Almudena Grandes: an illustrated life

Aroa Moreno (Madrid, 43 years old) says that she is “zero mythomaniac,” and perhaps that is why, she reflects on the phone, she does not keep any photos with Almudena Grandes (Madrid, 1960-2021).

What she did treasure was the memory of the call that the author of

The Frozen Heart

made her in December 2017 to inform her that she had won the Ojo Crítico award, of which Grandes was part of the jury.

She “she told me: 'The important thing is not the prize, Aroa, it is the book.'

He repeated that to me many times later.

'The important thing is the books,' she writes at the start of

Almudena.

A biography

(Lumen).

And that advice that Grandes spontaneously and generously gave him did not fall on deaf ears by any means: it is at the heart, in the substance and in the form, of the illustrated book that Aroa Moreno has made with Ana Jarén (Seville, 38 years old).

The authors present the new volume today, Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Alberti Bookstore in Madrid, accompanied by Pepa Bueno, director of EL PAÍS, and the writer and journalist of this same newspaper, Berna González Harbour.

“I had not thanked Almudena, nor had I asked her any questions, and that is why I decided to write this book.

When I published

The Communist's Daughter

seven years ago, she highly recommended it and she sent me a WhatsApp message in which she told me 'thank you for your company since your youth,' explains Moreno.

She has not tried to write an in-depth biography, she clarifies: “It has only been two years since his death, it is not the time to do that type of review nor is it what I set out to do.

It is still time for tribute.

A biography goes through every corner and I am not the person to do it, another job is required.”

The book

Almudena

has something of a living

collage

, where text, drawings, stories and voices mix to create a tapestry that speaks of the creative world and the writer who inhabited it, while offering a careful reading of her work.

“Women have always been at the center of her work,” she observes.

Aroa Moreno from the beginning imagined this profile as an illustrated book.

The work arose from the friendship that she established with Almudena in the last years of her life and that unites her with the artist Ana Jarén.

And Almudena's friends tour the pages of the new book: Eduardo Mendicutti, her inseparable accomplice since he won the Vertical Smile award in 1989;

the filmmaker Azucena Rodríguez

The blonde;

Ángeles Aguilera, Rosana Torres, Joaquín Sabina, Benjamín Prado, Felipe Benítez Reyes, Chus Visor, and the group of faithful

Almudenos

who shared the summers together in Rota.

Cover of the book 'Almudena.

A biography' (Lumen), by Aroa Moreno and Ana Jarén.

“We had lunch one day and I told Aroa that my editor Lola Albornoz proposed that I write a book. We had been wanting to collaborate together for a long time, but we didn't see a way to do it.

That day we talked about Almudena and we thought about it right there,” says Ana Jarén when reconstructing the genesis of

Almudena

.

The result is a book as varied as life itself, in which there is space for the recipe for squid in its ink, to explain his passion for Atlético de Madrid, for his role as a columnist in the pages of EL PAÍS, for anecdotes —like the call that Gloria Fuertes made to Luis García Montero to ask him if he was with the writer and share with him that she was also attracted to him— and for childhood memories, for example, in Becerril de la Sierra.

“Almudena had her first motorcycle there, a Vespino with a basket,

as a girl

, they tell me.

When she debuted it, it took her a hundred meters to fall.

“She was a terrible driver, her brothers remember,” she says in one of the chapters.

The thread that connects the story is the passion for telling and for literature that drove Almudena Grandes' work.

The pitfalls she faced and the powerful connection she established with her audience.

In the chapter titled 'Being a writer in the nineties', Moreno remembers the questions she was asked on television shows: “I find in the RTVE archive a conversation on the program

Cerca de ti

from 1994, to which Almudena attended after the publication Malena

is a tango name

.

Was the novel discussed there?

Nothing.

What was talked about is the author's physique, the extra or less kilos, her attributes.

Almudena Grandes in the Barceló Market, an illustration by Ana Jarén included in the book 'Almudena.

A biography' (Lumen), by Aroa Moreno and Ana Jarén.

Jarén's work as an illustrator escapes from comics and tends towards albums.

Through family photos she has created new colorful images, in some cases she is a faithful reproduction of the original image, in others she adds details and has let her “imagination fly.”

Her drawings will be exhibited at the Tipos Infames bookstore starting tomorrow, Friday, March 1.

Almudena's life, her childhood in Chamberí and in Parque de las Avenidas, her nights of youth outings and teenage summers in Becerril become intertwined with the history of her books, her rise as a writer and her evolution.

Aroa Moreno has interviewed family and friends and in the warm and multifaceted portrait that she constructs remains a kind of diary of the process of writing the illustrated book.

“What worried me was whether the people who have known Almudena would recognize her.

She wanted to tell how a writer is forged, but also her domestic life, her militancy in optimism, her joy.

Almudena was transparent in her columns and collaborations in the press, we knew what she thought.

For this reason, she wanted to collect other facets, what the family told me,” notes the author.

What facet does she think she was the most unknown about?

“Almudena's identity as a mother and as her daughter, also her manias and routines in her writing.

“ She felt like a

literary

worker .”

He says that he has asked himself many times while working on the book what Almudena would think of this, and in the end he also decided to follow her advice: “When he wrote the novels of

Episodes of an Endless War

he started from a historical fact and maintained a loyalty to the spirit of what happened, that way it was not blocked and could be free.

"I have wanted to remain loyal to Almudena without giving up my freedom."

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