"Let's see what Mercedes says"

Mercedes Barcha, in an image from 2007.ALEJANDRA VEGA / AFP

The Feduchi of Barcelona (Luis Feduchi and Leticia Escario, both psychoanalysts) were leaving a dinner in which there was a couple that turned out to be Gabo and Mercedes. The doctors had cars and Gabo was not yet (1967) the most famous of the writers in Spanish, so they took them wherever they wanted.

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Thus protected, they met for lunch the next day at the home of these hosts. A friendship forever. Gabo and Luis did verse jousting "to see who knew more"; Leticia spoke with her "about what two close friends talk about, until the 12th of this month, my birthday ... She seemed very happy, and now we are all sad." She has a memory full of “her intelligence, the good sense that always led her to say the last word”. "Gabo was silent 'to see what Mercedes says."

In that conversation, La Gaba was already connected to a respirator, but (says Jaime Abello, the director of the Gabo Foundation) “she was also connected to the whole world through the iPad”. Like Carmen Balcells, who brought together these friendships, she was someone who, without writing a line, most influenced the writing of the 20th century, in the case of the agent over all her pupils and in that of Mercedes because without her Gabo would not have known what do.

"She seemed authoritative," says Abello, "but suddenly she was laughing." "Tranquility imposed its law, which Gabo attended." José Luis Fajardo, a Spanish painter, was, with his wife, Piluca Navarro, a friend of both. “We were at his house in Havana. And Fidel was coming. She put order in their conversations and in their fights ... La Gaba said things that seemed like a novel about her husband. She regretted having jealously guarded her grandmother's trousseau. When he pawned it to send the manuscript of One Hundred Years ... they told him that that treasure was worth zero pesos. "

"He was gigantic," says his granddaughter Emilia García Elizondo, actress, 30 years old. “It was my biggest refuge. She taught me strength, caring for the people she loved and the elegance with which she led life. " One night, already deteriorated, Gabo wanted to help at home, and Mercedes asked him to find the ice. The task done, the placet waited. La Gaba gave him the smile she had for him at least since their common childhood.