenos Aires, which did not take place at that moment. The supplement was inserted in the Martín Fierro No. 18 edition (July 18, 1925). The group of “martinfierristas” [those practitioners of the Martin Fierro guidelines] really admired the Spanish writer, since they considered him a representative for the literary renewal. 

Gómez de la Serna finally arrived for the first time in Buenos Aires in 1931. He returned in 1933, and settled there for good in 1936 (in exile during the Spanish Civil War) until his death (1963).