Many years ago, around 1993, when the Madrid scene was beginning to be a relic of the past, the most brilliant of the North American writers, Susan Sontag, stopped in Madrid.
With that air of being in a hurry that this impressive woman gave him to any of his desires, he demanded that his editor (this chronicler who writes it, precisely) find him the most exciting restaurant in the city of Pedro Almodóvar, who was his country idol. from that time.
At that time, under the protection of the Seville Exposition and the certain fact that the scene had stopped illuminating the nights, a group of intellectuals and writers, lovers of Mexico and music, and the friendship of Pedro Ávila, had organized a Mexican aspiration restaurant.
The attraction of the place, apart from the food, which was truly Aztec, was that Pedro always sang, even if he did not properly attend to the kitchen, and that Paco Otero was there, who with him made an unforgettable duet in the neighboring cantina that It's still called Freedom 8.
That was filled every night, with very diverse people, some of whom were part of the crazy company that started El Comal, the name of the very illustrious joint.
So when Sontag expressed her desire to eat at that unique place, we took her to Comal.
Since she ate hard and long, and Pedro was generous and cheerful as a castanet, she spent an extraordinary night, without paying much attention, in that case, to whether or not people talked about her books or her ideas.
She ate, listened to Pedro sing, and never once asked why she was the only diner in the restaurant.
It was Sunday, closing day, Pedro, and her roommate, the singer, and artist for all, Paco Otero, had opened just for her.
Other days it was Juan Goytisolo, so demanding, such a thoroughbred of literature, or Peter Mayer, the then president of Penguin, who was traveling the world in search of the voice of Chavela Vargas, who sat at those tables at the Comal taste the flavor that Pedro (who had been a friend of Chavela) learned to achieve in his long Mexican life, to which he was attracted by friends who already lived there;
like the Taibo, and of whose literary nomenclature he was a part thanks also to a friend, the poet Ángel González, one of the captains of the Spanish poetic generation of the '50s.
For those people, in Mexico, in Madrid, anywhere, neither night nor day existed, but life, and with that purpose, living life, doing it with others, and doing it singing, and eating in these cases, They became the secular kings of the night without end or dawn.
Pedro Ávila (who was actually called Aguirre, he was born in Tangier, he had been a singer at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, he had recorded albums of poetry and folklore) was in that world as if he had always been there, but he was also a carpenter. If the opportunity arose, he would be a tennis player, fisherman, fish and couplet fisherman, snake charmer or whatever, as long as he was the good company he was.
An exciting human being who seemed to have been born for laughter and partying.
Like the character that Ernest Hemingway immortalized in one of his books, Pedro Ávila, the true friend of the whole world, like that Kim from India that Rudyard Kipling invented, knew anguish and pain, but he was never sad one morning...
About three weeks ago one of her great friends, and her Italian discovery, the light artist from Venice (and anywhere) Federica Marangoni warned this chronicler: “
That Pedro Ávila is wrong, he is going to die, he will die.” singing like Cucumber
”.
Pepino Cristinelli was a great classical Italian architect, who one night came to Madrid, in the middle of that movement, sat down to play the guitar on the sidewalk of the Cock, the most famous bar at the time, and dazzled everyone with his version. mourning of the most beautiful love song by Bruno Laudzi, The Poet, which begins like this:
“Alla sera al café con gli amici…”.
Since then, those Italians, Pedro, Paco, Ángel González, and all the crazy people who passed by there, were not only the joy of Comal but also brought life to the stage of Libertad, 8, a bar that lasts, performing Arabic songs. or French or Spanish that were from the repertoire of those two souls of the Madrid night who were Ávila and Otero.
The poet Ángel González and other interlopers, like this chronicler, went up to the stage to pretend that we were singing, but the only one who accompanied them seriously was the poet González, who put together songs from his own repertoire and above all gave that night cycle of Madrid the mystery of its melancholy.
It was an extraordinary world, full of surprises and expectation, as if it would never end.
And it was ending, little by little.
Pedro sometimes called to send songs to his friends, and I have many saved as relics, Federica from Venice requested his visit or his compositions, Paco Otero sometimes reminded us of the beautiful nights of Libertad and Comal, and we always felt that we were part of a world whose memory was also called Pedro Ávila and the night.
When Federica called me to warn me about the worst, I immediately called Pedro.
He was with his children (four -Sandra, Emmanuel, Isabel, Samuel-, born in different latitudes, had come to see him) and he was fine, he did not tell me that he was sicker than other times, nor did he tell me that he was going to leave. to fish at that moment, as he used to warn me other times, when he sent me messages with songs, increasingly melancholic or sober.
As I saw him like this, so Pedro Ávila of the night and the days, with his Mexican and flower shirts, smiling as if he were with the guitar at his side, we agreed to meet in March, which is when Spain begins to be warm again and abandon this kind of trace of bad mood that countries have when the sun becomes elusive.
He said yes, March was the time, of course it was.
We talked for a while, and he repeated that with him everything was fine, here were the children, he told me.
There will no longer be March with Pedro Ávila.
Paco notified another friend from those nights, the poet and novelist Julio Llamazares, that Pedro had died the night of last Sunday, and it took me until Tuesday, Tuesday the thirteenth, to find out, because I was traveling on a plane to Stockholm, where I now write this sad chronicle about the happiest man I knew in the nights, and in the days, when Madrid was still an infinite dawn.
At night, before starting to write this chronicle, when Tuesday the thirteenth was still hovering among the curses of life, I slipped on the ice of Stockholm.
Life is a chance that gives you scares and friends, and the friendship of those nights had so many names, so much happiness, that it seemed like a perpetual orgy that in the end, like life, is now pure longing, ice on the ground of the city. and of the night.
His friend Paco Otero told me: “
He was a libertarian nomad, who after long decades of being a widow went to die off the African coast where he came to life..., singing, with the guitar, with the piano...”
.
On the Internet there are his songs, which are now the thread that keeps him in life.