The Spanish writer Almudena Grandes passed away this Saturday in Madrid

The writer Almudena Grandes, a benchmark of Spanish literature who became known with an erotic novel and in recent years turned the recent history of his country into fiction, died this Saturday in Madrid.

The newspaper The country, where he wrote opinion articles, he indicated on Twitter that he died in Madrid at the age of 61 as a result of cancer that he had already made public.

“We are losing one of the leading writers of our time. Committed and brave, who has narrated our recent history from a progressive perspective,” said the head of the Spanish government on Twitter. Pedro Sanchez.

Also, the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) dedicated a minute of silence to him at his inauguration on Saturday.

“We share the pain of his irreparable departure with his family, with the entire literary community, his friends, his readers,” the FIL organization said on Twitter.

Grandes, born in Madrid on May 7, 1960, became known with the erotic book “The ages of Lulú” (1989) at the age of 28.

That novel caused a scandal and became a bestseller. Shortly after its publication, it was brought to the big screen by another controversial director, Bigas Luna, with the Italian Francesca Neri embodying Lulu.

Since 2010, Grandes started an ambitious series of novels called “Episodes of an endless war“on the recent history of Spain, with titles like”Manolita’s three weddings” (2014), “Dr. García’s patients” (2017) the “Frankenstein’s mother“, published in 2020.

In the first book of that series, “Agnes and joy“(2010), Grandes novelized the frustrated attempt of a group of communist exiles in France who wanted to invade Spain by entering the Pyrenees in October 1944 to bring about the fall of the Franco dictatorship.

In addition to his books, Grandes, who declared himself to be on the left, republican and anticlerical, gave his views on current affairs in Spain from a column that he published every Sunday in the newspaper. The country, since 2008.

In one of his columns in that newspaper, published last October, he explained how he was diagnosed with the disease.

“I have had to write some very complicated articles throughout my life. None like this,” he said then, in a text in which he defined cancer as “a disease like any other, of course a learning process, but never a curse. , not a shame, not a punishment. “

Reactions to his death were not long in coming.

“Almudena Grandes masterfully portrayed our recent history and gave a voice to those who never had it,” tweeted the Instituto Cervantes, a public body for the dissemination of the Spanish language and culture.

The writer Rosa Montero, also a columnist in The country, declared herself “shocked” on Twitter by the death of the novelist.

“I hate death. Today I hate it more than other days because it took Almudena and left us without all the books she could still have written. I am dismayed,” the Nicaraguan writer tweeted Gioconda Belli.

“Thank you for giving us your literature for decades, thank you for always speaking from the eyes of women, from historical memory and from the beauty of words,” said the Minister of Equality on Twitter, Irene Montero.

Pilar Alegria, Minister of Education, stressed in a tweet that Almudena Grandes “knew how to portray our history, the most recent and the one that marked us forever. It leaves us a huge void.”