The gypsy who brings ice to Macondo in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” is Melquíades.
Melquíades leads the band of gypsies that visits Macondo each March, bringing unfamiliar inventions and discoveries from the outside world. Among the objects displayed to the isolated villagers are magnets, telescopes, an alchemical laboratory, and ice—an astonishing substance to people who have never encountered it.
He becomes a close friend of José Arcadio Buendía, whose fascination with the gypsies’ inventions grows into an obsession with science and the mysteries of the universe. Melquíades later returns to Macondo after reportedly dying in Singapore, emphasizing the novel’s blending of ordinary life and supernatural events.
Readers sometimes confuse him with Pietro Crespi, an Italian musician associated with the Buendía family, or with other gypsies who appear in the novel. Melquíades is especially important because his manuscripts ultimately reveal the complete history and fate of the Buendía family.