"Well. The day has come. I used to read obituaries - a sport like any other - until today, March 9, when mine appears." Thus begins the note dedicated to Manuel Brañas González published in its latest edition by La Vanguardia, the house where this Barcelonan born in the Sants neighborhood 83 years ago worked for more than four decades as a printer. Because for Brañas this newspaper was like his second family.
"He was very happy in the company," says his son Agustí, who still has the image of his father dressed in a blue shirt and embroidered red letters in which the name of this header was read. And he details that the person writing the obituary is not actually the protagonist of the obituary, but Agustí. But why pretend to be his father? To express through his words what he felt and also because he liked to read the obituaries in the newspaper. "He always said: 'I'm going to read the ones who have quit smoking today,' and I promised him that when the time was right he would do his thing," he clarifies.
Manuel Brañas stopped smoking yesterday, March 8, although he did not practice this habit, except on specific occasions. His time came after a long battle against Alzheimer's and Parkinson's that faded memories of him. Even so, "in the few moments he had of lucidity, we asked him: 'Father, what have you been working on?', and he answered: 'Yes, yes, tonight I had to go, because the paper was torn and I left late,'" says his son.
The last years in which he served the house he did so by programming the computers to distribute the newspapers on its different routes. "He had to make a great effort, because he was a very manual and mechanical person," his relatives remember. However, he eagerly overcame the test so that the printed edition always reached its destination on time while most of the city slept.
As Agustí recalls in the obituary published today, his friends and acquaintances affectionately called him "el Vanguar" because "he always spoke a lot and very well" about the Godó Group. For his family, he was "the fox of Sants", due to his mischievous nature, and "the marquis", due to his elegance and because it was the same nickname that referred to the sports journalist Andrés Astruells.
Brañas was also a big Barça fan. The obituary leaves no doubt about his fandom: "I have enjoyed great nights of football with brutal bacon sandwiches and beer - may His Majesty forgive me for the cholesterol - but now it keeps bothering me xDDD." Being a culé also opened the heart of a woman with extraordinary eyes, Teresa Sillué Vilà, with whom he shared life from the age of 20. "When she met him at the Sants festival, she asked him what team he was from. And if she hadn't been from Barça, she would have sent him away," Agustí asserts. Far from that, she formed a great home with him. "He has been a happy man who has dedicated himself to his family and enjoyed it," says a proud son.
