Spat with PP authorities sees Saramago Foundation pull out of Granada

Accusations of financial misdemeanors has led José Saramago's widow to withdraw the Nobel literature laureate's name from an arts center in a small mountain village in Granada.

Pilar del Río, president of her late husband's foundation, announced in late December that she would be severing all connections between the Saramago Foundation and the arts center in the village of Castril.

"Pilar del Río wishes the necessary steps to be taken to change the name of the José Saramago Foundation Center, removing the writer's name, and that she be relieved of her position as spokeswoman of the said center," says a letter written by del Río's brother Jesús del Río, dated December 21 and sent to both the central government's representative in Granada, Sebastían Pérez, and the mayor of Castril, Miguel Pérez Jiménez, both of the Popular Party.

The reasons for the break lie in accusations by Sebastián Pérez of irregularities in the management of the foundation by the former Socialist Party administration, and in particular, an unpaid catering bill that Pérez says was in reality a wedding banquet held at the center following the marriage of del Río and Saramago in 1998. Del Río was born in the village of Castril, and retains family links there.

"It's really not even worth the trouble of countering these accusations. Anybody who knew José would understand that such a thing was impossible. They have besmirched his name with an unforgivable lie," says Jesús del Río. In the two letters, he also mentions "the distress caused to the families of José Saramago and Pilar del Río by these false stories that have been spread by a senior figure responsible for this institution regarding unpaid bills at the José Saramago Foundation Center of 9,000 euros for a supposed wedding banquet."

The respective families, says Jesús del Río, believe that the provincial government of Granada should have contacted them "in order to avail themselves of all the facts relating to this matter, which would have prevented the spreading of lies and corresponding damage to Saramago's image."

Saramago, who died in 2010, set up the foundation in 2007. Aside from preserving his work, it also campaigns in defense of human rights and the preservation of the environment. In 2005, Saramago teamed up with Greenpeace to request all his work be published in future according to environmental norms. The author repeatedly showed his concern over political and environmental causes in the past.

"More than 13 percent of the Amazon has been destroyed or, actually, looted, in the face of the Brazilian government's impotence. Everybody should care about this. Individually, we can't do much, but one can certainly do something. People have to think 'I can change the space around me'. Greenpeace is doing great work, but we have to go beyond that, we have to make society understand that it is necessary that all of us act," he said in 2005.

The foundation's headquarters are in Lisbon and Lanzarote. Saramago moved to the Canary Islands after a spat with the Portuguese government in 1992, following his work The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, considered by ministers to be offensive to Catholics. Two so-called delegations were also set up: one in the writer's birthplace in the village of Azinhaga do Ribatejo, and the other in Castril.