From rubbing shoulders with Woody Allen to a fugitive from justice: the adventures of Natalio Grueso, the man who invented the Niemeyer Center

“There is no one who knows more about loneliness than me.”

The first sentence, the only autobiographical one, according to his author, Natalio Grueso, of his debut novel,

Solitude

, was premonitory.

Grueso, who turns 54 this year, is missing, fleeing from justice.

The Provincial Court of Oviedo issued an international arrest warrant, on February 15, for the former general director of the Niemeyer Center, in Avilés, to serve eight years in prison.

Solitude

was published in 2014, when his life as a cultural manager had plunged into a hole from which he still does not know if or how he will get out.

In just a few years, he went from rubbing shoulders with friends like Woody Allen or Kevin Spacey, from being able to boast that the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa and the best-seller Paulo Coelho praised him in the promotional strip for his book, to seeing how his professional prestige and reputation were destroyed. Personal life.

The reason, unjustified invoices according to the ruling when he directed the Niemeyer for an amount of 78,819 euros, money that he has already returned.

Who is Natalio Grueso?

Why did that happen?

To try to answer these questions, we must go back to the moment when Grueso, a native of Moreda, a town in the Asturian mining basin, of humble origins, calmly spoken, intelligent, who had studied law and obtained his exam, acquired experience and contacts. working in international organizations (the UN, in New York, and a consulting firm for the EU, in Brussels).

He is bilingual in English and Russian, and speaks Italian and French.

A former collaborator of his at Niemeyer defines him as “a skilled negotiator who got what he set out to do, however, he could be seen at the bar of a cider house reading the newspaper, without making any ostentation.”

His literary agent and friend, Palmira Márquez, describes him as someone “brilliant, generous to those who needed it and always wanting to do things in a big way.”

A person who did sporadic jobs for Niemeyer and was later among those affected in the bankruptcy proceedings confirms his ability to enchant: “Good communicator and ability to capture the attention of his interlocutor.”

More information

International arrest warrant against Natalio Grueso for his management at the Niemeyer Center in Avilés

Signed by the Prince of Asturias Foundation in the early 2000s;

In 2005, when the prestigious awards granted by this institution marked 25 years, he was commissioned to travel the world, visiting personalities who had been distinguished so that they could collaborate in the celebration.

In Rio de Janeiro he contacts one of the great architects of the 20th century, the Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 1989, who tells him that his thing is not words, but buildings, and that is why he decides to give in. free of charge the project of what will be his only work in Spain, the Niemeyer Center.

According to Grueso, that moment was drawn on a napkin, although a source who worked with him at that time says that it was little more than a doodle.

“Natalio liked those effects.”

The then president of Asturias, the socialist Vicente Álvarez Areces, "intrusts him with his experience and contacts with the direction of what is expected to be an icon of Asturias in the world, and who has decided to rise in Avilés," he says in a cafeteria in the Asturian city José María Urbano, journalist who followed the

Niemeyer case

.

Given the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao, Asturias, like other communities, longed to have a powerful flag.

Avilés, the third largest city in Asturias (79,000 inhabitants), had a past linked to the pollution of the steel plant where the Niemeyer River stands today, next to the estuary.

Natalio Grueso, in a trial session, in September 2019. Alberto Morante (EFE)

“While the works are being developed, Areces sends Grueso around the world to publicize the project,” adds Urbano, who at that time was editor-in-chief of

La Voz de Avilés-El Comercio

and today is director of AsturiasInnova+, a project technology dissemination.

The result was an urban island with domes and a tower, all in white, curvilinear concrete.

“I met Natalio when the first stone was laid, I got along with him from the beginning,” adds Urbano.

A former collaborator remembers that the office equipment was bought at Ikea and that Grueso's table had cost 90 euros.

However, the fact that Niemeyer was not in Oviedo aroused misgivings in the Asturian capital.

“The then mayor, Gabino de Lorenzo, of the PP, took tables out into the street to ask for signatures against the project being in Avilés,” says Urbano.

Natalio Grueso and Woody Allen, in Oviedo, in August 2010, when the filmmaker went to Avilés for the Spanish preview of his film 'You will meet the man of your dreams'.JLCereijido (EFE)

Despite this, Nieyemer is a success before opening.

Grueso's agenda ensures that Brad Pitt, passionate about architecture, visits the works in the summer of 2009. How much will he have charged to come? was mused in Avilés.

“Do you think he comes for money?

We will pay for the hotel and invite you to dinner,” Grueso told Urbano.

He was also paid for the transfer by private plane from France.

As one of his collaborators remembers: “Natalio said that we had to make the best cultural center in the world.

“He invented Niemeyer.”

Before the opening, Paco de Lucía, Enrique Morente, the soprano Barbara Hendricks, Kevin Spacey doing his

Richard III

, and Woody Allen performed in Avilés for the preview of one of his films.

It was finally inaugurated in March 2011. However, just two months later, in the regional elections, there was the victory of Foro Asturias, a regionalist party born a few months ago as a split from the PP, led by Francisco Álvarez-Cascos, former vice president. second of the Government with José María Aznar.

“That's where the problems begin,” says Urbano, who was able to see how in Cascos' first act as president he ignored Grueso.

After all, the director of Niemeyer had been promoted by his political rival, Areces.

That day, Urbano points out that Grueso confessed to the then mayor, Pilar Varela, of the PSOE: “They are coming for us.”

In a meeting of the Niemeyer Board of Trustees, made up of the local and regional administration, private companies and the center itself, the accounts of the previous year are reviewed and it is verified that “there is a significant travel budget” without justifying it, as is leaked to the press.

