Elena Fortún
Encyclopedia
Encarnación Aragoneses Urquijo (Madrid, 17 November 1886 - Madrid, 8 May 1952), Spanish
author of children's literature who wrote under the pen name, Elena Fortún. She became famous for Celia, lo que dice
("What Celia Says") the first in the series of children's novels which were a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929. The series were both popular and successful during the time of their publications and are today considered classics
of Spanish literature
.
of the Spanish Royal Guard
from Segovia
and her mother was Basque
. Born in Madrid
she spent her summers with her grandfather, Isidro, in Abades
, a small village west of Segovia. She studied Philosophy
in Madrid. In 1908 she married her cousin, Eusebio de Gorbea y Lemmi, a military man, intellectual and writer. They had two sons, the youngest, Bolín, died in 1920 at the age of 10 and she sunk into a deep depression at times trying to contact her son through a Ouija
board. Her younger son, who had lost an eye in a hunting accident, eventually married Ana María Link, a young Swiss student who was studying at the Residencia de Señoritas in Madrid. Encarna lived mainly in Madrid but also spent time in Tenerife
in the Canary Islands
, San Roque, Zaragoza
, Barcelona
, Valencia, France
and Argentina
.
Her husband, Gorbea , a playwright, was a member of the Generation of 1914
and introduced Encarnación to his circle of writers and artists. By the late 1920s she had decided to write and began writing for children in 1928 for the magazine Blanco y Negro under the pseudonym
Elena Fortún, a name of one of her husband's characters. Her stories became so popular that the publishing house of Aguilar became interested and began putting them into print in 1935. Set in Madrid, these stories were told from the perspective of seven year old Celia Gálvez de Montalbán, a young girl who questions adults and the world around her in ways that were both ingenuous and innocent. She especially querried the educational system that sought to dampen the imaginations of young girls. Encarna knew how to excite the hearts, minds and dreams of children and these stories became favorites with Spanish
girls during the 1930s through the 1960s.
would end illiteracy and bring equality into women's lives. At the start of the Spanish Civil War
she stayed in Madrid with her husband who was loyal to the Republic
. In Celia en la revolución (1987), an accurate portrayal of Republican Spain during the siege of Madrid, the author wonders who is right and expresses her own thoughts and sufferings of the war through Celia who is horrified at the uncompromising positions of both sides. In 1938 she became a member of the Comisión del Teatro de los Niños and in July her play Moñitos (Baubles) was staged.
and then into exile in Argentina
with help from her daughter-in-law's family. In Buenos Aires
she met the writer Jorge Luis Borges
at the National Public Library where they were both working. Unlike other writers who left Spain because of the war, her Celia books continued to be published despite the fact that Celia, like Encarna and her husband, was a Republican with no specific party affiliation. In 1948 she returned to Spain to negotiate the possibility of an amnesty for her husband. She was not persecuted because she did not belong to a political party, her only crime was being a woman who felt that the Republic
would enhance the education and role of women in society. She visited with her old friends from the "defunct" Lyceum Women's Club which was continuing its activities in an unofficial and clandestine way. A few months later her husband, who was still in Buenos Aires
, committed suicide. Grief-stricken she went to America to live with her son who was in exile. Later she returned to Madrid
and died on 8 May 1952 at age 65.
In 1957, a few years after her death, María Martos de Baeza and playwright Matilde Ras sponsored a fund raising effort to erect a monument in her honor in the Parque del Oeste
in Madrid. The relief
which shows Elena Fortún between two children was designed by the Murcia
n sculptor José Planes. In Córdoba
there are the beautiful Jardines Escritora Elena Fortún named in her honor; as well as the streets, Calle Elena Fortún in Madrid
, Las Rozas de Madrid
, Valdetorres de Jarama
and, in Málaga
, the Calle Escritora Elena Fortún.
In 1993 Celia, lo que dice
, Celia novelista and Celia en el colegio
were adapted into a series of six episodes for Spanish television and directed by José Luis Borau
.
