Carmen Conde

Cartagena, 1907 – Madrid, 1996

Carmen Conde was a prolific writer and the first female RAE member. Very much aware of her authorial voice, she became spectator and raconteur of the hardest moments of the 20-century in Spain and also of the existence of networks of women artists and intellectuals sustaining each other, their work and their thoughts. She is a link between those who went to exile and those who stayed. Always a poet and a teacher.

Hello...

I am a woman and I will write. […] I decided to work and make my own way.

Camen Conde remembers her childhood in a society obsessed by controlling girls. The family doctor considers the little girl, too keen on fantasies and tales, should read less. And Mother wants her girl to be conventional and learn all that is needed to take care of the home. But the need to write continues to grow and her own table and chair come to her life to stay forever.

Learn from me, all of you, to carry the flame up high.

Motherhood cannot fully exist in a world where there is war. War time makes woman be in a state of perpetual existential grief. Conde denounces this in her poetry, full of political intent. Women cannot and should not be mothers while men are on war.

Words! An ocean I went to, sleepwalking.

Carmen Conde felt it impossible to betray her vocation to write. On entering the Royal Academy, she remembered Spanish women writers before her and she included them in her acceptance speech. She denounced the violence and discrimination the institution she was entering and the predominantly male canon had historically inflicted on women. This unfairness has not diminished her faith on women authors and their words.