It’s been a week since the death three years ago Raul Padilla Lopeza tremendous type who culminated in his utopia, with an impossible dream to forget that a cultural center of stellar proportions would be created in Guadalajara, Mexico, just to reach the book fair that was celebrated in his city, in the state of Jalisco, was the Hollywood of books, the world of Española language literature.
That’s not consistent, Padillo, who was called “the lay pope of Spanish-language literature”As a result, every year until the end of November and the beginning of December, the FIL in Guadalajara was the meeting point for the most important writers of the Spanish world and other linguistic breadths.
Every year, as president of the Feria, I was invited to the Literary Village to showcase its cultural treasures in Jalisco, including gastronomy. Since then, this utopian idea has not been easy to get on board with, as it has drawn both applause and criticism, including many envious and high-flying enemies.
He had an enterprising, extraordinary personality and authoritative qualities that were recognized with complete success in FIL, an international comparison that has no comparison in the context of the Spanish languageexcept for FIL from Buenos Aires who followed them along the way.
More than six hundred writers at each meeting accompanied FIL up to a million visitors who learned about the geography of Expo Guadalajara as never before in the world.
All authors from all over the world who want to participate in every episode, every exhibition, every end of the fair and feel like protagonists for the same reason Padilla and his team show that hard and careful work has led to healthy injuries.
The official version of Padilla’s death was suicide. At this moment, there were sounds and silence, because the emotions that it caused over the death throughout Mexico and the international world of the book industry and the intellectual world as a whole had a sudden and unexpected impact. Padilla, a man who loved books, was at the peak of his work at this point.
The official version of Padilla’s death was suicide. There were sounds because it was in the middle of his work at the moment
He sold his own utopia and entered into the realization of another great city: the City of Culture of Guadalajara, a huge cultural complex that included film festivals. (was the first producer of Guillermo del Toro’s films)classical and popular music and a living place in the culture of the whole world. At the time of his death I’m here to tell you they screw it up until it’s done; many people said they were mortally wounded by a disease that undermined their health at high rates.
Everyone was talking about the death of this extraordinary man who worked on the path of books, sold and edited books, who was connected to the rector of the University of Guadalajara, he was very young and established himself as the president of the powerful Fundación of this university, which financed the FIL and many other cultural gatherings in Guadalajara, hasta get el Prince of Asturias Prize for Communication and Humanity 2020 for great meritI grant FIL.
I was a close friend of Raúl Padilla and he gave me the privilege of participation in the last years of his life, which for me was insurmountable. More than the value of a person and the value of a person in our large private conversationsuntil the black legend that created their enemies could never be sought again.
When the University of Alicante and Santander Bank closed the library of Miguel de Cervantes, which depended on the chair of Vargas Llosa (which was founded just after Manuel Bravo Lifanteand currently directed), talked to Padilla about Guadalajara hosting the Bienal Vargas Llosa de novela. I’m just talking. Intellectual talent and outstanding vision—for Padilla was also: a visionary—were manifested in three invitations to the Writers’ Meeting and the Biennale.
In his own words, he explained the difficulties and controversies that always engendered any decision he made. Vargas Llosa changed his mind because he thought before the Nobel Prize that the FIL was being manipulated by a “nest of communists” (in the last years of his life, Mario saw a communist cell on every corner) and understood the intellectual generosity of the great cultural propagator that the Mexican represented.
When Padilla died, the agoreros predicted that FIL would die suddenly. The man should not be replaced and everything will be sold out. It wasn’t like that. Ahí está su heritage. Now, three years after his death, Guadalajara and the Mexico within provide them with a home of memory. I am happy because the memory is taken from good births and not from bad agoreros who are always wrong.
I will continue to record Padilla as one of the greatest personalities I have known in my lifetime. And I will toast his work and his memory and his friend truncated by death, for he shall live.
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