The Lyrics box will keep its unpublished cards and discontinued books

Cervantes Institute Writer will honor this Monday Carmen Martín Gaite And it will be saved in the Box of Lyrics Material belonging to the author as unpublished letters and discomforted books, coinciding with the year of the centenary of her birth and the publication of her biography ‘Carmen Martín Gaite’ (Editorial Tusquets), written by José Teruel and recently awarded the Comilla 2025 Prize.

“The legacy will consist of the complete works of Carmen Martín Gaite whose first three volumes were destroyed, that is, they are discontinued (…) and in the correspondence with Juan Benet. Unpublished, family, one with their sister will also be delivered. Two handwritten postcards will also be delivered to his mother and his father. A beret will be delivered, a very significant object of the public representation of Carmen Martín Gaite, a beret with its corresponding brooch“José Teruel has detailed this Monday morning at the presentation press conference of the biography ‘Carmen Martín Gaite’.

Awarded with the Comillas 2025 Award, this biography of Teruel seeks to “revive” before the reader the moments and capital relations on which Gaite’s life turned, through the relationships he maintained with herself, made “always fundamental in an autobiographical discourse,” as detailed by the author, as well as with others.

“How Carmen Martín Gaite appeared before others and how he looked at herself. These were the questions that continually circulated in my mind. Therefore, we have three great pivots, columns in this biographical story: The intimate biography, the construction of the public image and the exegesis of his work“José Teruel said about Gaite, who throughout his career received numerous awards, including the Prince of Asturias Award for Letters in 1988.

On how the biography has been constituting, Teruel stressed that he has tried that “experience is not designed in information” and get away from other biographies that are mere dilated chronologies.

“I needed the archives and narrate, get the voice of the documents and my voice, my voice as an interpreter as chronicler, truthful, modest, nothing Olympic, rigorous, architect and careful also of words, plus her voice and the versions of others who lived with her“, As specified Teruel, who met Carmen Martín Gaite in 1986.

With only 26 years, Teruel spoke for the first time with the author thanks to her, after reading an article about the memory and her hiding places in ‘The back room’ (1978), he phoned him to tell him that he had liked. “He invited me to his apartment as Doctor Esquerdo and we had tea, I remember it perfectly,” he said, since then, he agreed several times with Gaite, with whom he never came to establish a friendship.

“I cannot affirm that I was a close friend of Carmen Martín Gaite, although I maintained with her a very cordial, but sporadic treatment. From that direct treatment, I can deduce that the entire exterior of Carmen Martín Gaite, all her social behavior was intended to facilitate access. He was an accessible person,” said Teruel, who has pointed to the author who after the death of her daughter Marta, “literature was the only thing she had.” “And that showed right away“, according to the author.

Throughout 11 chapters, Teruel traces the life and personality of Carmen Martín Gaite through his family history, the years of training in Salamanca and his friendship with Ignacio Aldecoa, his marriage and separation with Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, his relationship with his daughter Marta, the first five years of the 80s and his last years of life in solitude.

“In short, characters, environments, circumstances, which could most significantly influence the development of Martín Gaita as a woman and as a writer. This is the book map, “Teruel has apostilled.