Ana María Matute and her fantastic worlds, on the centenary of her birth

'Familiar Demons' is the novel that Ana María Matute never finished, and 'Mada', the name of the housekeeper in that book, is the last word left on her typewriter, two details worth remembering on the centenary of the birth of the writer who never let go of her childhood.

In 2013, Ana María Matute explained that, despite the vertigo she suffered from, she had a book "half-finished," which would be titled "Family Demons." She died on June 25, 2014, in Barcelona , 31 days before her 89th birthday, and without finishing it.

Winner of the Cervantes Prize in 2010 and a member of the RAE (Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts) since 1996 (with the armchair marked with the letter K, "the rarest," she joked ), Matute had a powerful imagination, which she developed by reading and writing stories as a child, and which allowed her to create stories when she was punished in the darkroom at home.

"I've never let go of my childhood, and that comes at a high price. Innocence is a luxury one can't afford and one they want to slap you out of," the writer stated when she published "Uninhabited Paradise" in late 2008. She combined reality and magic in a masterful reconstruction of the protagonist's childhood, which closely resembled her own. It was her last novel.

She wrote her first novel, "Pequeño teatro," at age 17. It's a story about a fantasy world of puppets driven by human emotions , but she didn't publish it until eight years later. With it, in 1954, she became the first woman to win the Planeta Prize .

'Forgotten King Gudú', 'Aranmanoth', 'The Soldiers Cry at Night'; 'The Abels', 'Feast in the Northwest'; 'The Dead Children' and 'First Memory' are some of his essential titles.

Born in Barcelona on July 26, 1925, to a Castilian mother and a Catalan father, Ana María Matute was bright, lively, sincere, and entertaining, even when her health began to fail, especially following a long convalescence in 2008 from a broken bone.

Even today, it's a joy to remember her at the Complutense University of Madrid's Summer Courses in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, with her white hair, her cane, and chatting with everyone about the small, big, and important things in life.

An opponent of 'political correctness' and considered one of the greatest figures of post-war Spanish literature , she experienced with great pain her marital breakdown with the writer Eugenio de Goicoechea in 1963, when divorce was unthinkable and custody was generally awarded to the father.

Thus, for two years she was only able to see her only son, Juan Pablo, on Saturdays, until she managed to regain custody when the boy was 10 years old . He was by her side until the end, pushing her wheelchair when the writer could no longer walk.

In addition to the Planeta, and among many other awards, he received the Nadal Prize , the Café Gijón Prize, the Lazarillo Prize and the National Prize for Literature, and was a finalist for the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature.

"Literature has been, and is, the saving beacon of many of my storms," he calmly acknowledged at the 2010 Cervantes Prize awards ceremony, the culminating award of his career , which, according to the jury, recognized an extensive and prolific body of work that moves between realism and "a projection into the fantastic" and for possessing "a world and a language of its own."