Marisa Paredes dies at 78: the battle over her tribute

Marisa Paredes dies at 78 and divides even the street map

Dying does not exempt you from being held to account. Actress Marisa Paredes has died at 78 and the obituary lasted less than a news bulletin: within hours the conversation shifted from cinema to street names, from filmography to subsidies, and from mourning to party politics. The news broke in December 2024 and the reaction trinc a recognizable pattern: when a name linked to the left disappears, condolences turn into an audit.

Hardly anyone questioned her craft. What was questioned was what to do with her memory. Paredes, associated with Pedro Almodóvar's film clan and with left-wing positions, became the center of a fight that was no longer about her. Her death was described as sudden, without the cause ever being specified.

From street names to Atocha: whose name is next

The first battle was over place names. The most repeated proposal was to rename Madrid's Gran Vía as Avenida Marisa Paredes; other voices favored Plaza de España, and the most ambitious ones the country's most important train station. The precedent cited again and again was that of writer Almudena Grandes, whose name already appears at Atocha station.

That is the trigger: if an author whom part of the public considers mediocre has a plaque at the main railway hub, why not an actress with a long career? The question was posed without an answer.

Against that, the protocol argument. Whoever presides over an autonomous community (Spain's regional tier) has institutional obligations that do not depend on whether the honoree is liked or not. And alongside protocol, the mockery: someone directly proposed a recycling plant named after her. The irony, this time, cut both ways.

Subsidies, box office and the Nobel that never comes

Here the discussion left cinema and entered the money side. Paredes was criticized for having called in the same interview for tax breaks for the film industry and higher taxes for everyone else, a summary of what part of the public calls the subsidized cultural caste. The objection is not new: the sector lives largely on public money, and that makes it a recurring target.

The most repeated argument was the Nobel one. The last two prizes for Literature in Spanish, Camilo José Cela and Mario Vargas Llosa, are in the conservative camp, while the Spanish left, according to this narrative, would not have produced any. The comparison is as old as it is debatable —the award rewards a body of work, not a party card— but it works as a shortcut.

From the other side came a quip in response: cultural people have sensitivity and therefore vote left, while on the right there are only bullfighters, tonadilla singers and the occasional streamer. Two ways of saying the same thing: that the sector's political map is an open secret.

The reproach to those who live well while preaching redistribution

Another line insisted on the economic double standard. It is argued that those who defend redistributing wealth accumulate considerable fortunes and apply the opposite rule to their own lives; the formula that sums up the reproach made the rounds with a mocking edge: what's mine is mine and untouchable, but what's yours belongs to everyone and must be shared. The label of the well-off leftist, in its domestic version.

In the same direction, it was claimed that the anti-Franco left lived better than regime sympathizers during the dictatorship. It is a thesis launched with more epic than archive, and at best it describes a well-placed urban minority, not a bloc. It does serve, however, to defuse the martyrdom narrative.

The dead who don't make the newspapers

The most uncomfortable counterpoint came from below. If the country devotes headlines to one particular death, where do the others remain? In the conversation, three anonymous cases were listed: Paco, who worked 33 years as a bricklayer and died of a heart attack two years after retiring; Marisa, who spent 30 years in a shop until she took early retirement to care for her parents; and Manuel, 25 years getting up before dawn at the wheel to deliver food to supermarkets. None had a funeral chapel or a street.

The argument is not a competition of mournings, but a question about the criterion: what makes one life worthy of public recognition and another not. Those who raised it were not asking to withdraw tributes, but to explain why they are granted only to some. The calculation with years contributed, broken down case by case, leaves a difference that is more uncomfortable than it seems.

And amid all that, the underlying suspicion: that an actress's name serves to measure ideologies says quite a lot about the country, and not exactly in a good way.

With this background, the reasonable bet is that some administration will make a move sooner or later, even if only out of electoral calculation. It is also reasonable to expect the opposite: that the matter cools and not a single square is renamed. If the first happens, the fight will be repeated with the next name; if the second happens, the reproach will remain that recognition never comes in time.