Contra el olvido (En la muerte de Gloria Collado) / Against oblivion (on the death of Gloria Collado)

Article published in the online magazine Doce Notas. Madrid, July 18, 2024


Within just a few weeks, the warm and powerful light of Gloria Collado faded away, disappearing completely on July 11. Editor, cultural manager, photographer, art critic, she was a person deeply committed and sensitive to culture, art and thought, channeling all of that through music in close harmony with her husband, the composer, critic, and researcher Jorge Fernández Guerra. At a vertiginous pace, Gloria had been gradually losing her memory, but in one of those incomprehensible twists of fate, life granted her the possibility that an incurable illness would prevent her from losing it entirely, taking her so swiftly that at least those of us who knew her can keep the memory of her full vitality.
Among all the projects she undertook, one stands out with its own brilliance: the founding of the magazine Doce Notas, which she created with Jorge in 1996 and co-directed with him for more than five years, before taking over as sole director in 2001. She oversaw its transformation from print to digital and, upon her retirement a few years ago, left firmly established the guiding principles that the capable team she had gathered around her has carried forward in exemplary fashion. Focused mainly on music and dance, Doce Notas added a distinctive intellectual dimension by launching in parallel the bilingual (Spanish and French) semiannual publication Doce Notas Preliminares. For a decade, from 1997 to 2007, it devoted monographic issues to themes such as Postmodernity, Higher education in music, Contemporary opera, and Real-time creation, with contributions from leading Spanish and European voices in creation, research, and contemporary criticism.
But what I would most like to highlight is that my closeness to Gloria and Jorge -whom I had known since the 1970s in his case, when we often crossed paths in the halls of the Opera Conservatory, and since the late 1980s in hers, when she introduced herself while photographing a dress rehearsal of one of my works at the Teatro Real with the words: "Hello, José Luis; I'm Gloria, Jorge Fernández Guerra's wife"- arose precisely from the founding of Doce Notasz. Its first issue, March–April 1996, was a real event in the environment I was working in at the time -as Technical advisor in the Department of Music and Performing arts of the Ministry of Education- where I had already spent over three years collaborating on the regulatory development of the reform of studies in Music, Dance, and Drama, under the Organic Law on the General Organization of the Education System, passed in October 1990.
In the nearly six years since then, one could already glimpse what that reform might yield -especially considering where we had come from-, and Doce Notas quickly grasped the scale and significance of what was taking shape in the former morgue of the Hospital de San Carlos on Argumosa Street. From the beginning, their support was unconditional, all the more so when, only a few months after that first issue, the Socialist government lost the elections and, after 14 years in power, had to hand it over to a right wing that wasted no time in showing its true colors. Jorge's article opening issue no. 4 of Doce Notas (December 1996–January 1997) remains a historical document, perfectly capturing the tension of the moment, starting with its title: "Horror in the supermarket, or how to build an educational conflict".
To silence the most reactionary voices, which for years had been demanding her removal, Elisa Roche, then Technical Advisor, was summarily dismissed by the Minister herself, Esperanza Aguirre -something unprecedented in the Administration-, and the entire team that had been working with her resigned in protest. I truly do not know what would have happened to the implementation of the Law had Doce Notas not been there, offering unwavering support and raising awareness in a sector that was crucial to preventing the reform from collapsing. In the following years, both Elisa Roche and I, along with other professionals, continued working in absolute secrecy, while Doce Notas opened its doors to us, letting us publish in its pages whatever we considered appropriate -sometimes openly, other times anonymously in the form of an editorial, and occasionally under a pseudonym. It was in that context that the higher education curriculum for music was conceived, debated, and approved -no small feat- as well as several other regulations which, though officially authored by Ministry-appointed teams, always carried behind them our many years of experience. In the magazine's online archive one can still access the entire record of that underlying movement that ultimately managed to push the reform through, though with much diminished ambition compared to its original intent.
Elisa Roche never returned to the Ministry, though she remained behind every regulation drafted and approved in those years. As for me, I was called back in late 1998 to join the team of the new Technical Advisor, Rosa Alonso. And in 2001 fate once again brought Jorge and me together in different, though not too distant, roles: on February 1, he was appointed Director of the CDMC (Center for the Promotion of Contemporary Music), and I Artistic Director of the JONDE (Spanish National Youth Orchestra). Naturally, Jorge had to leave the co-direction of Doce Notas, and Gloria assumed the role of sole director of the publication. For all these reasons, Spanish music education -and the high standards of quality and quantity it has continued to achieve for over twenty years- owes an immense debt of gratitude to Doce Notas and therefore to Gloria and Jorge. The magazine was essentially the two of them, especially in its early days, and thus in those difficult times all the support -moral and logistical, since many working sessions were held at the magazine's headquarters- was theirs. Jorge will never forget it, but Gloria's premature death has made me relive many things and has awakened in me the need to prevent society from forgetting the effort, passion, and determination with which they faced the obstacles that their unconditional support brought them on many occasions. Beyond our memory, it deserves only our gratitude: the gratitude owed to those who give their all in what they do.