Cuenta Suetonio en Life of the Caesars that when César Augustus was about to die, he asked those who covered them: “Do you think I represented this life farce well? We enjoyed them, clapped our hands and applauded the author.” Without asking for a standing ovation, but simply, his existence and the protagonists of these books passed.
Spanish Lives
Juan Pablo Fusi and Ricardo García Cárcel
Taurus / Fundación Juan March, 2026
496 pages. €22.70
So the first of these, Spanish Livesfive and short biographies of the great figures of our history, at the same time Ana R. Canil the renewal of oblivion to disturb foreigners (journalists, economists, poets) who wrote about twentieth-century Spain, Carmen Gallardo It reminds us of two evil queens who rebelled against their kindness and their desire.
Juan Pablo Fusi (San Sebastián, 1945) y Ricardo Garcia Carcel (Requena, 1848) glosan en Spanish Lives reservoirs of medieval people exemplary in their professional or moral qualities. Consequently, this extended name includes a Picasso, Saint Teresa, Beatriz Galindo, Ramon and Cajal…
And they did so by declaring their goal from the beginning: to draw on the many historical figures condemned to silence, to place each figure in a historical context to explore the meaning of the relationships in which they moved and studied. media projection each of them all the time. When they decide to, with the rigor, wisdom, and kindness that the characters provide, they do so fully.
Rescatadas del olvido
Ana R. Canil
The Gutenberg Galaxy, 2026
235 pages. €21
With the same intention as Fusi and García Cárcel’s book to save its protagonists from darkness, the journalist Ana R. Cañil (Madrid, 1958) recalls the women catóricos who lived in Spain and in many cases “picked up this the país blazed in memoryNancy Cunard, Tina Modotti, Ilsa Bareabut also Lilian Hellman, Vita Sakville-West y Sylvia Plath They are some of the heroes of this exciting and well-documented book about how we lived in very different conditions, some of which were as dramatic as war.
Guess, sure, it doesn’t appear among these fascinating biographies Renée Laffontshot by coup gangs in December 1936 entering a joint location, she is believed to be the first female reporter to die in the conflict.
Carmen Gallardo
Planet, 2026
456 pages. €20.90
Sweet heroines Reinas infidelesIn return, they would have a happier life since they decided to defy the marital infidelities of their royal husbands.
Carmen Gallardo (Madrid) portrays her with life, knowledge and a certain amount of frivolity, making it clear that in the meantime, for reasons of the state, they were just ill-housed girls who grew up with the obligation to give an heir to the king or the empire, before living their days (y noches) with absolute freedom, ya fuesen Urraca I, Catalina la Grande, Isabel II de Borbón or Paola de Belgium.
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