"Then I began to understand that time is never won, and that it is never wasted, that life is simply wasted." He wrote it in 'Malena is not a tango name'. And like everything that has a truth, it ends up being true. Almudena Grandes passed away yesterday at her home in Madrid at the age of 61.
Cancer struck down one of the most respected, most beloved writers, with the best literary texture
. Room 17 of the La Paz Funeral Parlor (Tres Cantos) was the penultimate stop before tomorrow's burial at the Madrid Civil Cemetery, where three presidents of the Second Republic, where Pío Baroja, where Grimau, where Pablo Iglesias (founder of the PSOE ), where Dolores Ibarruri, where Marcelino Camacho. The left was his place and republicanism his faith.
The river of people began to arrive at the funeral home at 11.00, where the family of the author of 'The Difficult Years' resisted the first blow of absence. Friends, politicians, readers, colleagues, writers and writers ...
The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, was among the first: "His intellectual contribution has made our country a better place, with which he was so committed," he
commented. The poet Luis García Montero, Almudena Grandes' husband, received him at the wake. Minutes before, the president of Congress,
Meritxell Batet
,
had left
; and shortly after, the Minister of Culture,
Miquel Iceta, arrived
. The Minister of Tourism of the Community of Madrid, also approached Tres Cantos; same as the CCOO secretary general,
Unai Sordo
; and the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo. As well as the Attorney General of the State,
Dolores Delgado
, together with
Baltasar Garzón
. Somewhat later, former president
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero arrived
. Also the Secretary General of United We Can,
Ione Belarra
. And the Minister of the Presidency,
Félix Bolaños
; the Foreign Office,
José Manuel Albares
; and the former vice president,
Carmen Calvo
.
Friends also paid him this last tribute in small groups together with the writer's family: her children, her sister and brothers, her uncles ... The editors
Chus Visor
, Miguel García Sánchez and Ángeles Aguilera; the writers
Marta Sanz, Domingo Villar, Ian Gibson and Benjamín Prado
. The journalist Montserrat Domínguez.
Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel
. The gallery owner Álvaro Alcázar. The film directors Mariano Barroso, Charly Arnaiz and Alberto Ortega. The poets Luis Muñoz, Raquel Lanseros, Fernando Valverde, José Ramón Ripoll, Joaquín Pérez Azaústre, Martín López Vega (director of the Cervantes Institute's Board of Directors), Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga, Diego Doncel ... A disparate and complicit tribe summoned around a cold.
The conversations crossed to finish almost always in a common space: Almudena. Her hedonistic power, her joy, her condition as a magnet for a thousand different people, her fear also when the disease finally showed its claws. And the desire to win. In the last week he left the papers ready. A couple of days ago his editor in Tusquets, Juan Cerezo, was at his house in Madrid. She
gave him instructions for the last novel in the ongoing saga
,
Episodes of an endless war
, about to culminate with the last installment,
Mariano en el Bidasoa
, which he finished off as the disease progressed. "
He gave instructions on when it should be published, how to do it and where the last chapter was
Since she always wrote the first version in a notebook and then passed the text with the necessary corrections to the computer. She maintained strength until the end, until the last day to organize everything that involves her great literary project, "says a friend of the author.
The cries followed one another, but someone remembered that one of the explosion engines of his life (along with civic commitment) was
the defense and contagion of hedonism
: "Joy made me strong because it taught me that there is no work, no effort No guilt, no problems, no lawsuits, not even mistakes that are not worth facing when the goal, in the end, is joy, "he wrote. Today, for a time among their own, it has been abolished. Losing a friend is a panic. That's how it is. And it is what also haunted yesterday like a cursed cramp in the La Paz Funeral Parlor.
The joy suddenly disappeared on Saturday around five in the afternoon
in dozens of intimates, in hundreds of acquaintances, in thousands of readers. A piece of news ran through mobile phones like a cut: "Almudena Grandes has died ".
There will be no more dinners, more equal after-meals, more book signings, more laughter that explodes in this way against the atmosphere, inventing joy for others.
"But his work remains," someone said.
The novels, the articles, the stories, the words remain, which soften the vertigo of the
distance
.
At 3:00 p.m., in the La Paz Funeral Parlor there was a queue of people in pain to hug Luis in room 17. The afternoon remained.
Silence remains.
Almudena remains, who taught us to remember.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Pedro Sanchez
Ione Belarra
Dolores Delgado
Baltasar Garzón
literature
culture
Meritxell Batet
Literature Laura Fernández: "Cynicism is the worst poison in society"
TeatroJulio Llamazares: "What depopulated the countryside is the car"
Intellectuals and Spain The 'international brigades' of literature ... Against Franco
See links of interest
Last News
Holidays 2021
2022 business calendar
How to do
Home THE WORLD TODAY
Burgos CF - Malaga
Crystal Palace - Aston Villa
Liverpool - Southampton
Norwich City - Wolverhampton Wanderers
Valencia CF - Rayo Vallecano