According to the markup help, "Text after a blank line that is indented by two or more spaces is reproduced verbatim." You can add your own line breaks if the text is long. fireballs619, if you do this, could you also please correct the phrase "as he faced the firing squad"?

This is probably my favorite opening too. My Spanish is not good enough to get through the novel, but I enjoy looking at the original. The "river of clear water" is "un río de aguas diáfanas."

Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo. Macondo era entonces una aldea de 20 casas de barro y cañabrava construidas a la orilla de un río de aguas diáfanas que se precipitaban por un lecho de piedras pulidas, blancas y enormes como huevos prehistóricos. El mundo era tan reciente, que muchas cosas carecían de nombre, y para mencionarlas había que señalarlas con el dedo.

García Márquez paid high praise to Gregory Rabassa's English version:

Mr. García Márquez has said that Mr. Rabassa read One Hundred Years of Solitude, sat down and then rewrote it in English. (He also said that Mr. Rabassa's translation improved on the original.)

Another memorable firing squad scene appears in the Jorge Luis Borges story "The Secret Miracle," here translated by Anthony Bonner:

On the night of March 14, 1939, in an apartment on the Zelternergasse in Prague, Jaromir Hladik, author of the unfinished tragedy The Enemies, of a Vindication of Eternity, and of an inquiry into the indirect Jewish sources of Jakob Boehme, dreamt a long drawn out chess game.

five-page PDF version

I was charmed to see Borges sneak a reference to his character Hladik in the footnote to another story.