On the day in 1924 when the first stone of the monument to Concha Espina was laid in the gardens of Pereda de Santander, the writer buried a letter from her with very precise instructions: not to open it until 100 years later. The deadline expired on August 23, but the message has not yet been recovered despite the curiosity aroused by its content. The truth is that not even the statue, the fountain and the pond that make up the sculptural group are visible. It is currently surrounded and hidden by a high fence in the perimeter of the construction shed that Banco Santander has demarcated to carry out the renovation of its old headquarters. Only one of the pieces remains visible, damaged by graffiti. “Fuck”, someone wrote in blue ink on the name of Concha Espina.
So far, no one has discovered the brass or zinc box, depending on the version, which also contained another envelope with an autograph – a handwritten text – by Concha Espina, editions of the works she wrote, local newspapers with the date of the day. and some silver and copper coins from the time. “For no reason or motive should it be read for a century,” the multiple Nobel Prize candidate for Literature wrote in her own hand on the letter’s envelope.
Today, there are fears that this legacy could be lost after some changes in the location of the monument or that, in the worst case, it could be destroyed due to negligence in these movements. In fact, a few years ago, an investigation was opened at the Santander City Council to try to find, without success, any file or evidence in the municipal departments of Culture and Architecture. They even physically searched the land and, as confirmed by elDiario.es, it was concluded – without there being any official confirmation on this matter – that the box had been lost or destroyed.
The story began on August 23, a century ago. The Santander City Council named Concha Espina, author of a prolific narrative work translated into several languages, its favorite daughter. “Being a favorite daughter of Santander means for me the warm duration of the house where I had my cradle, so that this filial title of grace is like a fire always lit for my soul on the ice of the roads,” the writer proclaimed in her speech.
Being a favorite daughter of Santander means for me the warm duration of the house where I had my cradle, so this filial title of grace is like a fire always lit for my soul on the ice of the roads.
Thorn shell
— Writer
After an official ceremony at the City Hall, the delegation of authorities, social representatives and family members went to the current Pereda Gardens, then known as the Boulevard, where they proceeded to the symbolic laying of the first stone of a monument dedicated to the writer from Santander. “Once the participants finished signing the minutes, as well as the works of Concha Espina, the local newspapers of today were included and an envelope in which another was placed, inside which was an autograph of Concha Espina for all unknowns,” he said. “Written in the newspaper La Región, in the second envelope is written by the novelist a recommendation to read it without reason or cause before a hundred years have passed,” this column highlights.
The event was presided over by Queen Victoria, wife of Alfonso and King Consort Francisco de Asís, in 1852, when the first sleeper of the Alar-Santander railway was placed in the Cajo neighborhood. A tool that, together with a mahogany wheelbarrow, is preserved in the Santander Interpretation Center, located in the Cathedral.
A monumental complex was built on this small handwritten testament of Concha Espina, designed by the sculptor Victorio Macho. A fountain with two spouts that flow into a pond presided over by a recumbent statue of the writer. The idea was promoted by the local journalist José del Río Sainz “Pick” and the director of the town’s pedagogical school, Carmen de la Vega, who launched a popular subscription to finance this initiative. The monument, made of marble and bronze details, was inaugurated three years later, in 1927, in the absence of the writer and in the presence of Kings Alfonso and Victoria. In the 1960s, a rear pediment was added to the monument in homage to Concha Espina’s son, the journalist Víctor de la Serna.
Where is the box?
The newspapers of the time emphasize that the urn was placed inside the first stone itself, which could have kept it safe during the changes of location that the sculptural ensemble underwent. “The first stone was placed in the center of which the brass box was closed,” reports the newspaper La Región verbatim on Saturday, August 23, 1924, which also includes three photographs of the event. The edition of El Diario Montañés is more specific in the details and explains that Professor Carmen de la Vega, one of the promoters of the monument, acted as master of ceremonies and placed the objects “in a zinc hole made where the stone that was placed after.”
