it Is obvious that Antonio Machado was unique. Even so, some days, it seemed quite the other. That Friday 11 of January of 1929, for example, would feel a frustration very common. Still rested in Madrid, but the return to the everyday as we amargaba existence. “The beginning of the letter that I will miss, oh, in Segovia on Sunday. Because my holiday end without remedy,” she lamented. As anyone, even today. But, starting this year, readers can share much more than the feelings of the poet: have as a gift of his complete works.
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The author of Fields of Castilla and Solitudes died in Colliure, France, in 1939. So, 80 years later, his writings are already free of copyright, as provided by law. At the same time, the National Library (BNE) offers from today, online, virtually all of their production. Manuscripts, book covers, first editions and dozens of documents to read and download. In that tide, also sail four sheets to complete this gloomy missive, 1929, addressed to Pilar de Valderrama. “Goodbye queen, and the glory mine, the heart of your poet, the huge for you —and only you— accompany you,” writes the author to his beloved.
The biblioteca nacional, in reality, has published a list of 180 other authors that passed to the public domain. “There are artists from all the Autonomous Communities, unknown or forgotten, that it is worth recovering”, stresses Ana Santos, the director of the institution, which since four years ago, collected in January, the creators free of rights. Even though she herself is aware that a colossus like Machado would shadow even other giants of literature. “Rare is the Spanish home where you do not have one of his works”, sums up Manuel Álvarez Machado, nephew of the poet, honorary president of the foundation and one of the heirs of his legacy.
Now, in addition to acquire, anyone may publish or dispose of their texts as you want. There are only two limits: the moral rights and authorship. It may be that the release stirs up a renewed interest in publishing, although both Cegal (the confederation of booksellers) and the Federation of Guilds of Editors point out that the arrival in the public domain does not usually have a noticeable impact on sales or publications. In any case, Alberto Sanchez, president of Cegal, believes that there must be a bookstore in Spain that does not offer work of Machado. He runs, Taiga, in Toledo, yesterday I had three or four copies.
The margin of a wider dissemination, Manuel Ñúñez Encabo, chairman of the Spanish Foundation Antonio Machado (FAM), expressed another hope: “What does not exist and it is necessary a deepening of their work. Represents an example of democracy and a lesson in cultural, poetic, social, and political. There are some publications about Machado of enormous superficiality. It is perhaps the poet most quoted by politicians, but also the most deformed”.
expand photo Manuscript of ‘Coplas’, 1939.
perhaps it is the fate of any genius. Many want to get hold of him. The risk, now that is offered to all, may even increase. But Alvarez Machado expected to grow, rather, the research work about the author. What is certain is that the catalog is already huge: a search in the index on ISBN (which register the books published) returns about 200 titles of Machado edited, in addition to other 550 on it. And the success of the recent exhibition about him and his brother in Seville and Madrid demonstrates its validity.
Generation of ‘ 98
it Is often said that the teacher of the Generation of 98 shares with García Lorca the throne of Spanish poet best known. His great-nephew offers a piece of information: “four decades Ago, in the kiosks, there was a collection of classics. The work of Machado appeared in issue 16. Sold 1.6 million copies”. And Núñez Encabo adds that it is the only Spanish is recognised as the “universal poet and of the humanity” by Unesco.
Both of these seem to consider the release of rights as a good news. The nephew does not care much for the family to lose a source of income: in the absence of sons, Antonio Machado left everything to his brothers. Only two had heirs: their rights, ended up distributed among those six girls, nieces of the poet. And, today, among the children of these, including Alvarez Machado. “If he had concentrated everything on a single person, would have been able to live it. And well. But it has always been very divided,” he said.
in The end, that is exactly the spirit that seeks the law: a balance between the protection of the author and his environment and the widest possible dissemination of culture. In fact, after the reform of the Law of Intellectual Property in 1987, works in Spain enter the public domain 70 years after the death of its creator, from the following 1 January. To the deceased prior to that regulatory change, like Machado, you must wait 80 years. And a discrepancy: several experts argue that the rights are released on the day that they are eight decades; others interpret that you must wait to January 1. For Machado, there is no doubt: both dates have passed. It is already all.
