Espejo de sombras

From 1976 onwards, Felicidad Blanc became known to the general public as the mother in 'El desencanto' (The Disenchantment). Jaime Chávarri's legendary documentary, a metaphor for an entire era, revealed the private life of a singular family of writers: the Paneros. A writer herself, wife of Leopoldo Panero, one of the most important poets of Francoist Spain, and mother of Juan Luis and Leopoldo María, also poets, and of José Moisés, known as Michi, Felicidad Blanc's figure shone on screen with an overacting as real as her own life, while enigmatically indifferently sustaining a world that no longer existed. A year later, in 1977, after the resounding success of the documentary, she wrote her autobiography, 'Espejo de sombras' (Mirror of Shadows), in collaboration with the journalist Natividad Massanés. Its pages revisit the years of the Silver Age, the Franco regime, and the transition to democracy, imbued with a singular melancholy that allowed Felicidad Blanc, despite her numerous disappointments, to escape destruction. She, too, was in her own way an eccentric during that turbulent decade.