Concentration of thousands of people in front of the Niemeyer in defense of the continuity of the center, in Avilés, on January 13, 2012. ALBERTO MORANTE

Sources agree that Grueso was indeed “a disaster in accounting.”

“He should have had a second person keep the accounts, but he didn't put Niemeyer's money in his pocket,” Urbano asserts.

Álvarez-Cascos orders the return of the subsidies received by the center, a deadly stab that he justifies for losses that according to him are almost two million.

A paragraph: Cascos is now awaiting trial in which the Prosecutor's Office asks him for three and a half years in prison for alleged appropriation of funds from Foro Asturias.

The

Niemeyer case

reaches court and Grueso, without financing, executes an Employment Regulation File, the suppliers do not get paid and in mid-January 2012 he ends up handing over the keys to the new managers.

The dream had lasted 10 months, the time in which Avilés was on the world's first line of cultural cities.

In September 2014 he was named the new director of the Niemeyer Carlos Cuadros.

Grueso immediately reappears in Madrid, as the star signing of the PP City Council, with Ana Botella as mayor, to manage the programming of the municipal theaters.

In the capital there are those who are shocked by “his style of cultural management, based on spectacularity,” remembers one of them.

He is there for almost two years, until his supporter, the councilor of Las Artes, falls from the municipal government.

Grueso reinvents himself: “From now on, I begin an ambitious and exciting professional project dedicated to artistic and literary creation and production.”

Woody Allen joked with the press before the concert with his group, New Orleans Jazz Band, at the inauguration of the Oscar Niemeyer International Cultural Center in Avilés, on March 25, 2011. ALBERTO MORANTE (EFE)

Then he turned to literature, one of his passions.

After

The Solitude

, he will publish a biography of Woody Allen, novels, the first authorized biography of the filmmaker Carlos Saura... Palmira Márquez remembers the “endless conversations about books and movies with him.”

“Then, during the trial I saw him suffer the unspeakable.”

The rope had begun to break when he did not attend the first summons to the Provincial Court of Oviedo.

He is in Madrid and he does not pass through his Asturian house, the doorman tells those who are looking for him.

A friend claims that they did not call him on the phone number they had for him.

The Court concludes that there is a risk of flight.

“Natalio, you are wanted and captured! Go to Asturias!” A friend tells him on the phone when he sees the news in the press.

The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, with a model of the project for the Avilés cultural center, in April 2010. GORKA LEJARCEGI

Grueso appears the following Monday and that day he leaves handcuffed: provisional arrest and without bail.

His world collapses.

The Prosecutor's Office requested, in September 2018, 11 years in prison for carrying out “some expenses totally unrelated to the purpose of the Foundation and for making others of dubious connection that he charged to the Foundation.”

His surroundings speak of “cruelty.”

“Eleven years for 79,000 euros?”

“I am only aware of having worked to put Avilés on the map of world culture,” he says.

On the first day of the trial, Grueso suffers the ordeal of appearing handcuffed at the main entrance of a courtroom packed with onlookers, instead of being introduced through a back door.

From there he returns to jail, where he will spend 40 days.

“He came out destroyed,” says Urbano.

A hell that he will tell in an unpublished book,

Crystal Sparrows

, which circulates among his intimates, who describe the text as “tremendous”, “dramatic” because of the experiences he recounts from those weeks.

While he awaits sentencing, he is admitted to a hospital.

When he leaves, he confesses to his friends: “I've been further away than here.”

His entourage insists that “he made a mistake in the strategy during the trial.”

Grueso proclaims that everything will come to nothing, with a touch of arrogance: “How are they going to condemn me for not justifying some

gin and tonics

and some dinners.

That can only happen if I get a crazy judge.”

When the trial begins, someone who worked with him remembers him in a session in a defiant attitude, “reading a novel.”

“Natalio, find a good lawyer because they accuse you of serious things,” his friends tell him.

One of them adds: “He behaved as if that were not the case with him and on the other hand he seemed very pessimistic.”

The process affects his personal life and he ends up separating from his wife.

Finally, Grueso is sentenced, in June 2020, to eight years in prison: five for a continued crime of embezzlement of public funds and three for falsifying a commercial and corporate document.

The magistrates mainly consider that he traveled with his wife through Spain and abroad at Niemeyer's expense, altering and manipulating the invoices to conceal that they had no employment relationship with the center.

On this he pivoted the

Niemeyer case

, the expenses for his wife, who although she did work for the Center (interpreter, guide...) was not on the payroll.

Eight years for 78,819 euros, which she returns.

Natalio Grueso, when he directed Niemeyer, and Kevin Spacey.EFE

He appeals to the Supreme Court, which ratifies the sentence in April 2023. The modification, a few months earlier, of the crime of embezzlement in criminal legislation does not benefit him.

“A medical document was even presented warning of the risks to his health if he returned to prison,” explains Urbano.

“Even the Prosecutor's Office agreed, but the judge of the Provincial Court opposed it,” adds a friend.

The last hope for Grueso was a petition for pardon to the Ministry of Justice last May, signed by cultural personalities such as Joan Manuel Serrat, Woody Allen, Ana Belén, Víctor Manuel, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón or the former Minister of Labor Manuel Pimentel, editor of some of his books.

However, the elections of July 23 and the waiting period until Pedro Sánchez is re-elected president in November leave the matter fallow.

Grueso has to go to prison and tells his loved ones: “I'm leaving.

If I go back to jail, I'm ready in 24 hours.”

Where is Thick today?

As he said long ago in another premonitory phrase: “I am a sailor who navigates the world a little aimlessly.”

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I am already a subscriber

_