It was a privilege to know her, to really know her, beyond the clichés. The biography of Àngels Martínez Castells is much broader and deeper than the four pieces of information provided by the announcement of her death. I will stick to the title of La Vanguardia: activist for social rights. She had a doctorate in economics and was a professor at the University of Barcelona for three decades. An authentic woman of the left, a radical anti-fascist, feminist, republican, but above all free, consistent, a tireless fighter, courageous like few others, ingenious. He spoke and wrote in six languages: Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and German. A living encyclopedia, he knew everything and how to tell it.
I called her, without knowing her personally, for the book React that I coordinated in 2011, the best-selling Spanish essay that year, which had a great influence on 15M: the first chapter was written by José Luis Sampedro. She talked about the economy, about humanity. About privatizations, about that false feeling that assures – to manipulate it – that public money belongs to no one. Given the importance of care, few people did it then.
