The good humor, trademark of the house, of Fernando Aleu emerged in all its splendor when he remembered the day in which he landed between Elizabeth Taylor’s breasts.
He explained it as an untimely stumble (when giving him an award) that gave him one of the most celebrated anecdotes.
His story was produced in a huddle at the exclusive Metropolitan Club in Manhattan, at the 2018 awards ceremony of the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute (The Institute), based in New York and which he chaired.
As a host, he had the ability to praise the honorees with elegance and without sugarcoating. Therein lies the true art of praise.
Fernando Aleu, born in Barcelona in 1929, died at the age of 93 on December 5 at his home in Boulder (Colorado), where he has settled since he returned last July from Barcelona, ??a city that he was passionate about and that he frequented often despite who since 1953 settled in the United States, in New York, to work as a doctor and later as a perfumer.
In his life he still opened a twist, a demonstration that it is never too late for anything. He became a novelist at a late age. At the age of 89, he published The Exchange, a story in which he recreated one of the circumstances that most impacted his career. In that post-war Barcelona he witnessed a prisoner exchange that took place in 1943 in the port of Barcelona between the British and the Nazis.
The covid and prostate cancer weakened his body, his 64-year-old daughter Rebeca acknowledges in a telephone conversation, who together with her brother Alex, 23, accompanied him until the final sigh. “His health began to decline in the summer. He lost strength, but not her mind, he never lost it, ”she explains.
“Although his body began to fail him, his mind worked perfectly. Until the last day before his death, she was working on his memories. In fact, today I am going to collect all the photos that we scanned for the book,” she adds.
He was not very conscious in his final 24 hours as he suffered a stroke. “I couldn’t speak, but she communicated because she incessantly wanted to hold your hand”, she emphasizes with emotion.
After graduating in Medicine in the Catalan capital, Aleu completed postgraduate studies in Iowa and in the Big Apple. He worked as a pathologist and specialized in Neurology, a subject in which he taught at the University of New York (NYU). His taste for fragrances led him to associate with Mariano Puig. He left medicine to open the market for the Puig multinational, “his other family of his,” says his daughter Rebeca.
Later he collaborated with Carolina Herrera or Paco Rabanne.
In addition to presiding over The Institute, with which he was linked by his friendship with Queen Emeritus Sofía, Aleu was in charge of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in the United States, the Fragrance Foundation of New York and was a founding member of the Olfactory Research Fund. . He twice received the decoration of the Spanish government and the Medal of Honor of the city of Paris.
His daughter remarks that Aleu has left a lot of material on his thought, which was very focused on Spain and, especially, on Barcelona.
“He knew why we were here and he loved talking about his life in these days that we were together,” he clarifies. “He loved the culture and the people, he was a born worker, even during the last month, when he got up, he asked me: ‘What do I have on my agenda today? ‘”, he confesses. “He wanted to die at home, without medical intervention,” he insists.
Aleu, by his express wish, will be cremated. His ashes will be taken to his hometown to be scattered in the sea.
