Celia novelista: Elena Fortún’s Rebellious Heroine Becomes a Writer
Rebellious and fearless, Celia is the heroine of the quintessential Spanish children’s classic. The episodes in which Elena Fortún told her adventures and misadventures have delighted generations of readers since they first appeared, and in 1992 they were brought to television in a series directed by José Luis Borau.
Author: Elena Fortún (1886–1952)
Title: Celia novelista (1934), third book of the Celia series
Format: Spanish paperback (Editorial Renacimiento, Biblioteca Elena Fortún), 264 pages, original illustrations by Molina Gallent; no English edition found on Amazon.es
Scope: Children’s classic; stories written by Celia herself
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/8418387971 (ASIN 8418387971)
Why Celia Endures
The reason for Celia’s staying power is that, beyond fashions and settings, her particular way of seeing reality, a mix of innocence, sincerity and daring, together with her crushing, literal-minded logic, often dismantles the thick farce on which ’grown-ups’ have always built their authority.
Celia Takes Up the Pen
Celia novelista is the third book in the series. Like the other books published before Celia madrecita (1939), it collects short stories that first appeared in the magazine Blanco y Negro and were then published together in book form by M. Aguilar in 1934.
The book differs in style from the rest of the series. Celia Gálvez de Montalbán steps into the shoes of the writer Elena Fortún and, bored during the summer, tells her own adventure stories, including some with gypsies. It does not continue the plot of Celia en el colegio; instead it gives us the stories Celia had written in the notebook her father gave her in that book.
Who Was Elena Fortún?
Elena Fortún was the pen name of Encarnación Aragoneses Urquijo (1886–1952), born in Madrid. She began publishing the Celia stories in 1928 in Gente Menuda, the children’s supplement of the magazine Blanco y Negro, and the first collection, Celia, lo que dice, appeared in 1929. Her husband was a military officer on the Republican side, and after the Civil War the couple went into exile in Argentina. She returned to Spain only near the end of her life and died in Madrid in 1952, by then half-forgotten despite her enormous popularity in the 1930s.
A Writer’s Rediscovery
For decades Fortún was remembered mainly by the generations who had grown up with Celia. The novelist Carmen Martín Gaite, one of her most devoted readers, helped bring her back into view, and the books were later carefully reissued. Some of Fortún’s most personal writing appeared only long after her death: Celia en la revolución, in which Celia lives through the war in Madrid, was not published until 1987, and her semi-autobiographical novel Oculto Sendero appeared in 2016. Those later books show how much of Fortún’s own life and doubts lay behind her young heroine.
Celia as a Writer
Celia novelista is particularly appealing to readers who write. Celia, convinced that she can produce novels as good as the ones she reads, invents stories of her own and tries them out on the people around her, often with comic results, and her literal-minded logic makes the grown-ups’ explanations about books, love and money sound absurd. It is easy to read it as Fortún gently mocking her own vocation. Spanish readers who enjoy it can continue with Celia en el mundo and the books about Celia’s little brother, Cuchifritín.
For Learners of Spanish
The prose is lively and colloquial, with the speech of 1930s Madrid, so it suits upper-intermediate learners, especially those curious about Spanish society before the Civil War.
Editions and Adaptations
The original illustrations in the early editions were drawn by Molina Gallent; later editions replaced them with new drawings by other artists. The Renacimiento edition linked here restores Molina Gallent’s work. Celia novelista was the last book of the series to be adapted, briefly, in José Luis Borau’s 1992 television series Celia. The book is only available in Spanish, which makes it a charming read for intermediate learners of the language.
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