Blank stare, head stiff, muscles relaxed, mouth open: mind completely blank. It's not the result of any yoga session, nor the effect of a guided meditation, nor anything that has to do with mindfulness, like this, in English. It's the product of vacation, of true rest. The kind that, when I take it seriously, rewards me with a fleeting moment like this, of absolute nothingness, in which for a few moments my existence seems lighter, more ethereal, almost imperceptible. Then, the weight of my body is relieved, as if suspended, and if I remain still, in silence, I can come to feel how my atoms and those of the matter that surrounds me—breeze, sea, plants, light—are part of a whole.

She was one of the most distinctive voices in Spanish-language literature—still very much alive today—and won the most prestigious awards in a time that was much more difficult for women than it is today. She also spent a few months as a guest of Mallorca, where she set her life on the island. First memory, the novel that won her the Nadal Prize and one of her favorites, according to her own admission. We remember Ana María Matute on the 100th anniversary of her birth (July 26, 1925).