In El Rastro (Piquer Galleries)
There is life and verses beyond those of One balloon, two balloons, three balloons, especially if we are talking about Glory Strong. To stay in that would be to stay in the typical and the topical, in the 'mainstream' that we say now.
And it is that talking about Gloria Fuertes and not seeing beyond The White Kite is to ignore not only an important part of the Spanish poetry of the 20th century , but also of our History, the one that an intellectual woman who did not go into exile dared to tell at a time when the awkward verses had to play at being silly and innocuous in order to get past censorship.
She “she completely snuck it into the most rancid Spain. And her poetry was one of the most incredible and beautiful things that happened here in the entire twentieth century." , writes Jorge de Cascante in The Book of Gloria Fuertes: Anthology of Poems and Life (Editorial Blackie Books).
1939 Verbena de San Antonio, with colleagues from the magazine Maravillas
“Brutal”, this is how Paloma Porpetta, President of the Gloria Fuertes Foundation , defines her social poetry. Yes, she had it. Even before the children's, which is surely the one you remember. “The history of Gloria's poetry is the history of the 20th century. She portrays what she sees. If she was born in 17 and she died in 98, everything that happens in the 20th century is reflected in her poetry " she explains.
“In Gloria's social poetry, in her first writings from the 1930s, which are not published because they are documents that she kept, there are poems in which she talks about the situation in the neighborhood where she is born and lives”. Lavapiés at the beginning of the 20th century, “a suburb with a very high infant mortality rate, with enormous unhealthiness. She described what she saw ", which at that time was the reality of the Civil War and the postwar period, episodes that pushed her to write as a way of fighting against crudeness.
The mason arrived from his day
with his puny wages and with her points.
They went down to the store for flour,
they made porridge with bacon,
they put it to cool in the window,
the pan fell to the patio.
The worker coughed:
-As Gloria finds out,
tonight we dine Poetry
_(My neighbor) _
The poet and writer Gloria Fuertes
“She was always on the side of the poor and the underprivileged. The sadness is that her poetry is still valid. That is the great problems that Gloria denounces through her work continue to happen today”.
Porpetta insists on this idea. "The portrait that she makes of the ruling classes is valid for today as well." In some poems she urges them to walk around her neighborhood, to get in touch with the reality of shantytowns and sprinkles them with verses as current as the one in the poem I make verses where an already clairvoyant can be read "There are cases, although houses are never given to the poor."
Alternating her mediatic children's poetry, which allowed her to eat, with her production for adults, which she needed to breathe, Gloria Fuertes never stopped writing. And today, almost twenty years after her death, many of those who enjoyed it as children “They are discovering that her poet, with whom they learned to read, turns out that she also writes for them now. They are discovering a Gloria that they can continue to read about, who is no longer just a childhood memory.”
Hand in hand with her verses, clinging to that free and transgressive spirit so hers and with her voice in her memory, we set out to look for her through her Lavapiés.
Gloria Fuertes with her mother and her brothers Jesús and Angelín
“WHEN I SAY YES, EVERYONE NOTICES THAT I AM FROM LAVAPIÉS”
Chula to say the least, that's how Gloria wrote about her origins during her stay in the United States in the early 1960s. “Although she later lived outside of Lavapiés, she never disassociated herself from the neighborhood. She came back and wrote in Lavapiés” Porpetta points out.
The castizo of her poetry comes from the neighborhood, where a pride of Gloria has begun to emerge. “They are very proud that Gloria was born there, that she came from a humble family and for her to tell and sing about the things that were happening in the neighborhood”.
The poet's Lavapiés can be explored on foot, hand in hand with Carlos Figueroa and Aurelio Merino , the two creators of the Saturdays with Glory , some guided tours that, through recited poems, biographical explanations and a lot of wandering, unfold before the attendees the most unknown side of her life and work.
glory strong
"Our goal is always the adult theme because we saw that it was very forgotten, despite the fact that there are a lot of very interesting texts" , explain Carlos and Aurelio. “Most of the attendees come to the visits with a very reduced concept, very limited to the children's theme. And suddenly they meet a very fresh poetry, very interesting, very topical”.
From Puerta de Toledo, a meeting point for these visits whose day and time are announced through its website, with explanations by Carlos and Aurelio and the verses of the poet and other writers who slip into the walk, we go back in the time until the Lavapiés castizo of the cigar factories, the suburb of suburbs where the industries were concentrated, the end of the world that Gloria chose as the beginning of her journey.
She was born in 1917 and her father's profession, her janitor, led her to live in different locations in the neighborhood. “I was born on Calle de La Espada and lived in Dos Hermanas, Tres Peces and Cuatro Caminos” , collect Gloria's memories in Blackie Books.
This drawing was made by Gloria Fuertes remembering what the house they lived in was like on Calle Tres Peces, 21
In fact, At number 3 Calle de la Espada a plaque is in charge of indicating the place of his birth , alluding to the attic she talks about in her poems. Although, the investigations that never cease, this time by Jorge Sánchez Cascos, who is writing a doctoral thesis on the poet, and Paloma Porpetta, they just revealed that it was in number 9 where she was born . There used to be a Gota de Leche (places where children were cared for and childcare concepts were taught to mothers) where her father was a doorman.
Her childhood and her character are given brushstrokes throughout the entire route with special attention when we get to the Fuente de Cabestreros, where we begin the descent down Mesón de Paredes street and talk about its school , which was located near there. "She moves around this circle a lot, it's her childhood and early youth neighborhood."
With her mother on Dos Hermanas street (Lavapiés)
Our arrival at Pious Schools and the state in which it was left after the building was set on fire in July 1936 serves to make reference to the Civil War and explain how Gloria lived that time that marked her life so much.
In Madrid it rained shrapnel,
dead rained down
They gave me a lamb.
"You have enough to eat for a month," they told me.
The lamb's eyes told me something else.
I almost starved to death.
The lamb died of old age.
We fucked each other, darling
him and me alone under the bombardment.
Then I went for grass to the lots
for my lamb
I taught him to eat paper
with the war parties
to my lamb
(When Madrid was Sarajevo) _ The tour, which still has poems and nooks and crannies to discover, ends at the Antonio Sánchez Tavern _(Calle Mesón de Paredes, 13) _, near Tirso de Molina, a square that hosted Gloria's childhood games. During the postwar period she goes to the tavern “To read concentrated while she drinks her white wine and eats the bread muffin that she always brings from home ”, writes Jorge de Cascante in El Libro de Gloria Fuertes. Later, when she lived installed in Alberto Alcocer she did not stop visiting the tavern her in search of the muses that pushed her to write.
And yes, in her neighborhood they want to honor her. Last February, the City Hall announced the placement of a plaque in his honor of it in a square located between Lavapiés, Ministriles and Ministriles Chica streets. At the moment, the plaque has not yet been installed, but neighbors and lovers of the figure of Gloria Fuertes have decided to 'take over' the square this Friday at 8:30 p.m. carry out a symbolic placement of a poster that can read 'Plazuela Gloria Fuertes'.
In the Tavern of Antonio Sánchez (Mesón de Paredes)