In Miguel Delibes’ house (Valladolid, 1920-2010) there are books even in the kitchen drawers. A martemágnum of translations, collections and works is scattered for the family domicile of Valladolid, where the prizes, paintings, photographs or physical recognition that the writer received in life or his heirs to his death accumulate. The shelves, the venerated rocking chair or the modest bed have been labeled with yellow stickers if they correspond to the living room, green for the office and red for the bedroom, with numbers traced, up to more than 2,000, to coordinate the imminent move. Now, the family applauds, the properties of Delibes will pass from the private to the public: the Junta de Castilla y León (PP) has confirmed the opening in October of the Miguel Delibes museum in its native Valladolid, where 15 years after death there was no where to contemplate its legacy more than in temporary exhibitions.
Good verbal intentions are finally running. Elisa Delibes de Castro speaks, 74, daughter of the novelist and angels, the eternal woman of red on a gray background, immortalized on canvas behind the author’s desk, the author’s “balance” of the author according to himself said after his premature goodbye. “We are happy because the museum seems definitive, although three years ago it also seemed a reality, but it did not materialize. Until I see it … but I think this time,” he says, because the Ministry of Culture promised in 2022 that it would soon be reality, but the deadlines dilated and the descendants feared oblivion. The objective is to inaugurate the sample on October 17, 105th anniversary of the writer, in the Renaissance Valladolid Palace of Mr. Bartron, a historic palace of the city and headquarters of the Archive of Castilla y León. Near is one of the multiple plates that remember the scenarios of The heretic in Valladolidthe last great novel of the writer and crediting of the National Literature Award in 1998. This work was written by hand as always, on the wooden desk ajado that will soon be transferred to the Plaza de las Brígidas, named for the former community of nuns that inhabited the monastery.
The Minister of Culture, Gonzalo Santonja, presented the project with Germán Delibes, one of the seven children of the myth. “In Delibes’ work is what we are,” said Santonja, with the aim of “creating an open space for all for their human and intellectual legacy, which invites you to meet the deep and committed writer and whom we all enjoy and enjoy reading.” The file has already received about 15,000 official documents preserved in the Revilla House, home of the Miguel Delibes Foundation. Its president, Fernando Zamála, values the proximity of the opening: “We begin to see that project of Casa Museo, becomes something tangible.” Elisa Delibes, resident on the upper floor of the family duplex on whose low floor inhabited the winner of the Cervantes Award, exalts the place for its artistic value and by the amplitude of the space where the assets of his father will be distributed: three environments to recreate the living room, the office and the bedroom. Nearby, a room focused on his books, awards and literary elements and another stay, “The writer and nature”, to remember his link with the rural environment and the environmental environment that he reflected in his pages.
Elisa Delibes considers “absurd” that in this city, exalted in word and lyrics by Delibes, I did not have a museum where Pucelans or outsiders could invest “half an hour” in knowing better the also former director of The North of Castile. “There is Casa Zorrilla, Casa Colón, Casa Cervantes …”, reciting highlighting the relevance of these characters, but clarifying that none had the quality and quantity relationship as their parent with Valladolid. “I do not know if it is necessary or essential, Miguel de Unamuno took 60 years to have it in his Salamanca, but already has it,” he values, surprised because when the plan was known, he read comments that this effort was better to allocate it to a health center: “They are different things.” What is meaning, he asks jokingly, opening the private home to school excursions “and that rises five in five in the elevator.”
“The people of Valladolid have not yet learned the rest in diffusion when it opens,” says the fourth daughter of the artist, who exemplifies the importance of giving him a headquarters in conditions: in 2012, open taps almost ruin the legacy of Delibes and among the victims was the original of The hereticwith 100 blurred pages of which only their corrections survived with their acute calligraphy in ink. The successor has importance because “they are things that happen in life and have a story” and shows, among the material accumulated on a side of the office, a decapitated sculpture, work and grace “of three dwarf great grandchildren” at Christmas. The moths have also crushed the carpets and the time some more stumbling will have caused. She emphasizes that the seven brothers agreed on the literary and material heritage, because none advocated to distribute the material and save or auction it, as the heirs of Gabriel García Márquez did when selling their legacy to the University of Atlanta (United States). “We are older and we have many grandchildren, it is better that everyone can see it, the generous thing is to open it to the public.”
The daughter takes advantage of the visit to rummage in the writer’s desk and rediscover treasures. Boina old, glasses, smoking paper, manuscripts with drawn exercises to deoxide the skeleton or firm pen emerge from wood catacumba. Folios also appear, in blue ink, with the last and pessimistic reflections of the already sick novelist. Children, Viejo, Always o Lonelytribulations pray. With them, a brief essay entitled The depopulation of Castile. Castilla, biologically dead, When there was no talk of depopulation, but Delibes, with those glasses and berets, saw her come on her walks.