It was not eleven in the morning and in the civil cemetery of Almudena in Madrid some books were already waving like flags. At 12 noon, the body of Almudena Grandes (who died last Saturday at the age of 61) was expected to arrive, accompanied by her family. But long before, around the niche that the writer had reserved a long time ago, readers, friends, colleagues were already gambling … All those who have been orphaned by her words.

Shortly before, the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and a large representation of the Executive, with the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, and the ministers María Jesús Montero and Irene Montero, as well as the general secretary of Workers’ Commissions, Unai Sordo. All of them were joined in the front rows by their widower, the poet Luis García Montero, and their three children.

They were sheltered by a crowd that had previously been reading paragraphs of their works at random, summoned since yesterday Sunday by social networks to pay a final tribute. The applause scattered across areas between the niches of a space where writers such as Pío Baroja, three presidents of the First Republic, such as Estanislao Figueras, Francisco Pi y Margall or Nicolás Salmerón, rest together with founding members of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. like Francisco Giner de los Ríos and Gumersindo de Azcárate, and some suicides who were denied a Christian burial. All of them are now joined by the writer from Madrid, who tried to dignify the place of the defeated and lived success and glory in life without rising, attached to the earth and joy, oblivious to the unreasonableness of rancor, always in search of reconciliation .

Almudena Grandes knew how to expand the smallest dimensions of everyday life, but she also knew the importance of symbols. Surely he imagined that at his funeral some would carry the Republican flag and others, scarves from Atlético de Madrid, the club of his loves. The forecasts did not fail. All of this defined her. There were also chants and slogans. From Grândola, a morena village, hymn of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, to The InternationalWhoever wanted to join some sones or others, there was for everyone. Even one of our Father, prayed at the foot of the grave, that she had celebrated without complexes in a spontaneous liturgy full of emotion in which crying and hugs prevailed.

Some accurate cries could summarize what during the last stage of his literary career he pursued: “There is no democracy without memory!”, Some clamored. Before García Montero deposited a book of poems in his coffin, Ana Belén read For a skirt of bananas, a story by the writer in which she described the difficulty of fitting certain pieces into a girl’s gaze. Already soon, Almudena Grandes had understood, she wrote, “that progress is not a straight line.” And that the fact of seeing a naked woman on a stage like Joséphine Baker scandalized twice the generations closer to her than those of her grandmother. Against that world turned upside down, he soon knew that he had to act with his writing to find, if possible, the logic of progress and harmony.

So it was applied with art to accelerate the rediscovery of modernity and many have recognized it as well while others, incessantly, will blame it in their face. After the story read by Ana Belén, the actor Miguel del Arco intoned Absence is a form of winter, one of the poems that García Montero dedicated to his wife: “Well, I forget everything if I have to learn to remember you …”.

His favourite song

The sadness subsided later, when from the speakers sounded Wedding night, his favorite song by Joaquín Sabina in duet with Chavela Vargas. The singer listened to her sitting down, broken by the pain of a too early farewell. Thus, suddenly, the death of Almudena Grandes has shaken a territory that we understand better now, when we discover it crumbled between the cartography of its stories and the skin of its characters. He has left too early in a country that is almost always late for the fairest recognitions. However, he has bequeathed a good handful of substantial works in which, on board of historical rigor, emotion and contradictions between nearby and distant universes also navigate.

In the hands of her readers the author’s titles were hoisted: de The ages of Lulu a The frozen heart, from Kisses on bread a Malena is a tango name, as well as all those belonging to the series Episodes of an endless war, of the first of them, Agnes and joy, a Frankenstein’s mother, the last novel he published in 2020. In the raised arms of his faithful, the volumes were paper banners, cellulose universes, healthier and more profitable than many fabrics.

When the coffin entered the niche, all the books were raised. A final applause also flew and his body was at peace accompanied by that minimal representation of a Spain that has had a hard time finding its own place. There, inside the civil cemetery, where the same prayers and verses, songs and prose that, like that of Almudena Grandes, do justice to the disinherited.