Amnesia of the heart

Their list is as long as the list of injustices that history has suffered. What happened to them is what happened to the house of the painter Ricardo Arredondo (1850-1911) in the former Adrada Palace attached to the wall in the outskirts of Cambrón, a victim of abandonment and oblivion. In July 1958, a wind blew away its roof, marking the beginning of the end of a house that neither his nieces and heirs, nor the municipal authorities knew how or wanted to save from ruin, with the irreparable destruction of a good part of the documentation of an extraordinary painter who, during his life, enjoyed fame and recognition throughout Europe.

On the occasion of the centenary of his death, the author contacted the person who at the time ran the Rabacht to suggest that Arredondo deserved, at the very least, a commemorative plaque on the façade of what was his home and studio, without any result. (We had better luck poet Baltasar Elisio de Medinillawho, on the occasion of the third centenary of his assassination in 1620, precisely in said palace, deserved a plaque to be erected by the venerable institution, which lived in better times). Today, almost no one in Toledo remembers Ricardo Arredondo, an accomplished artist who was also a councilor of Toledo and provincial deputy, a tireless fighter for the conservation of the artistic heritage of the city who promoted the restoration of the castle of San Servando, the old Puerta de Bisagra and the creation of the Paseo del Cambrón, dedicated until the Civil War to such an eminent painter.

But the merciless wind of history has swept away the memory of many other personalities of Toledo’s life who would have deserved a bust, a street or a modest plaque. The shadow of El Greco has eclipsed, for example, one of his contemporaries, Sánchez Cotán, born in Orgaz but trained in Toledo under the direction of Blas de Prado. From his studio in Toledo came some of the most exquisite and extraordinary still lifes in the history of painting. But there is no need to go back that far in time. I will mention only one other artist, although we could sponge many more from the dusty archives of history, who lived (and died) for Toledo: Enrique Vera (1886-1956), disciple of Sorolla and the light of ToledoHis house-studio on Calle Alfonso XII, dedicated to the memory of the painter, has been in danger of collapse for decades.

We look with healthy envy at how other cities have transformed the houses of their local painters, or other significant urban spaces, into house-museums (I now remember, for example, the Jaume Morera Museum, a disciple, like Arredondo, of Carlos de Haes, in Lleida, or the Pablo Sarasate Museum in the violinist’s hometown, Pamplona). Toledo owes much to novelists like Pérez Galdós, who rivaled his friend Ricardo Arredondo in knowing the street of Toledo by heart; to poets of the universal stature of Rilke, who made his stay in Toledo a source of inspiration for his poetics of angels; to damascene and chisel workers like Mariano Alvarez and Crispulo Avecillawhose works won gold medals at the Universal Exhibitions; with such great ceramists as Sebastián Aguado and Ángel Pedraza, and many others.

Very late, a plaque was dedicated to the author of Ángel Guerra on the Cerro de la Virgen de Gracia, a recognition that is probably insufficient for this colossal novelist who introduced more than 70 characters linked to Toledo into his novels. Doesn’t the Canarian writer deserve a statue, a bush or a simple head, like the one he made? Victorio Macho by Gregorio Marañón (whose neck, by the way, is still covered by the awning of a well-known bar in the Santo Tomé square)? Perhaps it will be an opportunity to deal in another article with other forgotten people closest to us, some of them recently deceased, and whom we had already spoken about in the article The Essentials. The so-called imperial city has shown itself to be very ungrateful towards many illustrious Toledoans and many other foreign personalities who excelled in the different fields of culture and fell in love with Toledo by settling within its walls. Although it would be more just and more accurate to attribute such ingratitude, more than to the city itself, to its political representatives, especially in times like these when excellence stands like an island in an ocean of political mediocrity. Seneca said: “He who denies the benefit received is ungrateful; he who hides it is ungrateful; More ungrateful is he who does not return it, and much more ungrateful is he who forgets it.

Is there a way to cure the amnesia suffered by this city so burdened with years and oblivion? Perhaps there is at least one way to alleviate this problem, by creating a municipal museum, like the one enjoyed by so many cities with much less historical baggage than Toledo. Archaeology, urban planning, ethnography, goldsmithing, the silk industry in Toledo, painting, ceramics, damascene, ironwork, photography, etc., would come together in a journey of more than two thousand years of history, which would take us from the Roman era Toletum to the city of the 21st century. The royal city of the Visigoths, the Muslim city, the medieval city, Renaissance and communal Toledo, the Baroque city and the contemporary city would be represented in an exhibition space organized according to modern and rigorous museological criteria. There is no shortage of empty or unused historic buildings in Toledo that could house this new museum. With a City Museum, not only would the cultural offering of a city that aspires to become the European Capital of Culture in 2026 be strengthened, but a deeper and more precise knowledge of the history of Toledo and, by extension, of the city would be enhanced. appreciated the history of Spain, but that many historical injustices would be repaired, because, as García Márquez said, “death does not come with old age, but with forgetfulness.”