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| Francisco Umbral (second from right) at a party. From left to right, Miguel Delibes, Regidor, De la Torre, González, Francisco Umbral, J. Lozano, Emilio Salcedo, in the center |
Every great city to be, you need great writers, like artists, intellectuals and filmmakers are those who make it big. In the case of Madrid, Francisco Umbral has been one of the most prominent. His work, like the few novelists and writers, has placed our city on top of English literature in the second half of the twentieth century. His ties to Madrid, rather than the fact of being born into it, is the result of an infatuation, a stormy relationship in which ecstasy lived explosions of temper.
journalism, to which he devoted the last 50 years of his life, was the passion he went to Madrid. Since the night I arrived at Café Gijón, exemplified threshold model outside Madrid, which comes from all over Spain and feels and performs Madrid as such from day one.
is through the profession as a city known that, under the official culture, lives another rich, plural and diverse that stands out and awakens in the darkness of the gatherings, shaking and break the false weighing about Madrid. Strengthens and expands the time that mutual dependence, because there comes a time when Madrid threshold needs to understand itself, and no doubt sought in their columns and articles.
Madrid
and a muse is somewhat peculiar, which is not enough to be a source inspiration. Also awaiting the response of the addressee, the confirmation of the charm it has on one of his most ardent fans, but also more demanding. Because, in his chronicles, that after living in the most important pages of many newspapers, since 1990 occupied the last page of El Mundo, emerges the odd reproach.
Threshold looking for stories in a cosmopolitan city whose image he helped to build. Just a reflection awake, honest and stripped of any bias, as was yours, could find that comment, this rumor or that meeting that, after going through his mind, became an article full of the essence of the city itself.
threshold was a master of alchemy, the science of transmuting matter, which he applied in each of the sentences he devoted to this city. On one occasion I asked him to come to the Metro, and there made a speech full of nostalgia about the girls "espigaditas and playlists" that went to their affairs as they read his columns in the ground, paying attention, once again, the human landscape before that the technical marvel. Then I realized that threshold perfectly understood the meaning of what we were doing, and if the Metro was for a text so full of life, then we were on track.
Francisco Umbral dies With the last great chronicler of the social, cultural and political life of Madrid, which has maintained a consistent look for decades, always controversial and never indifferent. Despite the move in the literary and political, his was never a formal review, but alive and criticism, because, as he did in 'The Night Metal', walked the same journey of Max Estrella from palaces to the suburbs, and especially because it was the rapporteur of the pulsating life of men and Women who Madrid. For some threshold could happen in a few pages of the Country Club neighborhood, once forgotten, Manzanares, as it does in 'Trilogy of Madrid'. Not surprisingly, Madrid Threshold conceptualized as 'urban tribe', rather than as a collection of landscapes.
Maybe Madrid did not have a reporter like in the tradition of great literature from Ramón Gómez de la Serna, although it can be said that threshold was rather a sort of second Cansino Assens, ie , the patriarch of letters and salons who saw everything and everything was, which made its literature in view of the people, and mainly based on the people. Therefore, the gap left is huge, despite imitators, because, like all large threshold was a genre in itself, and his anecdotes, his voice, and ultimately, their presence in everyday life City have weighed as much as his works, to the extent they are an inherent part of Madrid today.
ALBERTO RUIZ-GALLARDÓN
World 28/08/2007
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