When he died, Julian Rodriguez Marcos (June 28, 2019, of a heart attack, in the morning, at his home in Segovia) is it snowed the heart of a crowd. There is a photograph of you that appears surrounded by the snow, as if to reflect as well his first title, Nevada. In other photographs, this alone, staring galeradas, finishing a paragraph. That crowd was in awe of his death was composed of loners who were part of that, one-to-one or in a group, they were getting closer to the morgue of the city of Cáceres where we said goodbye, between shadows frost, in the heat of extremadura who had seen the birth of did a half-century.
The mother did not want consolation, the news was this: Julian was dead. A major injury. She was holding on to that huge fright with the force of rage. The father was a whisper of walk between the shock and the disbelief, sitting on a wooden bench, looking circular the icy wind, the relentless sun and extremadura. He said the ear to those who greet you: “Was called as I… it Was my son.”
brother Javier was raised between words of farewell, as if it had come from an earthquake, filled with a serenity that seemed to inheritance of Julian, and of the parents. Wanted one-to-one to the that also he wanted to, said Javier. “You all made us feel unique, special”. Holder of many trades (editor, musician, writer, cook), “had the book fair, the restaurant just right and the print fair.” He had learned to be a printer “on the side of the worker who used the Minerva in an old printing house in Cáceres: Thomas Rodriguez.”
he Told Javier that “led many colleagues to the printing press Kadmos, Salamanca”, even though they were those editors direct competition of Peripheral, the editorial that opened with Paca Flowers in 2006. To conclude this flight to the heart of the brother, Javier read a song of The Planets, which Julian had been used in a novel as a prayer lay: “Ghost of Bruce Lee / If you can in sites important / give me back to how it was before”.
there Was a tremor massive, transcendent, and the silence was applause intimate that expressed admiration for Julian Rodriguez. From that moment, the one who now narrates the time he wanted to have that atmosphere, it was like a fist of pain and recognition. Julian had wanted to silence, but in the printing presses of now, without sound, there were many letters, such as the requiem by José Hierro, “without flying in the verse”. Leila Guerriero wrote here what he said after declaring that their editorial peripheral working in a space of risk: “I Think that the books that we publish have a beauty comforting. Our catalog is established between the provocation and consolation”.
And what about your books? A cheap holiday in the misery of others, his collection of Novels, are part of the essence of anger, consolation, and literature that, when I already had made the task of loving and saying goodbye (of your trades as varied), he was allowed to draw to leave a record of his trade of living. A literature “between the provocation and consolation”. Its publishers were Claudio López Lamadrid, who had died months before, Constantino Bértolo, Abelardo Linares…
A void immense, it was noted in the farewell, as if to open a hole without end, the fire of a library of affections. Who was Julian?, I asked his compatriot Javier Cercas months after. He said: “it Was peculiar, original. Designer of exquisite taste. Cook at the height of the great chefs. A waiter also. Fun to do all that he did. Peripheral also, or above all. Showed that the periphery does not exist, which also may be central in Ceclavín. I discovered Extremadura, without patrioterismos. I refuted with facts Badajoz out ugly. And it was, in the end, a writer very original, though she was so generous that the faculty spent less time than set out to make the other be happy. All that and his talent made him a kind truly special.”
All who were there at the end of June could have said, as in the last verses of the requiem of Iron, “I have not told anyone that I was on the verge of crying.”
