The Ayala more scathing against Franco and nationalisms

The intellectual journey of Francisco Ayala, who lived for 103 years of a wit awake until shortly before his death, he just let stops without exploring. His letters give an account of the voracity analytical. In addition to condemn nationalism, lets appear a disdain to the general environment in Spain. “I've found things different from what I thought, and not since then better than the image I painted of them,” he advances to Gullon. “For resumirte my impression in one word: depressing”. This crude opinion, what happen next, because the writer is not lacking, the humor and the sarcasm: “as to the prospects... let's not talk. The Republic of the Congo offers a model of what is preparing Frank for the day remotísimo that God wants to remember him.”

“And in terms of prospects... let's not talk. The Republic of the Congo offers a model of what is preparing Frank for the day remotísimo that God wants to remember him” (1960)

They retain many more letters sent by Ayala that which he received; had the habit of not to save them. Appear as recipients Dámaso Alonso, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pedro Salinas or the argentinian Eduardo Mallea, but beyond the big names, the set of letters, which adds to the 600 earlier already digitized, stands out because it transpires that the writer took it very seriously writing. "Granting them as much importance as other media," noted his widow, the emeritus professor of literature at the University of the City of New York Carolyn Richmond. "He was always very aware that a letter drafted could be read in the future; that it was not only a personal letter, but that was going to happen to the story."

Criticism of Franco and the opposition

In his tirades against the regime warns Ayala, yes, shy advances in freedoms in the aftermath of the franco regime. Occurs in 1967, when he goes to visit Spain and share again with Gullon his impressions: "does the freedom of expression (freedom conditioned, of course) in appreciable extent, but less than what would have been expected". At the time in despair, because you do not see the chance of any strong front to the dictatorship: "The only real opposition seems to be the of the cures. On the other hand, it turns out that, with the new possibilities of expression, the small group is monarchical that is spokesperson for Abc has begun to act very aggressively [...] reactionary opposition, to the right of the regime as it now is [...] cave dwellers who can no longer look back to Rome since the Pope [Paul VI] has been done to them, crypto-communist".

democratic Future

The tone hopeless of some of the letters contrasts with his prediction of a democratic future that the author had collected in his book Spain, to the date of 1965, which could not be sold in the country until after the death of Franco: "my Friends [...] reacted against the book in the sense of accusing me that I was too optimistic because I saw a way towards an opening of democratic character, and in that time many [of them] they thought that it was excessive optimism," he said, already in 1976.

do Not absolve of responsibility those who, points out, would have to fly a successful democratic outcome –and understood– republican to the dictatorship that emerged from the Civil War: "The absurdity of the case is that our liberal friends, anti-franco, ex-republicans, and to ex-exiles [sic] are making the game to that group [of the royalists] in the vain hope that the monarchy would take the cat to the water, very deluded. They think that the implementation of this regime is inevitable Jestbet (and what will be, if not created alternatives, when God will call the Warlord to his bosom), [...] what happens is that people have desentrenado completely, and live within the approaches offered by the regime, without the minor's own initiative".

That Spain's self-indulgent Franco is also reflected in the health of the literature of the time. The listens and the diagnosed without muffler Ayala: "I see the disability in which they are found [Spanish writers] to reflect everything that has no immediate relation with our village peninsula."

expand photo Postcard of 1960 submitted by Ayala and his first wife, Nina Silva, to the Spanish Angel of the River, and wife. The Hispanic Society of America / FFA

If you have ever had, Ayala, intellectual polymath, has shaken the hair of the dehesa during their years in Berlin, in Prague, in Buenos Aires, in New York. Also in Puerto Rico, one of their destinations in the exile ("Dear Damaso: As the world is small today, I write to you now from Puerto Rico," he says when she resumes contact with the writer from madrid). There is resolved against the aldeanismo of an island that is torn between independence and integration in the united States. "The adoption of the nationalistic attitude in a community as small as this you need to derive quickly towards the grotesque", he commented in 1955, when governor of the island, Luis Muñoz Marín. The writer denuesta the patriotic exaltation that the university experience and what he calls his "arsenal ideological": "to Characterize it is easy: one of the common places of nationalism, so thumbed and worn in all parts; supervaloración of all that, for better or worse, is a product of the earth; idealization intransigent of the past, the typical; xenophobia, etc, etc".

“Our liberal friends, anti-franco, ex-republicans, and to ex-exiles [...] think that the implementation of this scheme [the monarchy] is inevitable. [...] People have desentrenado completely, and live within the approaches offered by the regime, without the minor's own initiative" (1967)

Since Puerto Rico is complaining of a few fiery speeches patriotic accusing also in Spain. "Perhaps I exaggerate on this, but I must confess that the pride national it seems to me one of the passions more odious; and in my native country we had to suffer, so much so that a lot of people gave us some nausea already, until you hear the name of the Catholic Kings".

there Are many cards to spread

Between that are added now to the epistolary digital is the most ancient conserved: in 1924, a Ayala of only 18 years shows his admiration for the author of theatre and zarzuelas Guillermo Fernández-Shaw. In addition to the candor of a young man who aspires to publish one day (and it was precisely Fernández-Shaw who helped him to it a year later in his first novel, a Tragicomedy of a man without spirit), the letter is unusual because it is one of the few written of his fist and letter, in place of the usual typewriter.

expand photo Letter of Ayala to his 18 years in the theatre author Guillermo Fernández-Shaw (1924). Fundación Juan March / FFA

The work of collecting the letters scattered has been overseen by the director the Fundación Francisco Ayala, Manuel Gomez Ros, who says that the nearly thousand letters scanned is only a small part of the huge production; its volume must, no one knows. "Surely what is preserved is not the tenth part of the total" estimates.

so far, the foundation has only published the correspondence that begins before the death of Franco, but it already has by other that ensures Gómez Ros, will be disseminated later. All in all, among them there will not be any of the letters more personal that Ayala sent his family, as his wife Carolyn, who wants to preserve the desire of the writer. Of him and of his eagerness epistolary remember two maxims: "The correspondence is a literary genre, and also always said that the true reality is the literature".

A acid humour and quaint Francisco Ayala, Ricardo Gullon in Puerto Rico in the fifties. FFA

The historian of literature and professor emeritus of the University of Zaragoza José-Carlos Mainer sees in the mail an extension of the Ayala essayist: "he Is a great writer of letters, short and direct because it almost always inspires a clarification, an opinion, or a replica, the more that confidence sentimental. As their essays, have the packing of rhetoric that, in the end, he bonus veren siteler loved it so much, and the sense of humor sometimes something traditional, the other more vitriolic, which was also yours in your essays or newspaper or in their tales of humor".