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
author of children's literature who wrote under the pen name, Elena Fortún. She became famous for Celia, lo que dice
Celia, lo que dice
Celia, lo que dice is the first in the series of children's novels by the famous Spanish author Elena Fortún. The novel is a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929...
("What Celia Says") the first in the series of children's novels which were a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929. The series were both popular and successful during the time of their publications and are today considered classics
Classics
Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
of Spanish literature
Spanish literature
Spanish literature generally refers to literature written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the state of Spain...
.
Life
She was the daughter of Leocadio Aragoneses, a yeomanYeoman
Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
of the Spanish Royal Guard
Spanish Royal Guard
The Royal Guard is an independent unit of the Spanish Armed Forces dedicated to the military protection of H.M. the King of Spain and the members of the Spanish Royal Family. It currently has a strength of 1,900 troops. While the guard does participate in parades and other ceremonial events, it...
from Segovia
Segovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...
and her mother was Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
. Born in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
she spent her summers with her grandfather, Isidro, in Abades
Abades
Abades is a municipality located in the province of Segovia, Castile and León, Spain. According to the 2004 census , the municipality has a population of 888 inhabitants....
, a small village west of Segovia. She studied Philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
in Madrid. In 1908 she married her cousin, Eusebio de Gorbea y Lemmi, a military man, intellectual and writer. They had two sons, the youngest, Bolín, died in 1920 at the age of 10 and she sunk into a deep depression at times trying to contact her son through a Ouija
Ouija
The Ouija board also known as a spirit/fire key board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0-9, the words "yes", "no", "hello" and "goodbye", and other symbols and words are sometimes also added to help personalize the board...
board. Her younger son, who had lost an eye in a hunting accident, eventually married Ana María Link, a young Swiss student who was studying at the Residencia de Señoritas in Madrid. Encarna lived mainly in Madrid but also spent time in Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
, San Roque, Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
, Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, Valencia, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
.
Her husband, Gorbea , a playwright, was a member of the Generation of 1914
Lost Generation
The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...
and introduced Encarnación to his circle of writers and artists. By the late 1920s she had decided to write and began writing for children in 1928 for the magazine Blanco y Negro under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
Elena Fortún, a name of one of her husband's characters. Her stories became so popular that the publishing house of Aguilar became interested and began putting them into print in 1935. Set in Madrid, these stories were told from the perspective of seven year old Celia Gálvez de Montalbán, a young girl who questions adults and the world around her in ways that were both ingenuous and innocent. She especially querried the educational system that sought to dampen the imaginations of young girls. Encarna knew how to excite the hearts, minds and dreams of children and these stories became favorites with Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
girls during the 1930s through the 1960s.
Spanish Civil War
Although a member of the Lyceum Women's Club, Encarna Aragoneses was not engaged in any political activity, however she believed that the Second Spanish RepublicSecond Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
would end illiteracy and bring equality into women's lives. At the start of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
she stayed in Madrid with her husband who was loyal to the Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
. In Celia en la revolución (1987), an accurate portrayal of Republican Spain during the siege of Madrid, the author wonders who is right and expresses her own thoughts and sufferings of the war through Celia who is horrified at the uncompromising positions of both sides. In 1938 she became a member of the Comisión del Teatro de los Niños and in July her play Moñitos (Baubles) was staged.
Exile
Later that year she and her husband went to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and then into exile in Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
with help from her daughter-in-law's family. In Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
she met the writer Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
at the National Public Library where they were both working. Unlike other writers who left Spain because of the war, her Celia books continued to be published despite the fact that Celia, like Encarna and her husband, was a Republican with no specific party affiliation. In 1948 she returned to Spain to negotiate the possibility of an amnesty for her husband. She was not persecuted because she did not belong to a political party, her only crime was being a woman who felt that the Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
would enhance the education and role of women in society. She visited with her old friends from the "defunct" Lyceum Women's Club which was continuing its activities in an unofficial and clandestine way. A few months later her husband, who was still in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, committed suicide. Grief-stricken she went to America to live with her son who was in exile. Later she returned to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
and died on 8 May 1952 at age 65.
