Carmen Mateu and Montserrat Caballé
She was born into a privileged family. She is the granddaughter of a successful businessman, co-founder of the legendary car brand Hispanic Swiss , which has just been reborn launching a super luxury car with an electric motor, more than a thousand horsepower and that costs around one and a half million euros. And that, by the way, bears her name.
Daughter of a successful politician and businessman, first Francoist mayor of Barcelona, president of La Caixa, then the Pension Fund, president of the Agencia Efe and ambassador of Spain in Paris. Oh, and fond of culture, art and wine. And all that heritage of hers, along with the passions of her father, was inherited by her, Carmen Mateu.
Far from settling down in the tranquility of having it all, she wanted to study art and decoration because she was already becoming interested in the cultural world. She wanted to be a pianist. And she was a painter, but one and the other went beyond her wishes as a child.
Peralada Castle, Girona
Her father, Miguel Mateu, had bought, several years before Carmen was born, a castle in Perelada, a town in the Ampurdán that would be the center of its activity years later, her refuge and the place that gave her the most joy.
So it was a complex with a spectacular garden designed by the French landscape architect Duvillers, and where almost 160 plant species and a 19th century aviary still live together today.
She had also housed a Carmelite convent where the monks, of course, had dedicated themselves, among other things, to making wine. Miguel Mateu wanted to recover the clerical wine activity, which would continue after Carmen with her husband, Artur Suqué.
Perelada gradually became a complex designed to house culture, wine, gastronomy... and games , because the family also owns several casinos in Catalonia and outside of Spain, and one of those casinos is also in Perelada.
Mateu did not consider herself a glamorous woman and she had a vision of women anchored in the past she (in an interview for regional television she confesses that she likes to take her husband's last name because he is a man with power), although she admired women like Angela Merkel or Pilar Rahola and the elegance of Audrey Hepburn.
She was also convinced that culture should be shared, and more when she is in a position to do it because your heritage and your background allow it, and with this idea she founded in 1987 the Castell de Peralada Festival , a summer meeting in the surroundings of the Castle where they parade every year lyrical artists, dancers or renowned performers of classical music.
Through the boards of Perelada they have passed from Serrat to Sammy Davis Jr., Woody Allen or Montserrat Caballé, Liza Minelli, Rudolf Nureyev or María Pagés, which has inaugurated the most exceptional edition of the festival, this year's, an installment that has just closed and that has been held without an audience due to the pandemic.
Also, exceptionally, you can see her performances through the official website of the meeting. Perhaps it is this year where it manifests itself the most that desire to share the culture that Mateu promoted with the Festival.
Peralada, the entire complex, is a cultural enclave where you can still breathe the atmosphere created by Carmen and her family, with a library that keeps almost 100,000 volumes and a pictorial collection with works by Ramón Casas, Filippino Lippi (a disciple of Botticelli) or a portrait of María Ana Victoria de Borbón that her father gave Carmen when she was a child.
At the back of the library, an office that was kept private because it was Miguel Mateu's, hosts a curious vision, that of several models that Carmen wore in some of the most relevant moments of her life, like her wedding, where she wore a Pertegaz suit, or one of her Balenciagas.
Also, in a showcase, a sample of the multitude of flowers with which Carmen adorned her outfits, Chanel camellias or fabric roses.
Carmen she died shortly before her 82nd birthday and being considered a patron of the arts in Spain. That year, at the Festival she sounded the Verdi's Requiem , one of her favorite works, to remember the fairytale princess of the Castle of Peralada.