Goodbye to Domingo Villar. A great black novel leaves us

Photos: (c) Mariola DCA

Sunday Villar has died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a severe brain hemorrhage Monday while in Vigo, in his native Galicia. The news has shocked the entire literary world and devastated those of us who have been lucky enough to meet him, meet him on several occasions and verify that he was not only a magnificent writer of novels and stories, but a beautiful person, close, humble and very dear.

So allow me to write these lines as a very personal tribute and with deep emotion for your loss, which I still do not believe and that it should not be like this or happen so soon. my condolences to his closest family and friends.

Sunday Villar

Vigués by birth and Madrilenian by adoption and residence, "Madrileiro" he used to say, he had 51 years half a life to live and many stories to write. But only four have been enough —three novels and a book of short stories— so that his figure as a writer hit a ceiling from the beginning.

The series starring the inspector Leo Caldas (Water eyes, The beach of the drowned y The last ship) elevated him to that place where great writers remain in time. It wasn't just because of the stories, the characters or the setting in that Galician terra that I missed so much living in the capital. It was for one very personal way of narrating, With a touch costumbrist and a prose . elegance y worked with great perfectionism. And all seems to "ring" when reading, because of that style and the cadence of the Galician that he later translated and read aloud when he wrote.

Last year he introduced Some complete stories, where that prose still resonated more to that land, its estuaries, legends, meigas and music in an illustrated edition by his friend Carlos Baonza. It was his last work.

sunday and me

I arrived at Domingo Villar by Water eyes, whose cover in the Siruela edition caught my attention and also because it was set in Vigo y bueu, places that I know very well because I have been in love with them since I started going on vacation there twenty-odd years ago. And also I fell in love with that prose, what it told and Leo Caldas, with whom they used to identify him, as happens from time to time with authors and their protagonists. then i devoured The beach of the drowned. And we had to wait 10 long years until The last ship, which he published in 2019. It was then that I met personally to Sunday.

That same year we met Getafe Black, in a great chat with Lawrence Silva, where he already knew me by name and we chatted for a while about his land, his books, writing... And in January of the ill-fated 2020 we share another good time in a meeting with readers organized by Cultural field, where he exclusively read us a couple of stories that he had not yet decided to publish.

Before Christmas of the 20th I had the luck and the privilege of reunite him already Francis Narla in a virtual chat which for me will be my best memory of Domingo in addition to having met him. Finally, last year I returned to greet him and chat in the Madrid Book Fair, where he already had those stories under his arm. This year she had the illusion of seeing him there again. But unfortunately it cannot be.

And now…

we will miss him, but not only for his books, for everything he had left to write, his theatrical project that he had in hand as well as a new story by Leo Caldas. We will miss him for how he was, his bonhomie and his gesture and voice always with a serene smile. And for this tragic and early game, so unfair. Because I have fully felt it for not being the first and reminding me of my mother, who also left in the same way.

now alone we have Caldas left and we can always return to his existence of ink and paper to continue seeing Domingo walking around his beloved Vigo. We'll have a drink in memory of him in the Elijah's Tavern and we will cross the estuary many more times. We think that at least he stayed where he wanted, under the sky that he longed for and by the sea for those walks. I will also stay with that, which is not consolation, but the privilege and luck having met him.

Good bow, Sunday, rest easy.