Carmen Castellote was haunted by the war for much of her life.
First in Spain, in 1936 she, then in the Soviet Union she suffered the hardships of the Nazi invasion.
In Mexico she found peace in 1958, where she arrived with her Polish husband and her son.
The poet is now 90 years old and she is one of the last voices of the Spanish republican exile, already Mexican.
She boasts of two homelands, because as she says, “when the birds are forced to fly without being able to stop, the wings are already her own home”.
This is how he told the director of the Cervantes Institute, the also poet Luis García Montero, whom he received this Saturday at his home to give him a collection of first editions of his published books, a handwritten letter explaining the meaning of his legacy and a bundle of photos of his life.
He has dressed so elegantly for the occasion that it is impossible to say that he is 90 years old, hardly even 80. His head intact, he continues to write and his memories of the Mexico of those years in which the Spaniards cultivated the lives that Franco denied them are valuable.
His work at the Uthea publishing house and the contacts of his father, a half-blind communist who continued his political and solidarity work from Mexico, provided him with meetings with José Gaos, Max Aub, Luis Cernuda, the cream of the intelligentsia expelled overseas.
Carmen Castellote signs her books that accompany the box of letters.
David Polo
Castellote lived first in the Ukraine, as a child of the war, then in Siberia, and finally, she graduated in History in Moscow.
No one knew like her that part of the idolized communist world was rotting between errors and injustices.
This is how she made the Spanish exiles in Mexico see it, who professed admiration for that side of the Iron Curtain.
"She argued a lot with them, but she always kept her progressive spirit, her republican solidarity," says García Montero, through whose mouth we have her reflections.
The poet did not want the media to accompany this meeting.
"She was convinced that it would be her own mistakes and not external factors that would end that Soviet communism," explains García Montero,
Montero takes to Spain the red suitcase with the legacy of Castellote, whose complete poetry has been published by the Torremozas publishing house in Spain.
Miles of Time
, it is titled.
This is how she understood exile, also measured as kilometers of time, not just space.
In the 1980s she published
Letters to Myself
, where she talked to the uprooted girl that she was.
"Analyze in them how a broken intimacy is formed and how it dialogues with the fragments," says García Montero.
She was forced, like all exiles, to look for a home of her own on the flight, to make the trip a home.
Today she has received some freshly printed copies of the
Letters to Myself
, which the director of the Cervantes has given her in Mexico.
It has not been possible to convince Castellote to make this delivery of his legacy a public ceremony.
"He insists on his modesty, explains that he dedicated himself to poetry to be in conversation with his own intimacy," García Montero transmits.
From her meeting with her, he says that she continues to be a great defender of the Spanish republicans, who knew how to make that exile a whole homeland far from their own.
When Castellote traveled to Spain in 1973 she discovered "a decent country, without theft or insecurity, but she still warned of the danger of speaking openly about politics in a public setting."
And she also remembers the compliments that she received on the street that "Mexican".
“No, no, I am Spanish”, she told them.
The work classification cardDavid Polo
García Montero is today the bridge that has never been broken between Mexico and Spain, with his back and forth lyrics, shared cultures and unbreakable mutual love.
“Mexico is the country with the most Spanish speakers and at the Cervantes Institute we also have a close relationship with the UNAM to take care of the language that is common to us.
“We have a good cultural relationship and for the language it is important to iron out rough edges, avoid confrontations and facilitate relationships.
That is the priority.
All together we have to defend our language, we can do more if we are 500 million”, says García Montero.
The war in Ukraine has inevitably come up in conversation with Castellote, who lived in a town in that country when it was still part of the Soviet republics.
“We are seeing the worst of the 20th century again, destruction, death and exile, also that of children,” says the director of Cervantes.
Castellote's poetry is very reminiscent of all that, because she built her life between rubble and escape trips.
Unfortunately, at 90 years old, she has to see how the world always turns on the same axis.
The poets Carmen Castellote and Luis García Montero talk during the delivery of the red suitcase.
David Polo
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