Literature Javier Marías, eternally young, cosmopolitan and innovative
Javier Marías culture: laughter and seriousness, root and shield
Death Javier Marías dies at the age of 70, the uncomfortable purity of being a writer
After dragging complications derived from the coronavirus, the writer
Javier Marías Franco (Madrid, 1951) has died at the age of 70.
Author of award-winning books
such as
Tomorrow in the battle think of me
or
Heart so white,
he was also a columnist for the newspaper
El País
and a book editor
.
It was precisely this last vocation that brought him
together with Carme López Mercader, a publisher from Barcelona with whom he maintained a relationship from the beginning of the year 2000
until the day of his death.
Together they founded the
Reino de Redonda
publishing house ,
a small label that published two or three works a year.
An editor by profession, Carme was in charge of editing the books and he of distributing them.
They had no more staff and put the quality of the works as a flag.
Although the company never came to have economic benefits.
The writer Javier Marías in 2013GTRES
"It is made up of two people, one in Madrid, which is me, and the other in Barcelona, Carme López Mercader,
who is in charge of the editions, that is to say, that the books exist. The Ítaca distributor does me the favor of placing some copies in bookstores," he said in an article in El País in 2008.
"I know that there is a deficit, because its volumes are well cared for, they have very good paper and binding
, and I pay the occasional translators the maximum," he explained about the project dedicated to edit forgotten quality titles, which would later be by authors such as Fernando Savater, Arturo Pérez-Reverte or Eduardo Mendoza.
Long-distance relationship and mother of two children
In addition to publishing books together,
Javier Marías and Carme López were life companions, although not always on the road.
After a sentimental past full of long-distance relationships that he always remembered fondly, the writer made the same decision when he met the editor.
While he lived in Madrid, she lived in Barcelona.
Marías told more than once that he preferred to live this way
to avoid the wear and tear of living together and thus be able to miss his partner
.
As she told
The New York Times,
they spent two or three weeks together and then four or five apart.
Although they were very discreet with his personal life, sometimes the author used his articles and dedications to praise what he considered to be the woman of his life.
In 2018, both boyfriends decided to go one step further and get married
.
According to the writer, who did not believe in signed papers as proof of love,
this decision was motivated by bureaucratic reasons.
As reflected in the newspaper
The Objective
, having no offspring, Marías wanted her inheritance to go directly to her girlfriend instead of the
Treasury keeping a good part of her money, with almost 70% .
Although Javier Marías never had children by his own decision,
Carme López Mercader was the mother of two children when she met the writer.
What little is known about her and her family is that she was previously married.
Several details are known about Marías's family, since he was the son of two well-known people in the intellectual world.
His father, Julián Marías,
was a highly reputed philosopher who was a disciple of Ortega y Gasset
and a member of the Royal Spanish Academy.
While his mother,
Dolores Franco Manera, was a renowned writer and translator.
Writer of great reputation and eternal candidate for the Nobel Prize, also a member of the Royal Academy since 2008, like his father,
he left behind an entire cultural universe that is still being explored by critics and experts
.
During the last decades he was considered by many as one of the best current Spanish authors.
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