Fifty years ago, Gabriel García Márquez published "Relato de un náufrago" ("The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor"), a novel report in which the Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner told the story of Luis Alejandro Velasco's voyage on the high seas after falling off the destroyer ship he was sailing on. 

Now, in order to recover the importance of a "work that is a masterful reference on how to navigate between journalism and literature", the Gabo Foundation, in collaboration with RTVC Sistema de Medios Públicos and Podium Pódcast, from PRISA Audio, has decided to publish a five-episode podcast to retell this universal story.

"The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" is a story written in first person (representing Velasco's voice) that the author published in fourteen installments in the Colombian newspaper 'El Espectador' during the month of April 1955 and that the Barcelona publisher Tusquets published in book form in 1970. 

The story tells the story of the only survivor of the destroyer Caldas, which on February 28, 1955 suffered an accident while traveling from the United States to Colombia. In order to rescue the castaways, U.S. forces at the Panama Canal combed the area near the wreck. After four days of searching, no survivors were found and the search was abandoned. A week later, Luis Alejandro Velasco appeared, who after spending ten days adrift in the waters of the Caribbean, managed to reach land. 

Through a press release, the Gabo Foundation tells where this idea came from: "Fifty years later, it is still fascinating to read it and decipher how Gabriel García Márquez was able to masterfully navigate the waters of journalism and literature to give us a reference of our time. Because 'Relato de un náufrago' is much more than the voyage of crew member Luis Alejandro Velasco at sea. It is a captivating journey from journalism to literature that marked Gabo's career forever: how he cemented his literary narrative in research, in the journalistic universe, his most important and broadest input, and the raison d'être of the Gabo Foundation".

The book has a special relevance because it is the first journalistic book by García Márquez, until then a fiction author, opening a new stage in his literary career in which he fuses journalistic investigation with literature, giving rise to titles such as 'La aventura de Miguel Littin clandestino en Chile' (1986) or 'Noticia de un secuestro' (1996).

The Gabo Foundation said that the podcast was researched by journalists Xavi Ayén, writer and journalist of the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia, and Nelson Fredy Padilla, editor of El Espectador, "born connoisseurs of the Colombian Nobel Prize winner's work".

The episodes will be published weekly, every Thursday, and will be available on the Apple Podcast, Spotify and Ivoox platforms of Podium Podcast and RTVCPlay.