Manel Monteagudo: “I woke up after 35 years in a coma”

A movie life. Few biographical stories as surprising, intense and fast as the one experienced by the writer Manel Monteagudo, who this afternoon presents his new book, ‘De mariño a poeta’, at the Pontevedra coworking O Sanatorio. What is the journalist exaggerating? Come and read:

–His life is a cinema

–(smile) They already told you something.

–To start at the beginning: how was your childhood?

-It was very sad, really sad because we were so poor. Well, it should be divided into two parts: at the beginning it was very good because I had an extraordinary grandmother, she was someone impressive who crossed my life, or I crossed hers in the best sense. I adored her, so much that when she died my mother said “well, I lost a mother but I gained a son.” Because I didn’t love my mother, I loved my grandmother. And when she was not there, we were very hungry, we lacked everything, my parents had nothing. We lived in a house in Noia where the floor was dirt, the wood in the rooms was all moth-eaten & mldr;

–He embarked at the age of 14

– As soon as I left school, yes, at 14 years old. I had to work. I boarded a boat in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and went to South Africa. He was really very young, he was also very thin because we had been very hungry and he was very skinny, very pale. And so I went to Las Palmas. In my life I had seen an airplane up close. And when I got to the ship everyone was staring, I was going to perform the job of greaser and the one who preceded me was 32 years old. When I was 17 I went to Hamburg, Germany, where I embarked until I left for military service. But before, when I began to have a good salary, I had studied electricity and naval electronics. When I got out of military service I already embarked as an electrician officer and, by the way, I was recognized by the German authorities in 1978, because I was the youngest officer in all of Germany.

– And in this the accident happened.

-On the boat it was great, but We went with a shipment to Iraq and I had a very serious accident: I fell into the hold of the ship from 6 meters high. And I can tell you up to that point, because from that moment on I was in a coma for 35 years, until I woke up again.

“From the coma, I imagine, you won’t remember anything.”

–Nothing at all. I only remember one thing: that I had to fix a piece, a projector, and the ladder I was on had rubber bands on the legs, it was paved, I don’t know how it got away like that. As soon as I reached out to grab the projector and pushed myself up the ladder, there I went. At that moment I noticed how it fell, I thought “alá vou & rdquor ;. And nothing else, it’s over.

– Where did you wake up and how was that moment?

–I woke up in a room I didn’t know, here where I still live. He did not recognize anything, he was very surprised, he did not understand anything. Suddenly a lady comes along, with gray hair, I didn’t know who she was. And he fell on top of me crying. At that moment I didn’t know who she was, I didn’t know her, until I saw her face. As soon as I saw her I recognized my girlfriend, because she was my girlfriend at the time. I thought that could not be. She started talking to me, talking to me, I didn’t understand anything she was saying until she picked up a mirror that she had bought on purpose. Do you know what I saw?

–Fear gives me the answer

“A man full of gray hair, because I have totally white hair and a white beard.” And I just said, “No, no. This is not me. This is an old one. I’m not this, I’m 22 years old. I’m 22, 22, this can’t be me. How am I going to be this old man? & Rdquo ;. And she explained to me, little by little she was explaining things to me. It was very dramatic, I have to say that that awakening was very dramatic for me. And when about 15 minutes had passed a girl came in and my girlfriend told her “come on Sara, come on & rdquor ;. I didn’t know who he was either, but he jumped on me saying exactly “papa, papaíño & mldr; Papa, meu papaíño & rdquor ;. Then they told me she was my daughter. My wife explained that we had two girls, and I became more and more surprised and puzzled. And even worse when my second daughter appeared, who happened to be pregnant, so much so that my granddaughter was born 6 days after I woke up, which was on October 15, 2014.

–I imagine your bewilderment.

– Total, it was all that, very disconcerting. As if everything was very fast, very fast, I did not assimilate what they were saying to me.

How did your life go afterwards?

–I had to learn to walk, to read, to speak well, although not entirely well because in the hospital in Iraq I damaged my vocal cords with a tube. This is not my old voice. I also had to learn to write.

– And he has hurried, because he is already on the third book.

-Really It is the fourth because I also made a self-published one for my daughter who, by the way, was so well received that we made 300 more copies.

– Did your girlfriend take care of you these 35 years?

-Yes because she always had the confidence that I was going to wake up, even though the doctors told her no, that I would never wake up and that I think, that I was clear, that any day she was going to wake up and I would already be cold, that my only path was the cemetery. It was my wife who took care of me because she is also a nurse, she was the one who took care of me all this time.

“You are a very dear one.” There is a lot of love in your life.

Yes, I have a lot of love because for me, a person has to be humble in every way, and also with integrity. A person has to be of integrity and have great dignity and humility, and I believe that I have always had it. I carry it in my veins, inside, I was born with it. And, as I told you, my grandmother transmitted all the love in the world to me, so I am affectionate, even sometimes I go too romantic (smile); I’m like this.

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“What do you want today?”

-I just want to live. What remains of my life what I want is to live. That is what I want, to live life, because I lost many years, but that time has passed and life is forward. I have nothing to do behind me, nothing, because behind me I have nothing left, except for two wonderful daughters, two grandchildren, and my wife, who is a monument to respect and patience. I will never be able to repay him for what he did for me, it cannot be put into words.