The eternal battle for Alberti: García Montero brings charges against the widow and Anna Caball treats him as a “political commissar”

The memoirs of María Asuncin Mateo awaken the wounds between the poet’s friends and his last wife.

• Luis García Montero “My challenge now is to not let personal pain embitter me.”
• “The Weapons and the Letters” extended Edition

The behavior during the war and the exile as well as the affection and loyalty of Rafael Alberti in the last ten years of his life are two controversial topics that regularly appear and disappear again in public discussion. This fall, the poet’s case was reopened with the publication of My life with Alberti (Almuzara, 2023), the book in which Assumption of Mary Matthew chronicles their nine years of marriage between 1990 and 1999. The supplement was published last week Babelia From the newspaper The passport published a review of the work signed by Anna Caball, a biography of Francisco Umbral, Carmen Laforet and Concepción Arenal, and other books, and was awarded the National History Award. The review was laudatory, compensating for Mateo, who was degraded during her years with Alberti and after his death by the poet’s former friends who censored their marriage, lost her privacy or part of it in that decade, and who, after her death, criticized the Managing Alberti’s legacy.

“For many years I have been insulted by ‘the widowers emeritus’ of Alberti,” said Mateo in an interview published by EL MUNDO in the publication of his story. And then he identified them widower: “Among others, Luis Garca Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute, Benjamin Prado, Eduardo Medicutti and Luis Muoz. […]. The madness went so far that he revealed what Rafael received after his death an inheritance of 3,000 million pesetasalthough in reality there was hardly any money in the bank.

There was an answer and it was early. Caball’s review appeared on Saturday, October 21st. On Tuesday 24, Luis García Montero published an article entitled Manipulated feminism, also in The passport. “None of those attacked had to react for everyone who has lived and known the matter knows very well who she is.“ writes García Montero in his first paragraph. The Granada poet, director of the Cervantes Institute, says of Mateo that he is “a figure who denies himself” and lists his main complaints against her.

First, while the poet was still alive, his wife “privatized” the foundation that bears his name and managed his inheritance negligently, or perhaps worse, according to García Montero: “The patrons of the foundation.” We didn’t want to get into a debate with old Alberti, so we left the manuscripts and Picassos to his new wife and we dissolved the foundation.” The second complaint: Mateo conspired to have the poet omitted from his memoirs. The Lost Grove, the mentions of friends who were not helpful to him, according to a statement from editor Mario Muchnik. In a text from 2010, Benjamn Prado already published the list of those eliminated: “Luis García Montero and me we are crossed out“, also Teresa Alberti, sometimes her daughter Aitana, and in this case new enemy consorts like Almudena Grandes or Pedro Guerra.”

And the third accusation: Mateo would have handed over the memory administration to Gonzalo Santonja, a former member of the PCE (Santonja met Alberti through the party), who would have enabled the Popular Party to symbolically appropriate the poet’s name through a visit from José Mara Aznar. “Santonja runs to the right [va]nothing less than from ETA to Vox”, writes García Montero. Santonja’s name illustrates the thesis of the poet from Granada, which links Caball’s criticism to the extreme right, which “perverts the values ​​of feminism and the fight for equality at the expense of manipulating events that ridicule a just and appropriate cause of the progressive mentality make.” “.

Anna Caball responded to Garca Montero’s article in Note with a text title Reply to Luis Garca Montero. A summary: Caball calls García Montero the “untouchable official poet of the Spanish Left” and a “political commissar” and defends that María Asuncin Mateo’s reparation is an act of feminism because she defends a woman who has been disqualified and humiliated The classic stereotypes of sexism: the fatal widow, the careerist, the hustler… To justify himself, Caball takes Line 13, odda novel by García Montero and Felipe Bentez Reyes (1996) that portrays an award-winning poet named Bertematti and his wife, an “idiot, such a lady who always carries the old man from one place to another, if I leave you the pictures .”, What if I didn’t give it to you, what if Bertematti’s reputation was damaged? What if you don’t give her the treatment and money she deserves, and in the meantime she gives free blowjobs in the theaters?.

Caball refers to other arguments of García Montero: he refutes with witness statements Muchnik’s version, with which Mateo led Alberti to delete some names from his lost grove and the idea that the poet turned to the PP to receive Jos Mara Aznar, prompted and deceived by his wife. Caball remembers this García Montero also received Aznar at Federico García Lorca’s house at that time and that the Alberti of the transition always had an attitude of reconciliation.

In his interview in El MUNDO, Mateo also pointed out these misunderstandings: “This country has a short memory. Some forget that when Rafael returned to Spain he said: ‘I left with a closed fist and as a sign I come back with an open hand.’ of harmony.” So Aznar was in opposition. It was 1996. What is not said is that the visit of Felipe Gonzalez, President of the Government, but the assassination of Toms and Valiente by ETA prevented him from doing so at the time. And it couldn’t be any more. Rafael’s political commitment remained unchanged until the end, across regimes that failed him in the protection of the ideology he defended. Rafael was only sectarian when he had to be: in the civil war.

Since his death in 1999, there have been ongoing discussions about Alberti’s memory. In 2010, Benjamn Prado, another friend whom María Asuncin Mateo refers to critically in her book, published another article in El Pas. On the hunt for the red poet, in which he reproached the poet’s infamous memory in history books and literary works:. At that moment they agreed Works by Ignacio Martnez de Pisn, Andrés Trapiello and Antonio Muoz Molina and a biography by Miguel Hernndez (by Jos Luis Ferris) which critically describe Alberti’s behavior during the civil war. Andrés Trapiello responded to this article with another title The human condition and Prado ended the discussion with a letter to the director of The passport in which he simply said that Trapiello had “no idea.”