María Asunción Mateo has been asked many times if she would ever write a memoir detailing the years she lived with Rafael Alberti (El Puerto de Santa María, 1902-1999). “Who would I talk about? The people who surrounded Rafael at the time were not people of stature”, he often answered. The editor Carmen Balcells herself advised him to tell everyone who asked him that he didn’t write “widows’ books”. But everything changed in June 2021, during an afternoon of cleaning, when a folder full of writings and memories with the poet fell on his head. “In an act of courage I decided to open it, to face the contents.” And she found a folio in which her husband gave her “the broadest and absolute permission to reveal all my secrets, the most intimate and dark”. And he has just done it in the new book Mi vida con Alberti. Para algo légaste, Altair (Almuzara), which has just arrived in bookstores.
“Since I read his words I knew I had to explain everything. I thought it was a sign and started writing. I hardly ate or got up from the table until October, when I put the finishing touches. He had a lot to say about the great story of love and passion we lived”, the same widow reveals to La Vanguardia through a call from her home in El Puerto de Santa María. “I could go back to Valencia with my whole family, but my memories with him are here.” Throughout 352 pages, Mateo narrates from the time he met his “great love”, 44 years older, in April 1983 in Baeza in a tribute to Antonio Machado, to the clandestine meetings with the poet in Madrid or the defamatory campaign that he considers to have been carried out by a series of poets when Alberti died.
“When I wrote it I didn’t put names or surnames. I thought it wouldn’t be necessary, that people would know who I meant. Then they made me see that only four intellectuals would understand me, and what I want now is for everyone to find out about the barbarities they have done to me. For 23 years I have been silent about the masculinity I suffer from and now they will listen to me”.
The ex-professor refers to the group made up of Luis García Montero, Luis Muñoz, Benjamín Prado and Eduardo Mendicutti, among others, whom she calls “widows emeritus” and who, as she explains in the book, are considered “heirs of her work ” and they started a campaign against her. “They didn’t just mess with me. They have done the same with other women, such as Susana Rivera, the wife of Ángel González, who the day he speaks and takes out all the documentation they can run away.”
Mateo does not anticipate that his words may not be liked. “Everything I say is proven. So no one can protest. They wrote things like how Rafael served as a doll or that I was one of the many who walked through his life. I have also been called a totalitarian and that I came to cancel my friends. Will they deny it? It is written with date and everything. It’s not that it’s my truth, it’s the truth and that’s it.”
In addition to Alberti’s invitation to speak, the wife acknowledges that the feminist movement also encouraged her to explain everything. “I can’t understand why politicians and intellectuals let what I’ve experienced pass by. But now yes, I see myself strong, and more so with everything that is happening with the World Cup. I want to have my place too, gentlemen. I have many things to say”, he says.
He clarifies that “I have never discussed it. The most I’ve done is make them lunch and put up with it. The moment they saw that our story was for real and that we were getting married was when we distanced ourselves since we didn’t invite most of them. We went down the aisle at 8 in the morning and if we could have, it would have been at 7. We wanted something intimate and, above all, to avoid the press. Of course, while Rafael lived they did not dare to write anything. It all started when they already knew he couldn’t raise his hand.”
Mateo concludes that “although he never imagined the disdain I have experienced afterwards, my husband tried to give little importance to everyday things for which others kill themselves. After all, he always told me that our life couldn’t be easy, but it was something we always accepted.”
