Alberto García Reyes: This light of Velázquez

This late autumn sun which rises some mornings in the rain makes the crystals cry. The reflection of the frost is like a brushstroke. But we don’t realize it because we are too close. We know the material heritage, the stone … of UNESCO, but not the intangible. The mayor of Jerez, María José García-Pelayo, says that true culture is not in the tangible, but in the duende. In identity. Because there are places in the world that can build more museums, but they cannot have the ineffable grace of mystery. There are cities that can exhibit paintings by Velázquez, but only Seville can offer visitors the light that inspired the painter. Jerez Oloroso can be drunk all over the world, but this can only be explained in a cathedral winery. There is an ethereal culture that cannot be measured, it can only be experienced. The mayor of Jerez is right when she defends the duende des tabancos as a heritage as precious as a baroque temple. And perhaps this explains the vain glory of those who open a museum compared to the apathy of those who live in a museum. This late autumn light which moistens in the puddles and rocks in the dead leaves of the catalpas is in the face of Murillo’s “Inmaculada Colosal”, in Velázquez’s “Fragua de Vulcano”, in the powerful and at the same time withered echo of the Girl with Combs, in the dove hands of Matilde Coral, in the transparent darkness of Romero Ressendi, in the patina of charcoal. of Gran Power, in the new childhood of Macarena, in the distant proximity of Cernuda, in the blue rhyme of Bécquer’s students, in the lemony bitterness of Machado, in the never-written couplet of Rafael de León, in the impossible cancellation of Sánchez Mejías… This light of Velázquez could enlighten Minister Urtasun to cure his intellectual blindness, but for that you have to know how to understand duende.

Under this light, the bullfighter illuminated Lorca’s piano for the intoxication of Argentinita and Espeleta in the show “The streets of Cadiz” which gave rise to the “tirititrán” of joys. How to explain this to a cultural manager, to a museum decolonizer? Sánchez Mejías was also a poet of 27. To his daughter María Teresa, Piruja, he wrote the rawest confession of paternal love: “I would kill ten thousand bulls/to make a path for you/of joy./I would kill ten thousand bulls/so that you never know/what I know.” If the minister of ignorance had within his grasp the true meaning of these verses, perhaps he would understand that culture is a halo, not a monument, and that works of art can wander. The bullfighter also said it: “That in life/ Pirujita,/ so pretty,/ all the bad games/ of life are hidden in the corners/ and it would be bad luck/ if I don’t put you back on your feet/ like this killed death/ your sadness pierced/ by my sword.”

This light of Velázquez, so that we understand each other, is the one who paints, the one who writes, the one who sings and the one who illuminates the incurable darkness of the sectarians who hide in the corners of life.

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