Fernando Remacha - Later Years

Later Years

Those years in Tudela marked Remacha's future personality. Little is known of his character before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and very few testimonies are available. However, there are the impressions of several people who knew Remacha after the War, either during the years he lived in Tudela or once he had settled in Pamplona. All theses people concur in that Fernando Remacha was a very modest, unassuming person. In Tudela Remacha took charge of the family hardware shop. From a strictly intellectual standpoint the course of Remacha's life was one of the bitterest of those of all the musicians of the Grupo de Madrid. Accordingly it may be said that his was one of the most arduous exiles following the War. Condemned to a brutal cultural silence, Remacha had to begin again from zero, that is, he had to start all over again, assimilating his circumstances as best he could.

With "Cartel de Fiestas" ("Festival Poster") (1947), a work that won a contest for topical and regionalist themes, he introduced himself in Pamplona, capital of Navarre. In 1951 the Pamplona City Council commissioned him to compose "Visperas de San Fermin" ("On the Eve of San Fermin") and, with the opening performance of this work in Madrid in 1952, Remacha succeeded in being noticed again by the Spanish music critics. From that moment on his production was musically variable, with the composition of such dissimilar works as "Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra" (1956) or "Rapsodia de Estella" ("Rhapsody of Estella") (1958).

In 1957 Remacha moved to Pamplona to start up the Pablo Sarasate Conservatory. In 1963 the present-day building of that institution was erected and, under Remacha's direction, it became a point of reference in the Spanish music world. Also in 1963 he composed the cantata "Jesucristo en la Cruz" ("Christ on the Cross"), which earned him the Tormo de Oro Prize of the Cuenca Religious Week, pleasantly surprising the music critics with the concept of this work. Remacha had been suffering from a devastating illness, Parkinson's disease, since the sixties. When he retired in 1975 he was already quick sick. In 1980 he received the Premio Nacional de Música for the third time, and in 1981 the Pablo Iglesias Prize. For its part, the Institucion Principe de Viana organised the Remacha Memorial, holding three concerts to promote acquaintance with some of the composer's works. Indeed, in the last years of Remacha's life it appeared that the musical circles wished to compensate him for the silence in which he had been enveloped in the post-war period.

In the last period of his life he was always open to the musical avant-garde, even though he did not generally share its criteria. This attitude aroused the admiration and respect of the most representative Spanish avant-garde composers of the times, a position that Remacha did not find comfortable because of his characteristic modesty and scant selfesteem.

Fernando Remacha died on 21 February 1984. The 21st and 22 February were declared official days of mourning in Tudela, where a solemn funeral was held for the composer prior to his burial there.