In 2006 Siruela gave us another memorable book by Carmen Martín Gaite: Waiting for the Future. A tribute to Ignacio Aldecoa. Josefina Rodríguez’s husband, who later adopted her surname, died suddenly in 1969 at the age of 44. Loved by all, an irregular resident of Madrid and La Graciosa (Canary Islands), it was a generational reference that included names like Rafael Azcona and Luis García Berlanga. He soon became an unusual figure due to the quality of his writing, so his death deserves extraordinary attention, stupefaction and loss. Martín Gaite published an obituary in La Estafeta Literatura describing the extent of the grief: A warning: Ignacio Aldecoa is dead.
In this spirit, many years later, Martín Gaite continued to commemorate his friend. It was at the headquarters of the Juan March Foundation in 1994. His charisma garnered a large number of people who first heard of his other works, as well as Aldecoa, whose stories were all republished at the time. It leaves its mark on the years of prosperity of the 50 generation.
The title of the lectures came from some of the lines he muttered in Waiting for the Future (“sitting on the stairs / waiting for the future / and the future is not coming”), as if this were the root of an inscription. And the source of the book is literally the cycle of speech that this historian followed. Carmiña stood up and spoke as if she were in the audience. Hiding his white hair under his colorful hats, he went and looked at his audience, the acquaintances, as if seeking approval or disapproval. It would not be unusual for him to seek out Aldecoa among them. And it was exciting to hear how he read a portion of that obituary: “His death swept through this ship of memories, which seemed too early to review, like a merciless wind. They were unfinished business, unordered accounts. The time to come out was known to come, but it was frightening, and now they told them we must oppose as much as we can and how we can”. And it ended like this: “Ignacio Aldecoa is dead. The 40s and 50s are starting to make history whether we like it or not.”
Now count out loud to the end of the story. Carmiña was there so that the clock of that time that no one else counted would be lost.