Spanish writer Almudena Grandes, novelist and journalist, died Saturday, November 27 of cancer at the age of 61. This leftist, republican woman was a famous daily columnist El País. In 2018, she received the Premio nacional de Narrativa, one of the most important literary awards in Spain.
With our correspondent in Madrid, Francois Musseau
Almudena Grandes described herself as a republican, leftist and anticlerical woman. All her life, she has never denied having been branded with a hot iron by the civil war, which tore Spain between 1936 and 1939.
By her family and her ancestry, she was one of the losers, of the “reds”, of the “republicans”, of all those who were defeated by General Franco, and who were assassinated, forced into exile or who continued to live. , but in the shade and resistance.
►RFI archive: The paths of the Retirada (2017)
All Almudena Grande’s literary work is nourished by this conflict, and especially its consequences, of the post-war period in Spain, from the 1940s and 1950s.
This is the case with his very famous novel, El corazón helado, (The frozen heart), which tells the intertwined story of two families during the 20th century.
“Si Almudena te quería tenías la impresión de estar a salvo. Su afecto era algo casi material que se levantaba ante ti como un muro que te protegía de las inclemencias de la vida” Por @PepaBueno https://t.co/tdp5u3RYUX
– El País Cultura (@elpais_cultura) November 28, 2021
She herself said that to succeed in a novel, you have to strike a skilful balance between creative freedom and historical truth. She also achieved this with the series Episodios de una guerra interminable (Episodes of a never-ending war), a historical fresco in which republican families are the protagonists.
This work had been hailed by critics, but also by the public, since it had up to 1.3 million readers. Almudena Grandes leaves a great void in Spain, especially in this left-wing and republican Spain.
►RFI archive: Spaniards greet the ephemeral Catalan Republic (2017)