In “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the founding family is the Buendía family.
Gabriel García Márquez’s 1967 novel follows seven generations of Buendías in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo. The family begins with José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán, who leave their former home and establish Macondo after a series of supernatural and violent events. José Arcadio’s dream of a city of mirrors helps inspire the town’s founding.
The names Melquíades, Arcadio, and Aureliano are associated with the family but are not alternatives to its surname. Melquíades is a recurring gypsy character whose manuscripts ultimately reveal the family’s history. Arcadio and Aureliano are repeatedly reused given names within the Buendía lineage, making the genealogy deliberately difficult to follow.
The family’s repeated names, cyclical relationships, political conflicts, and recurring solitude are central to the novel’s structure. The Buendías’ story also mirrors aspects of Colombian history, including civil wars, the arrival of modern technology, foreign commercial influence, and the violence surrounding a banana workers’ strike.