The facade of the former Vargas Llosa school in Piura collapsed: three efforts eluded cultural promise

Finally, it happened: the facade of the old school Saint Michael of Piurawhere Mario Vargas Llosa He attended the fifth year of secondary school in 1952, he collapsed last Thursday due to the intense rains that hit the desert region immortalized by the Nobel Prize for Literature.

“With the rains last night, parts of its walls and roof collapsed, which is worrying,” he said. Lorraine Zunigahead of the Decentralized Directorate of Culture, in a dispatch posted on the organization’s Facebook account.

The renovation of the former school —where Vargas Llosa got 16 in Literature and 11 in Physical Education— had been postponed by three regional administrations: that of Xavier Atkins (2011-2014), that of Reynaldo Hilbck (2015 and 2018) and that of servando garcia (2019-2022).

Just two weeks after the Nobel laureate entered the French Academy, last February, the incoming governor louis neyra reopened the door to the promised remodeling.

“All the architectural and soil diagnosis has been completed, and the house is propped up with wood to prevent it from collapsing. After a long time, it is the first management that announces, from a first moment, the execution of this emblematic space for culture ”, he continued.

As a result of the announcement, the former president of the Board of Culture, Manuel Rosaswrote an email to the Spanish-Peruvian writer, who replied briefly: “I dream of being able to visit him again, already rejuvenated.”

Vargas Llosa he laid the “first stone” of the work and toured some environments with nostalgia. It was an environment with stones, bags, garbage and dust. “Doors down, others hanging, no windows. Cobwebs, one or another rat lost from its hiding place. The second floor, without a balcony,” he wrote. Richard Chavezfounding member of the Mario Vargas Llosa Institute and witness to the scene.

The only photograph of the Nobel in that isolated environment was launched from his camera. “At that time, the school was a pissing hole and it smelled too bad. It affected anyone,” he said. chavez to infobae—. Vargas Llosa He frowned, as if disgusted. Then he stopped next to me and said: ‘I want to see there’. Security gave way. No more than six people entered, some from the regional government. It was dark, I don’t remember what they lit with. That day, the Nobel Prize winner left the event without prior notice.

More than a decade later, the project has not opened its doors and, with the rain emergency, the probability is even more distant. That ruined house also left the British stunned gerald martinbiographer of Gabriel García Márquez and author of what will be the biography of MVLL, when he toured Piura at the beginning of 2013. The garbage and dust from oblivion persisted, as until now when the downpour arrived.

Hell and catastrophe. The adjectives could also describe the ravages of nature —and political inaction— that have left in rubble a monument that, in another country, would be a museum: a mandatory Vargas Ilosian stop.