The Goose Game

Punctually as always, a week before Christmas the usual Christmas present of Víctor Infantes arrived. For 13 years their Ediciones de la Imprenta have regularly shared among friends at the end of the year these little gems rescued from the dust of the shelves. Thanks again.


This year Victor has touched us even more, because in the envelope there was a Goose Game. This is the first known board with a trail of 63 boxes, a number which would thereafter be fixed as canonical. The wooden board is preserved in good condition in the Monastery of Valldemossa, in Mallorca.

Camilo José Cela chose a series of woodcuts of the Guasp Press to illustrate
the first number of the Papeles de Son Armadans

The Guasp also printed other boards for this game, like for example this one, also from the 17th century.

Among all the preserved boards this one contains the highest number of boxes, 142.

To complete the gift, the reproduction was accompanied by a short text by Marcelo Grota on the Goose Game with a few words on the Guasp Press. If you want to know more about either the game or the printing house, you can start with J. Martínez Vázquez de Parga’s Juego, figuración y símbolo. El tablero de la oca, Madrid: 451 Editores, 2008, and Miquela Forteza’s La xilografía en Mallorca a través de sus colecciones. La imprenta Guasp (1576-1958), Palma: Olañeta, 2007.

The stoning of Blessed Ramón Llull, c. 1755. Attributed to the engraver Miquel Capó,
one of the best hands ever of the Guasp Press

Interesting is the hortus conclusus where the trip ends on this board: a symbolic Garden of Eden waiting with open gates for the winner.


The (Mallorcan) coins refer instead to other potential rewards of a more palpable kind.