Carmiña, a Century Against the Tide

Readers never turned their backs on her. However, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Cervantes Prize juries did. Had Carmen Martín Gaite (Salamanca, December 8, 1925 – Madrid, July 23, 2000) been born a few years later, she would surely have held an academic chair and enjoyed the highest honour in Hispanic letters, as she did with the National Literature Prize in 1978 – she was its first winner – the Prince of Asturias Award (1988), and the National Literature Award (1994).

This year we celebrate the centenary of this beloved, respected, and remembered author, known for her wavy white hair under colourful berets and her unconventional attire. Like her work, which addresses the clash between desire and reality, disappointment, loneliness, or the fear of freedom. All in a difficult life, with her marriage to Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio broken and the death of Marta, her only daughter, a victim of her addictions at 28.

Novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist, translator, Carmiña, as everyone called her, turned necessity into virtue to tackle all genres and characters. Building narrative bridges between realism and intimacy, she illuminated the greyness of her time with her talent for capturing the complexity of the human being, earning the admiration of critics and the favour of readers.

In this Martín Gaite Year, publications, exhibitions, and adaptations will follow to rediscover the great author, the "paradigm of the woman of letters," according to her biographer, Professor José Teruel, director of the seven volumes of her complete works. Playwright Lucía Miranda will direct the theatrical adaptation of 'Little Red Riding Hood in Manhattan', perhaps her most popular work. It will raise the curtain at the Teatro de La Abadía on January 23. Also there, 'The Back Room' will be seen, with Emma Suárez starring in the adaptation by María Folguera directed by Rakel Camacho from February 27.

Siruela gets ahead with publications like 'Selected Pages', an anthology with stories, poetry, and fragments of her most notable novels and essays, edited and prologued by José Teruel.

It also recovers 'Vision of New York', a delicate book of collages she tackled to keep her hands busy and quit smoking. The pieces, discovered by her sister Ana María in the family home in El Boalo, in the Madrid mountains, will be exhibited in March at the Casa del Lector.

In March, 'From Daughter to Mother, from Mother to Daughter' will also arrive, two emotional texts – a dream with her mother, and an evocation with her daughter Marta – about Martín Gaite's experience as a daughter and parent.

The International Spanish Centre of the University of Salamanca will exhibit her writings to reveal the keys to her creative process and the social, cultural, and literary context of her time.

Daughter of José Martín and María Gaite Veloso, the progressive spirit of this marriage and the family environment were crucial for Carmiña to address in her work issues such as memory or family relationships. She studied Romance Philology at the University of Salamanca, where she met writers like Agustín García Calvo and Ignacio Aldecoa, whom she reunited with in Madrid in 1950 with her friends Alfonso Sastre, Jesús Fernández Santos, and Josefina Rodríguez, later Aldecoa, all members of the so-called generation of '55 or post-war generation.

Before marrying Sánchez Ferlosio in 1953, she experienced extreme poverty while helping in a parish dispensary in Puente de Vallecas. Something that changed the bourgeois consciousness of a provincial young lady, as reflected in 'Waiting for the Future'. She earned her doctorate in Madrid with the thesis 'The Amorous Practices of the 18th Century', a study that masterfully and humorously describes dandies and fops.

With 'The Spa' (1955), her first novel, she won the Café Gijón Prize, reflecting the oppressive and rigid social routine. 'Behind the Curtains' earned her the Nadal Prize in 1958, a year after Sánchez Ferlosio won it with 'The Jarama'. She then followed with titles like 'Slow Rhythm' (1963), 'The Back Room' (National Narrative Award in 1978), 'The Never-Ending Story' (1983), 'Amorous Practices of Post-War Spain' (1987), a display of humour to illustrate the repression and prudishness that oppressed women in the early years of Francoism and the Anagrama Essay Prize, 'Little Red Riding Hood in Manhattan' (1990), 'Variable Cloudiness' (1992), 'The Snow Queen' (1994), a tribute to Christian Andersen dedicated to her daughter, 'The Strange Thing is Living' (1996) or 'Leaving Home' (1998), her last novel.

Translator of Rainer Maria Rilke, Italo Svevo, Primo Levi, Emily Bronte, Virginia Woolf, or Flaubert, she published the poetry collection 'In Fits and Starts' (1977) and premiered the dramas 'A Palo Seco' (1957) or 'The Little Sister' (1959). She was a screenwriter for the television series 'Santa Teresa' – with Víctor García de la Concha – and 'Celia'.