“Then I started to understand that time never gains, and that never is lost, that life is spent, simply.”
She wrote it in ‘Malena is not a tango name’.
And as everything that hosts a truth, it ends up being true.
Almudena Grandes died yesterday at her house from Madrid at 61.
Cancer glared to one of the most respected, more beloved, better literary texture.
Room 17 of the Peace Tankers (three songs) was the penultimate stop before tomorrow’s burial in the Civil Cemetery of Madrid, where three presidents of the II Republic, where Pio Baroja, where Grimau, where Pablo Iglesias (founder of the PSOE
), where Dolores Ibarruri, where Marcelino Camacho.
The left was the place of her and the republicanism the faith of her.
The River of the people began to reach the tanning at 11.00, where the family of the author of ‘the difficult years’ resisted the first hit of absence. Friends, politicians, readers, colleagues, writers and writers … The president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, came among the first: “His intellectual contribution of her has made our country a better place, with which he was so committed”, He commented. The poet Luis García Montero, husband of Almudena Grande, received him at the wake. Minutes before the president of the congress, Meritxell Batet had come out; And shortly after the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta arrived. The tourism counselor of the Community of Madrid, also approached three edges; Like the general secretary of CCOO, UNADO; And the defender of the people, Angel Gabilondo. As well as the State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, next to Baltasar Garzón. Something later the former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero arrived. Also the General Secretary of UNIDA can, Ione Belarra. And the Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños; the outdoor, José Manuel Albares; and the exvoicepressure, Carmen Calvo.
Friends also surrendered this ultimate tribute in small groups along with the family of writer: their children, their sister and brothers, their uncles … The Chus Visor editors, Miguel García Sánchez and Angeles Aguilera;
Writers Marta Sanz, Domingo Villar, Ian Gibson and Benjamín Prado.
Journalist Montserrat Domínguez.
Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel.
The gallerist Álvaro Alcázar.
Film directors Mariano Barroso, Charly Arnaiz and Alberto Ortega.
The poets Luis Muñoz, Raquel Lanseros, Fernando Valverde, José Ramón Ripoll, Joaquín Pérez Azatre, Martín López Vega (Director of Cabinet of Director of the Instituto Cervantes), Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga, Diego Doncel … A tribe Displaying and accomplice summoned around
A cold
The conversations crossed to echinate almost always in a common space: Almudena. The hedonistic power of her, the joy of her, her status as a magnet of a thousand different people, the fear of her also when the disease finally taught the claws. And the desire to win. In the last week she left the papers prepared. A couple of days ago the editor of it in Tusquets, Juan Cerezo, was in the house of Ella de Madrid. She gave him instructions for the last novel of the Saga in March, episodes of an endless war, about to culminate with the last delivery, Mariano at the Bidasoa, which topped as the disease progressed. “He gave instructions on when he should be published, how to do it and where was the last chapter, because she always wrote the first version in a notebook and then passed the text already with the necessary corrections to the computer, he maintained strength until the end, up to the Last day to organize everything that involves his great literary project, “says a friend of the author.
The cries came out, but someone recalled that one of the explosion engines of his life (next to the civic commitment) was the defense and contagion of the hedonism: “Joy made me strong because he taught me that there is no work, no effort
, no blame, no problems, or lawsuits, not even mistakes that it does not deserve to face when the goal, at last, is joy, “he wrote.
Today, for a while among his own, he has been abolished.
Losing a panic friend.
That’s how it is.
And it is what I also huddled yesterday as a cursed cramp in the tanning of peace.
The joy quickly disappeared on Saturday around five o’clock in the afternoon in dozens of intimate, in hundreds of acquaintances, in thousands of readers.
A news ran through the mobiles as a Tagus: “Large Almudena has died.”
There will be no more dinners, more equal toemeters, more bookmarks, more laughter that explode in this way against the atmosphere, inventing joy for others.
“But there is the work of him,” someone said.
There are the novels, the articles, the stories, the words, which soften the vertigo of the distance.
At 15.00, in the tanning of peace there was a tail of people with pain to embrace Luis in room 17. The afternoon remains.
There is silence.
Almudena is, who taught us to remember.