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Updated Tuesday, January 30, 2024-17:32

  • Controversy The raw history of Vicente Aleixandre's house

Velintonia, the mythical residence of Vicente Aleixandre where the great poets of the last century met,

has gone up for judicial auction today,

as announced in the BOE

.

The Nobel Prize chalet - located in the Vallehermoso neighborhood in the Chamberí district -

is sold for 4,561,650 euros,

a price that will go down until a buyer is found, although bids below three million euros are not allowed. .

The house has already gone on sale on the Idealista real estate portal

for 4.7 million euros

without a buyer appearing.

The property was built in 1930 and has 630 square meters spread over three floors. The plot measures 799 square meters and has a garden where Aleixandre

planted a Lebanese cedar,

as a symbol of rebirth after the Civil War.

Both the Madrid City Council and the Community or the Ministry of Culture have turned a deaf ear to the pleas of the Friends of Vicente Aleixandre Association (Aava), which has been demanding for years that

the home be protected

and that it be converted into a

study and in a house of poetry

.

From this group they regret that one of the residences with the most history in all of Madrid

could fall into the hands of any speculator.

"This is an aberration

. This fact will go down in the history of this country as one of the greatest ignominies committed against a historical heritage asset, which deserved to have been duly protected a long time ago by being declared an Asset of Cultural Interest. The house can be transformed now into a clinic or a restaurant," criticizes Alejandro Sanz, president of the aforementioned association.

State of abandonment

The house was

in a state of abandonment

and had been deteriorating since 1986, the year of the death of Conchita, Aleixandre's sister.

The chalet was inherited by

Amaya Aleixandre, the daughter of a cousin of the poet

, who has 60% of the property, and by four other siblings, grandchildren of a cousin on her mother's side, who own the remaining 40%.

The relationship between both parties has not been good, which has generated certain disputes between them and

has complicated the search for a happy ending

for the residence.

Velintonia thus goes up for auction due to the passivity of the administrations. The General Directorate of Fine Arts of the Ministry of Culture prepared a report alleging the

building's state of abandonment

, which would imply a significant investment to restore it.

State of abandonment of the bathroom of the house.AAVA

He also argued that the chalet

had no architectural value

, so it could not be declared an Asset of Cultural Interest and that the house lacked furniture and archives.

The Association of Friends of Aleixandre refutes these theses and asserts that the residence

has value in itself

, due to all the history it has housed within its walls.

In 2022, the Community of Madrid granted some protection to the chalet by declaring it an

Asset of Heritage Interest

due to the "special historical significance of the property", a status lower than that of an Asset of Cultural Interest, which was what the Association requested. However, this measure failed to stop Velintonia's decline.

A refuge for poets

Vicente Aleixandre, one of the most prominent authors of the generation of '27,

lived for 60 years in this chalet

, from where he wrote most of his work.

During the Civil War,

the house was bombed

, although it was not completely destroyed and the writer had to move with his family to his uncles' property on Españoleto Street.

In 1940, the author returned with his sister Conchita to the mansion, located in the former

Parque Metropolitano chalet colony

, where the country's cultural and business elite resided.

Due to his poor health, the Nobel Prize winner hardly left home and dedicated himself to receiving

writers from different eras in

Velintonia

.

Pablo Neruda, José Hierro

, Federico García Lorca, Blas de Otero, Miguel Hernández, Pere Gimferrer, Dámaso Alonso, Jorge Guillén, Rafael Alberti, Luis Rosales, Carlos Bousoño and countless others

paraded

through the residence of the author of

Destruction or Love.

authors.

The house thus became a bubble of freedom in the midst of Francoism and

in the poet's "internal exile"

, a lifeline to which he could hold on to survive.

All that history can now be erased with a stroke of the pen. For this reason, the Association of Friends of Vicente Aleixandre appeals "to the responsibility of all Spaniards, of all citizens who love historical and cultural heritage,

so that no one bids

in such a shameful public auction and it remains deserted, avoiding what no one wanted to avoid".

Standing and left. To right, Medardo Fraile, Claudio Rodríguez, Carlos Bousoño and José Hierro. Sitting, Vicente Aleixandre and Concha Lagos.EM