Mercedes Ballesteros | Photography: Regional Archive of the Community of Madrid
Mercedes Ballesteros was born on December 6, 1913 in Madrid. She was the first woman admitted as a member of the History Academy, but also wrote drama, detective story and rose and collaborated with magazines such as The quail. she had a very extensive work that time faded. So I remember her in this dedicated article. To rediscover it.
Mercedes Ballesteros
Mercedes Ballesteros Gaibrois She was the daughter of historians and history scholars Antonio Ballesteros and Mercedes Gaibrois. She studied Philosophy and Letters and later on got married with the writer and film director Claudio de la Torre. They went to the Canary Islands fleeing the Civil War. At the end of the conflict, Mercedes began to write detective stories and romance, and she used pseudonyms like those of Baroness Alberta and Silvia Visconti. . She did it until the late 70s and in the early XNUMXs she was widowed. Already in 1985 published what would be his last work, a kind of novelized memories. He passed away in his hometown in 1995, already far from the cultural world that also almost forgot her.
With a very prolific work He wrote both articles and essays and biographies. But the one that stands out the most is her facet as a narrator. There are many titles that she signed: Paris-Nice, Glori Dunn's strange wedding, The adventure of a daring girl, earth eclipse, Winter, Workshop, The boy o The kite and the echo. It was also dramatic author with tragedies like snow shop, which was followed I want to see the doctor o an unknown woman.
Mercedes Ballesteros — fragments of works
Thirst
Thirty years, or almost thirty, eating rice pudding because of Matías' fineness, who had decided on his own that this was Justa's favorite dessert. How to tell her that she didn't like him? She had never, not even as a child, dared.
He didn't thank her for the gift, nor for the dessert, despite appreciating them so much; What he had most thanked her for was that phrase: "You are the only thing I have in the world." Was that true? Was she that much to anyone? Grandfather had a daughter, other grandchildren. Carlos, her sister, hers, her nephews... But Matías had her alone. What a joyous birthday present!
Carlos, while shaving, kept thinking: "I, ma'am, represent the interests of Mr. Ambrosio Marsá...". It was a cold morning, one of those mornings at the end of September in which the light is humid through the mist. Although her husband had offered to take her in the car when she left for her office, she preferred to go on foot. She was walking slowly, enjoying the morning temperature. She looked at the passers-by with whom she came across, people in a hurry going to her chores, engaged couples in silence, children running screaming, beggars bending down to pick up some spoil. And behind each forehead a crossroads and within each heart a yearning. She saw them in passing, without paying attention to any particular one, and an immense pity took possession of her spirit. The people, the life! That monotonous and meaningless chain!
earth eclipse
The golden industry kicked them out of there. Due to an error when marking the itineraries, perhaps due to the fact that the Borrells' house was located at the crossroads of three streets, the case was that it was included in the route of several groups and Francisco and his companion turned out to be the fourth in knock on that door with the pretense of removing Asia from idolatry. As the owners of the house were absent and the doorman, rheumatic and proven, it was difficult for him to get up from his chair and go down the seven steps to open the door, and, on the other hand, he did not care about the spiritual future of Asia. When he saw in front of him two new youngsters armed with piggy banks and a fine evangelical dialectic, he pushed them away, with a vigor so unexpected in their advanced age that by a miracle the pedantic apostles of charity did not fall down right there.
Workshop
He had it arranged with great taste: good furniture, antiques, engravings, a screen of his invention with multicolored butterflies, imprisoned between two panes. Everything was refined, with that somewhat shoddy refinement, the shoddy kind of good taste, that illustrates the "Vogue" and other magazines depository of chic.
Cruz liked it, he liked it enormously, especially because of the contrast that that exquisite corner offered with his dilapidated apartment. In his house everything was ugly, poor. The mat in the corridor was torn; the folder that covered the table was tarnished. The sewing machine had a cover made from an old quilt. Only the reception room kept some good furniture, but it lacked varnish. In the cabinet, which once contained some valuable object, trinkets were now piled up.
Source: epdlp