All in mourning in Redonda, the king has died

From left to right, Javier Marías, Mario Vargas Llosa and Arturo Pérez-Reverte, in Santillana del Mar (Cantabria), in 2008.Pablo Hojas

In rare synchrony with the death of the British queen, our king dies: Javier, monarch of the Kingdom of Redonda, an imaginary place of fantasy, of books and above all of friendship.

A place where, together with the many great peers of the Kingdom,

and other important people, you could sneak in with a title as discreet but phenomenal as "chief scout or almasy", specially created by our lord with a nice wink for who signs these lines.

Refined and demanding editor from the seal of his kingdom, Javier Marías built book after book a collection in which the only guide was his taste and the desire to share with others the titles that excited him and had contributed to his readership.

We also owe him, among many things, for having left us that inheritance.

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Javier Marías, key writer of Spanish literature, dies

To those who did not know Javier Marías personally, he might seem like a very cultured, elegant and reserved person, a

literary

But, without a doubt being that, up close he was someone extraordinarily warm and friendly, with a real gift for friendship.

He liked to communicate by letter, the old-fashioned way (many times through Mercedes, his messenger): corresponding with him was a privileged window into a spirit of splendid sensitivity and brilliance, with a touch of sweet melancholy and soft humor;

it was impossible to live up to it, of course, like exchanging correspondence with Madame de Staël.

And he exercised that strange quality of affection that is to transmit it modestly, without fanfare, as if giving his love was —like giving imaginary titles— the most natural thing in the world.

Their friendship was at the same time a delicate filigree, as precious as their writing, and could be expressed in the most varied ways: a call (the last, paradoxically, of consolation), a postcard, a few lines suddenly about the Mau Mau;

giving you a DVD of a rare movie about the abominable snowman, a little book about the Salamander society of writers in Egypt in the 1940s, an original edition of the memoirs of General Custer's wife or the novels of the aviator Biggles , or the English auction catalogs of adventure or travel works (he was fascinated by adventurers and travelers).

Generous, attentive to detail, he committed himself like no other in a big way: he put on his armor and donned paladin when he believed a friend needed to be defended.

There he was able to face everyone and break his chest when he considered it fair.

In this, in exercising the currently so unusual virtue of loyalty, he shared, in his own way, more like a foil or rapier stick than a cuirassier's saber, the way of acting of his good friend Arturo Pérez-Reverte, today more alone in Zinderneuf.

They may seem like two very different people from the outside, Javier and Arturo (add Agustín Díaz Yanes to the couple until they formed a trio, together they formed a group like the

as the presenter described them as Gunga Din of an act in the who were together at the Eñe festival in 2017), but they were united by many things, in the small and in the big.

The little soldiers, collecting, a passion for books and adventure movies, a certain quixotism against the inexorable windmills of our time.

Also the boredom with the new forms of intransigence, which Javier, the undisputed champion of freedom and intelligence (it came from series, from his family), never stopped fighting, even though he knew that many times it was a sterile fight that also got him into trouble. messes

It is curious that someone who has always been so interested in spies, lies and treason would think so straight.

But he was superior to his forces: stupidity and fanaticism exasperated him and made him throw himself into the ring.

Thus, to give an example, he did not stop censuring his "almost Nobel" colleague like him Ngugi wa Thiong'o for the taunts that the Kenyan launched against people he valued like Joseph Conrad or Nicholas Monsarrat.

Let them not touch them.

He was never afraid of being politically incorrect when it came to being honest with himself.

There was something in Javier Marías of his favorite character, Captain Thunder, a paladin he admired;

like him, he had a Sigrid, Carme, with whom he shared so many things, including books, trips, dreams of adventures, and friends.

It will be difficult for all of us to get used to the idea that Javier will no longer be there.

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