Luisa Genoveva Carnés Caballero (1905-1964), also known as Clarita Montes, was a Spanish writer and journalist, contemporary with the Generation of 27, but neglected by it. However, contemporary history claimed it, including it as an important part of said literary movement..
Very little was known about her, until a few years ago when her work began to be vindicated, flawless on a literary level, despite coming from a self-taught training. Although Luisa Carnés was not the same as the writers of her time, who mostly came from educated and very wealthy backgrounds, she knew how to capitalize on her literary talent very well..
Her first writings are marked by her social and political commitment as a republican, concerned about the reality of the working class. The work of Carnés, who had the name Clarita Montes as a pseudonym, focused on her social sense.
The writer always had a pedagogical look, bringing out the living conditions of the women of the time, female rights, orphaned and exploited children, and, of course, her defense of republican legality.
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Luisa Carnés was born in Madrid, on January 3, 1905. She was the daughter of Luis Carnés, a hairdresser, and Rosario Caballero, a housewife, both of very modest origin. Luisa was the first of six children, and at the age of eleven she had to drop out of school to start working in her aunt's hat shop.
Since then, she began to be interested in the rights of working women, and in 1923 she took up the pen to write her first story. Although he did not have much money to buy books, he loved to read and taught himself with books that he exchanged in popular bookstores.
As a child she began working as a milliner in a family workshop, first she was an apprentice, then an official and finally a teacher. She was a waitress in a tea room and later worked as a typist at the publishing house Compañía Iberoamericana de Publicaciones (CIAP); this last job changed his life.
His training was limited to some basic courses that he took in a nuns' college. The additional knowledge he gained is due to his self-taught effort; He never stopped reading or writing, and that is demonstrated in the mastery level of his texts.
Although there is very little biographical information on this writer, clues from her life have been collected and it is said that her book Tea rooms, which is her most successful novel, it was inspired by the times she worked as a waitress. Also, his book From Barcelona to Brittany (Renaissance) recounts his journey into exile in 1939.
At the age of 18 he began to write stories based on his life experiences, and before 1936 he had already published three novels: Pilgrims of Calvary (1928), Natacha (1930) and Tea Rooms -Women Workers- (1934).
The literary works of Luisa Carnés have four axes that are easily identifiable. The first has to do with his social commitment, his concern for the dispossessed classes and he talked a lot about that. He always did it in a critical and pedagogical way about changes in society.
Second, respect for the rights of working women and workers were his banner until the day of his death. She was interested in making known about female suffering and achieving equality. In one of the first works she wrote, the phrase reads: "A creature who had the misfortune of being a woman".
The third axis of his work has to do with children, their rights and the defense of abandoned, abused and hungry children of the time. Finally, her fourth axis of interest was republican politics, and this was the one that cost her the most, sending her into exile from her native Spain, to Mexico where she lived until the end of her life..
The profession that changed her life was that of typist, which she performed for the CIAP Ibero-American Publications Company, where she had her first opportunity as a writer and the doors were opened to journalism. He was a sports journalist in As, collaborated in magazines such as Now, Estampa, Crónica, La Linterna, Mundo obrero and Frente Rojo.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in Spain, Luisa continued to write about the rights of women and the working class, but also began to collaborate with the press of the Spanish Communist Party. He published controversial articles in Working world Y Front speaker, main propaganda media of the Communist Party.
In 1937, accompanied by other intellectuals and politicians, Luisa Carnés moved to Barcelona and then in January 1939 they crossed the French border. Here began a period of chaos, suffering and uncertainty for many Republicans. She, like many, stayed in a refugee camp for some time.
From there he managed to leave thanks to the mediation of Margarita Nelken and thus arrived in Paris, where he met with his son. After a period in New York, the writer arrived in Mexico City, where, at last, her husband, the writer Juan Rejano, met her..
In Mexico both were dedicated to journalism and collaborated in newspapers such as La Prensa, El Nacional and Novedades. From this space they continued to defend the rights of the dispossessed classes and she established herself in her literary work..
The Spanish never returned to her country. She died in Mexico, when she was returning home, on March 8, 1964, after having delivered a speech for Women's Day for the Spanish colony of exiles in Mexico. His death was tragic, in a traffic accident caused by heavy rain.
The car where she was traveling with her entire family crashed on the road, but everyone survived, except her. After his death, his literary work was also buried in an oblivion that lasted decades.
The literary style of Luisa Carnés was characterized by being innovative, clearly framed in Modernism. His narrative was fluid, fresh and with an easy to digest language, which makes his works accessible and understandable by a wide audience..
His way of narrating allowed to vindicate feminism, giving it a different voice until its time, forceful, active and formed. Another particular aspect of his pen is the fact that it was properly experiential; Carnés had a gift to give life, through narrative, to all the circumstances he went through.
- Out to sea (1926).
- Pilgrims of calvary (1928).
- Natacha (1930).
- Tea Rooms. Working women (1934).
- That's how it started (1936).
- From Barcelona to Brittany (Renaissance) (1939).
- Rosalia de Castro (1945).
- Juan Caballero (1956).
- The missing link (2002, posthumous).
The first of his stories that could be located was called Out to sea (1926), published in The voice, Madrid, on October 22, 1926. For his part, Pilgrims of calvary (1928), was his first work printed with a religious tone common to his first texts.
Natacha (1930), his second narrative publication, was set in Madrid and with an interesting figure as the protagonist. On the other hand, Tea Rooms. Working women (1934), was a novel with real experiences of working women of the time, republished in 2016.
For his part, That's how it started (1936) was an "agitprop" (agitation propaganda) drama in an act that received rave reviews for its "originality and interest". From Barcelona to Brittany (Renaissance) (1939), served to narrate his journey from Spain to exile.
Rosalia de Castro (1945), it was a clearly biographical work. Juan Caballero (1956), was a novel set in the Spanish postwar period, crude and experiential. By last, The missing link (2002), was an unpublished novel that deals with Republican exiles and their relationship with their children.
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