We knew about the cultural interests of the person who presided over the Spanish government between February 1981 and December 1982 through the book Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo. An intellectual portrait. Edited by his son Pedro and published by Marcial Pons in 2011, it approached the figure of the UCD politician through the analysis of his library of ten thousand volumes, and offered a range of approaches to his humanistic profile.
A relatively atypical profile in his guild today, but not in his generation (in a broad sense) of transition politicians, rich in widely read characters, from Alberto Oliart to Alfonso Guerra passing through Jordi Solé-Tura or Jordi Pujol.
Now comes another quite unique volume, Poesía en la tangente by Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, again with a family impulse (the editors are his sons Pedro and José María), this time with the seal of Sial-Pygmalión. It offers the unpublished verses and couplets that the ucedista president, in whose inauguration the coup attempt of 23-F was unleashed, wrote over sixty years, drawing inspiration “from the dimensions of his public action –satirical poetry– and his personal life –love and family poetry–”, according to the editors.
An intelligent prologue by the former president of the Principality of Asturias Pedro de Silva points out the "false idea" that politics and poetry cannot coexist, and places Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as "a good example of conservative taste": in his poetic interests the classicism prevails over the avant-garde, "it is the taste of the upper class and political, moral and cultural conservatism in Spain". The one that Gregorio Luri has studied so well and that, contrary to the extended cliché “is really cultivated and affects almost all categories of the arts. In the end it is a taste in which an idea of order dominates, of order commonly accepted, and assumed by him with the naturalness with which we assume things that really exist”.
In the first part we find poems dedicated to figures of public life. That tall man whom we remember with an imposing austere and very serious appearance cultivated his breech in texts loaded with bullets, sometimes dedicated to people who were quite close to him. Like those dedicated to the Falangist Jesús Fueyo, "professor, deep, cruel and dark", or to his colleagues in the council of ministers Pío Cabanillas, good friend ("Pío, Pío/ I don't trust"; "you always leave/Cabanillas,/in the Xunta/the question/with its mess and messes/what the fuck.../does Pío want?”) and the much less appreciated Ricardo de la Cierva (“histrionic prophet of misfortune”; “pretentious and clumsy cassandra”).
Also to political adversaries such as Felipe González, who goes on the Azor -the yacht that Franco used- "very dizzy from fishing/War goes from brawl to brawl/and Ordoñez from flower to flower"”. To journalists such as Torcuato Luca de Tena, Juan Luis Cebrián, Juan Tomás de Salas or Jaime Capmany. And to an anonymous informant "who interviewed me to my detriment" and with results that were clearly not to his liking:
"Mendacious journalist who interprets me / giving your pen to all the poisons; / that you have translated into farragos and silt / my very clear and concise words".
It is, summarizes Silva, "the poetic work of an ironist, with the characteristics of the northwest quadrant of Spain."
The explanatory texts that accompany Poesía en la tangente allow us to peek into intricate family relationships within the elites of Francoism.
Leopoldo was the nephew of José Calvo Sotelo, leader of the right in the Second Republic and "proto-martyr of the Crusade" after his assassination on July 13, 1936. He was also the nephew of Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, a successful playwright in the 1940s and 1950s. with works such as The Wall, The Visit that Didn't Ring the Bell or A Little Girl from Valladolid. And literary mentor of the future politician, to whom he gave an economic stimulus for each poem he brought him.
The family verses are largely dedicated to his wife Pilar, with whom he lived a solid and happy marriage. She was the daughter of José Ibáñez Martín, Minister of Education between 1939 and 1951 and first president of the CSIC. There is also a text dedicated to her brother-in-law Rafael del Pino, a childhood friend married to her sister Ana María, an engineer like Leopoldo, founder of the now very powerful Ferrovial. (Another of her brothers-in-law was the socialist minister Fernando Morán; two of her sons, Leopoldo and Víctor, held high positions with José María Aznar).
Without apparently being the intention, in these pages that from the intimate environment and in substantial notes to the poems refer us to the world of administration, politics, economy and diplomacy, we glimpse the structure of Spanish power against the light, but also complicities and misunderstandings that are suspected to be relevant in the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
