Un viajero inglés en Buenos Aires de 1820

Abstract

Gordon Thomas Love (born in London in 1793) arrives in Buenos Aires in 1820. He is going to make of that city his permanent abode until his death in 1845. In 1825 he publishes a small volume under the title A Five Years´ Residence in Buenos Ayres, a recollection of his impressions on the town and its inhabitants which constitutes the more detailed account by a foreigner of habits, traditions, everyday life, and the urban landscape of the argentine capital in the years immediately after the declaration of independence from Spain. His narrative offers the reader a lively portrait of the first timid steps of a process of growth that is going to make of Buenos Aires the biggest metropolitan area in South America in the first decades of the 20th century, providing at the same time a contemporary description of a few landmarks that are an essential part of its identity still today.