The closest coordinates are revealed by La Región in the issue of the day after the event: the box was buried “at the western end of the second part of the gardens of the Boulevard de Pereda, in front of the bandstand”, it quotes verbatim. At this point, “a small altar and a seat for the queen” had been arranged, behind which were placed several armchairs “for the palatines who accompanied Doña Victoria and the authorities”.
Originally, “The Garden of Concha Espina” – as the press of the time called it -, under the soil of which the enigmatic letter lies, was oriented towards the disappeared building of the Pereda Theatre in Santander, victim of the pickaxe in 1966. The problem is that throughout this century, the monument has undergone some changes of orientation and location that could have destroyed the urn during an unfortunate excavation.
In 2003, the gardens were renovated and Concha Espina was moved so that the monument was oriented in another direction for reasons that probably did not go beyond a mere municipal whim. The fact is that the earth under this marble structure had already been removed without any evidence that the precise location of this first stone had been indicated, under which the urn with the letter should be buried.
The Pereda Gardens underwent another aggressive renovation in July 2014, when the Botín Center built a building facing the bay and insisted, with the approval of the city council, to adapt them to this new aesthetic. To do this, the monument to Concha Espina was restored and returned to its original location. The discovery or marking of the urn was also not reported at that time.
Today, it is other works – those of the renovation of the old headquarters of Banco Santander to become the cultural center named Faro Santander with the project of the British architect David Chipperfield – that hide the monument dedicated to Concha Espina, which has been there for more than a year surrounded, fenced and in a terrible state of conservation, very unrepresentative of the way in which the city treats the memory of one of its favorite daughters.
The writer who changed the name of his city
Concha Espina was a pioneering woman who lived from literature, being a writer by trade, since she did not have any other means of subsistence either. After a very problematic marriage for her, she left for Madrid with her children with the money she had obtained by pawning a diamond and emerald ring. She arrived in the capital with her first unpublished novel under her arm, “The Girl from Luzmela”, which was a great publishing success.
After 37 novels translated into several languages, poems, dramatic works, essays and journalistic articles, she was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1926, 1927 and 1928. In one of them, she was one vote away from winning the prize, in the absence of support from the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, which also refused her, because she was a woman, to enter the institution.
Her Catholic and conservative character, her Germanophile spirit and her harmony with the Franco dictatorship – she entered the Women’s Section and her children were linked to the Falange – allowed her to live comfortably from writing, with greater freedom than other women of her time. since her literature was not uncomfortable. Curiously, she was one of the women who took the opportunity to divorce during the Republic, although later it is said that she was presented as a widow, to hide this marital status so uncomfortable in the face of the morality of the dictatorship.
A prolific writer, she achieved enormous success in terms of sales and popularity with a style that is difficult to classify between romanticism and traditionalism, with some exceptions such as the social novel “La esfinge maragata” or “El metal de los muerte”. In recent years, now blind, she wrote with the help of a tablet and her narrative took on a more Catholic and traditionalist tone.
The influence and consideration she obtained led the Francoist authorities to change the name of her hometown, Mazcuerras, to “Luzmela”, the one she had invented in her novels. It was renamed in 1948, but later regained its identity. Curiously, her marriage to Ramón de la Serna linked her to an extraordinary female avant-garde. A generation of Cantabrian intellectuals and artists – the painter María Blanchard, the deputy, writer and folklorist Matilde de la Torre and the writer and translator Consuelo Berges – united by strong family and friendly ties, and by the rural environment they inhabited. surroundings of the Cantabrian town of Cabezón de la Sal.
Loss of the city’s heritage
When designing the statue of Concha Espina, the idea was to place it with its back to the sea facing the arch of Martillo Street, towards the Pereda Theater, a magnificent building demolished in 1966 to build housing and whose disappearance the city is still in mourning.
It was an imposing stage with 1,700 seats distributed in boxes at different heights, built in 1919 and where the most important artists and companies of the time passed through. The disappearance of this building with its relevant aesthetics and imposing architectural presence was experienced in the city as a funeral. And so, Concha Espina’s gaze remained in the same direction, indicating the emptiness of a mourned absence. Now surrounded by fences, her gaze is much shorter and even elusive for visitors.
