Almudena Grandes will have a street in Madrid but PP, Cs and Vox vote against her being named Favorite Daughter

The Madrid writer Almudena Grandes, who died this past Saturday in the capital at the age of 61, will give a name to a street in Madrid, has approved this Tuesday the plenary session of the city with the votes in favor of all the groups except for Vox. It has also been approved, through an urgent motion by Recupera Madrid and with the same votes, that a tribute be paid to him. It has not prospered, however, that she is named Favorite Daughter or dedicate her name to a library (they have voted against PP, Cs and Vox).

Madrileña del 60, Almudena Grandes became known in 1989 with ‘The ages of Lulú’, a work that won the Erotic Novel Prize La Sonrisa Vertical, in the Tusquets publishing house, and that obtained the unanimous applause of critics and public . She was followed by ‘Te Llamaé Fridays’ and it was ‘Malena es un nombre de tango’, her third novel, which established her as one of the great writers of Spanish literature.

‘Atlas of human geography’, ‘The difficult airs’, ‘Cardboard castles’, ‘The frozen heart’ and ‘The kisses in the bread’, together with the volumes of stories ‘Models of women’ and ‘Passage stations’ , made it one of the most consolidated names and with the greatest international projection in contemporary Spanish literature. ‘The Frozen Heart’ was a turning point in his career.

From there, he was fully introduced to the ‘Episodes of an Endless War’, a literary project that, following the model of Benito Pérez Galdós in his Episodes, wanted to narrate the history of those who lost the Civil War, interspersing historical facts with events fictionalized. In 2010 she published the first volume of the series, ‘Inés y la feliz’, which won the Madrid Critics’ Prize, the Elena Poniatowska Ibero-American Novel Prize and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.

It was followed by ‘Julio Verne’s reader’ (2012), ‘Manolita’s three weddings’ (2014), ‘Doctor García’s patients’ (2017; National Narrative Award) and ‘Frankenstein’s mother’ (2020). The sixth volume that closes the series is ‘Mariano en el Bidasoa’. Republican, feminist and committed to democratic values ​​and the memory of the country, Almudena Grandes won numerous awards, such as La Sonrisa Vertical, the Lara Foundation award, the Madrid Booksellers award and the Seville award, the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the Rapallo Carige and the Prix Mediterranée.

This recognition comes three days after the death of the writer, 2018 National Narrative Prize, who always boasted of the benefits of the capital and valued the virtues of the Villa and Court, one more protagonist in all her novels. The Plaza de la Guardia de Corps, Calle Manuela Malasaña, Plaza de Castilla or the Almudena cemetery are some of the Madrid locations that Grandes placed on the maps of his novels. “If I marked on a map of the city all the houses in which I have lived, the result would be an almost perfect circle. Now I live in Larra street, in the same neighborhood where my great-grandfather settled when he arrived in Madrid,” he explained about its roots.

“When I was little, what I liked the most in the world was to come with my mother to shop in the Center. I lived next to the Bilbao roundabout, my paternal grandparents on Calle de Fuencarral, my paternal ones in Lope de Vega, in front of the Trinitarias … my whole life was spent in the Centro district, but for me the center was a heart with Puerta del Sol, Calle Mayor, Calle Arenal, Gran Vía and Plaza Mayor, “he said. It was in 2018, during the reading of the proclamation of the San Isidro festivities, where Grandes, married to the poet Luis García Montero, made clear her love and defense of the city of Madrid with the reading of a clear tribute to the city that she saw her being born, growing up and becoming a writer.

“Like a generous and generous fairy godmother, Madrid gives her children two gifts at the moment of their birth. One is water, the incomparable delight of drinking directly from the tap. The other is anonymity. Because in this commoner village, what he is proud of his condition as much or more than other of his old and aristocratic coats of arms, nobody is more than nobody “, Grandes began from the balcony of the House of the Villa, in the homonymous square.

Grandes described Madrid as “a mysteriously ordered chaos, the town that has founded itself behind the back of the Palace, and that is not distinguished, nor does it need to be” and later lamented that “Madrid is a city that is loved little, much less than it should. ” He stressed during the reading of the proclamation that “it is a very beautiful city, an immense city, with large buildings, with wide avenues, with old parks and many trees, and yet the famous nonsense of the secarral and the poblachón continues to be heard daily. manchego “.

“Every day someone makes fun of the Manzanares because they do not understand anything. That the true river of Madrid is La Castellana. That its supreme virtue is speed. That its most valuable heritage is its resistant spirit, the fierce determination with which it is it clings to life even in the worst moments, which we have had, and there have been many, and very bad, “he explained to those gathered there. “Capital of pain, capital of glory, this is the city that never stops, a survivor capable of being reborn again and again from its own ashes,” he said.