The writer, critic and journalist for granada Balbino Gutiérrez has died in the morning of this Tuesday in Madrid, where he lived, at the age of 74, has informed the General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE). One of his last public acts, in April last year, has been the presentation of his work, Enrique Morente. The free voice, third edition, enlarged and revised, of the biography of the singer from granada, one of the artists to which more attention has been dedicated in his extensive career. “This work is the fruit of their last three years of work. An approach to the singer from the affection, since he was always very linked to Enrique Morente (1941-2010) and his family, but also with a lot of rigor,” has commented this Tuesday Ruben Gutierrez, director general of the Foundation SGAE.
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“Your work is referential. Highlight the generosity and the seriousness with which they undertook the three editions of the biography of Morente who spent more than 20 years. Since the first edition that came out in 1996, published by the SGAE, until this last one, which we also present in Granada and Málaga”, explained Ruben Guerrero. “I remember how, in the presentation of Granada, and was attended by the family of the singer, Soleá Morente was calling him tito Balbino,” he adds. Enrique Morente. The free voice, as the author explained in April 2018, at the headquarters of the SGAE in Madrid, was born of the need to “culminate a musical path and to close a cycle that ended in a traumatic”, in reference to the sudden death of Enrique Morente, at the age of 67 after a surgical intervention.
“he Had a great facility for the analysis and the writing and it shows not only in his publications; but also in the rest of his activity as a critic and journalist”, has added the director of the Foundation SGAE.
a Degree in Modern and Contemporary History and professor of French from 1979 to 2005, he served as a critic of flamenco in THE COUNTRY, and in other newspapers such as The Sun and The Reason. He was co-founder and contributor to national magazines such as What Madrid, Cane, Anuario Flamenco, Notebooks of the Mathematician, Poetry on the Campus, Soul 100, the Journal of the Festival of The Union, The Canon, Boronía, and others, in which he also published essays and short stories. In addition, he has collaborated with international magazines Arts et Vie and La Pensée de Midi. Facet which is matched to the translator of the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Nikita Khrushchev, or texts of Michel Barnier.
Has carried out studies on getting tiresome Assens, the Contest of Cante Jondo in Granada in 1922, the scholarly poetry and the flamenco, and interviews with the greats of the genre including those of Camarón de la Isla, Paco de Lucía, Enrique Morente, Ketama, Carmen Linares, Carlos Saura, Cristina Hoyos, José Menese, José Mercé, the family Habichuela, Estrella Morente, Miguel Poveda, Sara Baras or Rafael Riqueni.
The second edition of his biography of Morente, published by the Foundation SGAE in 2006, he received the first prize of prose flamenco in the 46th edition of the Festival de Cante de las Minas de La Union. He has also published the Chronicle of the want (Hyperion, 1996), anthology of popular song and flamenco of love, and the historical novel The last night of the engineer Santa Cruz (Editorial Comares, 2000). And in 2014, he collaborated in the edition of the catalogue of the exhibition Universo Morente.
During his career, always linked to the flamenco, has lectured, especially about Enrique Morente, in universities and cultural centers of Madrid, Vitoria, Valladolid, Pamplona, Oviedo, Barcelona, Granada, Lisbon, Cordoba and Buenos Aires (Argentina). Balbino Gutiérrez was always willing to share their knowledge, their generosity is a trait that will stand out many who knew him, and the consequence of this are the numerous musical events linked to the flamenco, both of character memorial as solidarity, which was presented in the Centro Cultural Conde Duque (Festival of homage to the Shrimp, along with Lola Flores and Nicolás Dueñas), the Teatro María Guerrero, the Circle of Fine Arts, the Casino of Madrid, the Teatro Alcalá Palace, the Albéniz Theater in madrid, the Colegio mayor San Juan Evangelista, the Lara Theatre, the Congress Palace and the theatres of Alcorcón and Fuenlabrada.
