Shared solitude
Manuel Altolaguirre y Concha Méndez (1932-1944)
"Andaremos por siglos siempre juntos
por el camino de la Poesía,
que fue quien nos unió sin darnos cuenta
un ya lejano y luminoso día…"
Concha Méndez, Entre el soñar y el vivir, 1981
1932-1935. Poets and printers in Madrid and London
Federico García Lorca, who would later dedicate one of the poems included in Poeta en Nueva York to them, introduced Manuel Altolaguirre and Concha Méndez at the Café de la Granja del Henar in 1931, and they married on June 5, 1932, in the Chamberí church. Juan Ramón Jiménez, Luis Cernuda, Federico García Lorca, José Moreno Villa, Vicente Aleixandre, Jorge Guillén, Francisco Iglesias, and Carlos Morla Lynch were witnesses at the wedding ceremony.
Together they started new publishing projects in their workshop on Viriato St. in Madrid. The results of this collaboration were the journal Héroe in which poets such as Lorca, Cernuda, Aleixandre and Moreno Villa wrote- and the books of the publishing house La Tentativa Poética, such as Vida a Vida, Concha Méndez’ fourth poetry volume, with a prologue by Juan Ramón Jiménez. Thanks to a grant from the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios, Altolaguirre and Méndez lived in en London between 1933 and 1935. In that city they stared 1616, a journal that published English and Spanish classical poetry, and Manuel Altolaguirre translated Shelley’s Adonais.
Their daughter, Paloma, was born in 1935, and they returned to Madrid in the fall, taking with them the printing press they had bought in London. During 1935-1936, they supervised the printing of Caballo verde para la poesía, a journal edited by Pablo Neruda, and some books for Ediciones del Árbol and Los crepúsculos. They also printed Cernuda’s La realidad y el deseo ;Lorca’s Primeras Canciones ; Miguel Hernández’ El rayo que no cesa de; Concha Méndez’ El carbón y la rosa and Niño y sombras, and Altolaguirre’s poetry collections, La lenta libertad and Las Islas Invitadas.
Their workshop was always a meeting place for their friends, with whom they shared an important part of their life. Their printing house became one of the most dynamic places for the new Spanish poetry movement.
1936-1939. The Civil War
The outbreak of the Civil War found them in Madrid. Manuel Altolaguirre supported the Republican government and moved to Valencia at the end of 1931. He published the journal La Hora de España. His play El triunfo de las germanías, written in collaboration with José Bergamín, premiered in January of 1937, and he was the stage director of Lorca’s Mariana Pineda, performed by the actors of La Barracafor the International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers. He joined the ranks and was sent to the XI Corps of the Army of the East, where he published Granada de las armas y las letras and Los Lunes de El Combatiente.
Meanwhile, Concha Méndez left Spain with their daughter, Paloma, and sought shelter in France, England and Belgium. They returned to Spain in 1938 and joined Manuel in Catalonia, where Concha started working for a propaganda office of the Republican government and published poetry and plays in Hora de España and Los Lunes de El Combatiente. Concha Méndez and Paloma moved to Paris in 1939 and were welcome by Paul Éluard. After a brief period in the concentration camp at Perpignan, Manuel Altolaguirre joined his family in Paris and they went into exile.
1939-1944. Exile. Havana and Mexico
They travelled on board the ship Saint Domingue to Havana, where they established a new printing house: La Verónica. There, Concha Méndez published her poetry anthology, Lluvias enlazadas; the second part of the theatre anthology that she had started before the war, El solitario, and the second edition of El carbón y la rosa. They also published the poetry collection, Nube temporal, with works written by Spanish exiles and Cuban writers. They published the journals Nuestra España, the official newspaper of the Spanish Republicans exiled in Cuba; Atentamente, where Manuel Altolaguirre presented the first pages of his memoirs entitled El caballo griego, and La Verónica. They also collaborated on Espuela de Plata, a journal edited by Lezama Lima. At this point in their life, when the tragedy of the war was still an immediate reality, the Altolaguirres’ generosity and tenacity marked their work at the height of their creative careers.
In 1943, the family moved to Mexico City where they continued with their activities as editors and publishers under the label La Verónica. Manuel Altolaguirre worked as the manager of a printing house of the Ministry of Education where he not only fulfilled his official assignments, but also published a brief anthology of Spanish Golden Age poetry entitled Aires de mi España. In 1944, Manuel and Concha’s marriage ended.
