His work reflected his human qualities and his commitment to freedom. All authors tell us something of themselves in their writings.
In a more or less veiled way they tell us who they are by choosing some themes over others, by drawing the profiles of the characters, even by choosing how to place them in a specific scenario. Sometimes, who knows why, they reveal all.
This is what Miguel Delibes did in “Señora de rojo sobre fondo gris,” a wonderful book about love and loss. He changed the names, the protagonist instead of a writer was a painter and many other details were also fictitious, but in essence he was telling of his love for Ángeles de Castro and the pain of her death.
Whoever met that lady in red through the clean and sincere prose of the Valladolid-born writer has come very close to the writer's heart. In his acceptance speech at the Royal Spanish Academy, delivered on May 25, 1975 -a few months after the death of his wife-, he took the opportunity to remember her with words as beautiful and moving as this book: “I am, then, aware that with her disappearance the better half of myself has died”.