In 1957, a few years after her death, María Martos de Baeza and playwright Matilde Ras sponsored a fund raising effort to erect a monument in her honor in the Parque del Oeste
Parque del Oeste
The Parque del Oeste is a park of the city of Madrid situated between the Autovía A-6, the Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid and the district of Moncloa. Before the 20th century, the land that the park currently occupies was the main landfill of the city...
in Madrid. The relief
Relief
Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...
which shows Elena Fortún between two children was designed by the Murcia
Murcia
-History:It is widely believed that Murcia's name is derived from the Latin words of Myrtea or Murtea, meaning land of Myrtle , although it may also be a derivation of the word Murtia, which would mean Murtius Village...
n sculptor José Planes. In Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain
-History:The first trace of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 32,000 BC. In the 8th century BC, during the ancient Tartessos period, a pre-urban settlement existed. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy...
there are the beautiful Jardines Escritora Elena Fortún named in her honor; as well as the streets, Calle Elena Fortún in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, Las Rozas de Madrid
Las Rozas de Madrid
Las Rozas de Madrid is one of the larger townships and municipalities in the autonomous community of Madrid, Spain, with an area of between 58.8 and 59.14 km²...
, Valdetorres de Jarama
Valdetorres de Jarama
Valdetorres de Jarama is a municipality of the Community of Madrid, Spain.Sights include the Church of la Natividad de Nuestra Señor....
and, in Málaga
Málaga
Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...
, the Calle Escritora Elena Fortún.
In 1993 Celia, lo que dice
Celia, lo que dice
Celia, lo que dice is the first in the series of children's novels by the famous Spanish author Elena Fortún. The novel is a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929...
, Celia novelista and Celia en el colegio
Celia en el colegio
Celia en el colegio is the second in the series of Celia novels by Elena Fortún, first published in 1932 according to records. Considered classics of Spanish literature, the books told the stories of a little girl named Celia living in Spain during the 1930s...
were adapted into a series of six episodes for Spanish television and directed by José Luis Borau
José Luis Borau
José Luis Borau Moradell is a Spanish producer, screenwriter, writer, and film director. He has acted in some films.He won Goya Award as Best Director in 2000 for Leo....
.
Writings
- Celia, lo que diceCelia, lo que diceCelia, lo que dice is the first in the series of children's novels by the famous Spanish author Elena Fortún. The novel is a collection of short stories first published in magazines in 1929...
, (1929) - Celia en el colegioCelia en el colegioCelia en el colegio is the second in the series of Celia novels by Elena Fortún, first published in 1932 according to records. Considered classics of Spanish literature, the books told the stories of a little girl named Celia living in Spain during the 1930s...
, (1932) - Celia novelista, (1934)
- Celia en el mundoCelia en el mundoCelia en el mundo is the fourth installment in the series of "Celia" novels by Spanish children's author, Elena Fortún. Originally published in the year 1934, the novel continues the adventures of Celia in a series now considered classics of Spanish children's literature...
, (1934) - Celia y sus amigos (1935)
- Cuchifritín el hermano de Celia
- Cuchifritín y sus primos
- Cuchifritín en casa de su abuelo
- Cuchifrití y Paquito
- Matonkiki y sus hermanas
- Celia Madrecita, (1939)
- Celia institutriz en América
- Patita y Mila estudiantes
- La hermana de Celia. Mila y Piolín
- Mila, Piolín y el burro
- Celia se casa
- El arte de contar cuentos a los niños, (1947)
- Los cuentos que Celia cuenta a las niñas, (1950)
- Los cuentos que Celia cuenta a los niños, (1951)
- El bazar de todas las cosas
- Celia en la revolución, (1987)
External links
- Celia. Serie de Televisión Española (Fragmento del 2° capítulo: Doña Benita) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IflnLKkXRhk