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History of the inheritance of Carlos Gardel to the present day

GARDELIAN EVENT N°13 - 02/03/2020

History of the inheritance of Carlos Gardel to the present day             

Interview with Nuria Eulalia Andrea Cortada de Fortuny, heir to Carlos Gardel, Bertha Gardés and Armando Defino. The story after Gardel's death; the heritage forgotten in a house in Río Ceballos for 70 years.

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This story aims to clarify what happened with the succession and rights to the work of Carlos Gardel, and the succession that gives rise to the creation by the successors of an International Carlos Gardel Foundation, which organizes and keeps his memory alive.

Since the foundation, we believe that having created it is an act of justice and a right of Argentines to protect our history. Having to explain who Carlos Gardel was seems to be unnecessary, but it is worth remembering that the customs and traditions that are transmitted from generation to generation are just as important as other types of heritage and deserve to be cared for in the same way, they are part of the heritage immaterial of the peoples. 

Carlos Gardel is an active part of our life consciously and unconsciously, not knowing the history of this exceptional artist, and his contribution to the history of our country, and the relationship between Buenos Aires, tango and Gardel, anywhere in the world, it is denying who we are and where we come from, guarding their memory reminds us where we are going.

 There is a before and after Gardel. Within its mission, the Foundation aims to awaken in current and future generations the sense of national identity as a conquest of rights, belonging to a society and safeguarding the future, as part of our identity.

The entrevista

By way of prologue

Very few times, or almost never, since the death of Gardel and then his mother, people have wondered what happened to his inheritance. Most remembered Armando De Fino, his friend and executor, and the heir to his estate as the last successor. her heritage, it is for those of us who believe it is important that people know this story told by one of the protagonists, and how this heritage remained hidden for 70 years. 

Walter Santoro. 

How did the link with Armando Defino come about?

Nuria: For this we have to go back to the arrival of my family in Buenos Aries. My maternal grandfather, Ramón de Fortuny, arrived from Catalonia, Spain, with his family, made up of his wife Armonía and their three daughters: my mother -Nuria- and her sisters Elena and Gladys, the youngest, whom we called Ninota, who he was born in Montevideo in 1922 and today lives in Spain; she is the only survivor of that generation and she has an excellent memory. I usually call her to ask her for dates and information that I don't remember about her.

My grandfather Ramón, by mandate of the Belgian Electricity Company, was transferred in 1925 from the Montevideo plant built 3 years earlier, to assemble the equipment for the Buenos Aires power plant. Construction of the Plant had begun several years before, but the equipment for power generation and distribution had yet to be installed.

My grandfather was a native of Barcelona, ​​from a noble family. Her mother in Spain had among her domestic staff Adela Blasco, a young girl from humble origins who wanted to emigrate in search of a better future. Adela managed to travel to Buenos Aires and got a job at the English Telephone Company.

After having lost all contact with his family and acquaintances in Spain; like all immigrants in Buenos Aires, they used to meet with their communities. In this way, my grandfather met Adela, who was already in a relationship with Armando Defino, in the Soviet cafe on Avenida de Mayo, a meeting point for the Catalan community in Buenos Aires, where they used to go every day around 20:XNUMX p.m. .

Since then they established a deep friendship; Adela with my aunt Armonía and my grandmother, and Armando with my grandfather Ramón. The four of them shared meals, basket nights, and outings daily.

In 1940 my family bought a farm in the town of Castelar -near the current Gaona Avenue- where we used to meet. A year later Armando bought a country house a few blocks away; then my grandfather sold his and we all began to frequent Armando's country house almost every weekend. There I shared my entire childhood with them, starting when I was four years old.

Several years before the tragic accident, Carlos Gardel had asked Armando to take care of his mother - Doña Bertha - if something happened to her, surely he must have sensed during so much travel that something could happen to her. After Gardel's death in 1935, Armando, following Carlos' wishes, proposed to Berta that she go live with them, although Jean Jaurés' house was huge and cold, lacking in comfort, however, Doña Berta wanted to continue living in it. her after death Carlitos. There she found herself with the shadow of her beloved son, there were all her living memories of her, throbbing, overcoming the sadness of the house. Doña Berta did not want to accept the invitation of the De Fino couple, who offered her a room in the house at 222 Saavedra street. A sentimental matter, in addition to the memory, kept her at Jean Jaurés 735, an elderly couple who lived with her since who he met when he arrived in the country with his little Carlitos; They were Don Fortunato and his wife, Doña Anaiz, who were parents to Gardel, and Gardel appreciated them as such. 

When Doña Anaiz died in the year 39, four years after Gardel's death, Don Fortunato went to live with his son. And at Bertha's insistence on staying in the old house, the De Fino couple together with Armando's mother, Doña Pepa, left their house at 222 Saavedra Street and moved in with Berta, so they could take care of her as they had promised Carlos. , complying with the request of his friend, and it was Adela who was in charge of taking care of the two women. 

When Doña Bertha got sick (with uterine cancer, this caused her to spend her last years bedridden), my father, who was a doctor, began to care for her at Armando's request; this made us frequent the house of Jean Jaurés assiduously. I was very young, between two and three years old, and I vaguely remember a bedridden lady, who was Doña Bertha. I also remember Doña Pepa, always sitting in a rocking chair, Armando's dog, a German shepherd named Indio, and Adela cooking; She used to teach me how to cook and it is one of the best memories of that time.

In July 1943 Doña Bertha died and a few months later Doña Pepa died; We decided to continue living in the same house until 1946, when our house at 222 Saavedra Street, which we had rented precisely when we went to live in it, was vacated. We moved to Saavedra, the house was much smaller, so most of Gardel and Bertha's furniture and personal belongings were taken to the house that my grandfather had bought in Río Ceballos; and we rented, in turn, that of Jean Jaurés for $330 pesos per month and in 1949 it was sold to the same tenant.

The purchase of the house in Río Ceballos

On a trip to Río Ceballos, my grandfather had met Doctor Ordoñez, who had a very nice house that looked like a castle. Since Ordoñez was very ill, virtually dying, he offered to sell my grandfather the house, on the condition that he take care of Clarita, his adopted daughter. My grandfather accepted the purchase with the agreed conditions and that became the summer home for the whole family.

After Armando's sale of Jean Jaurés, a lot of furniture remained and a large number of objects that had belonged to Gardel and Bertha; all of this was taken to the house in Río Ceballos, Córdoba. The house was very big, it had two floors and all the furniture that we did not use was stored in one of the rooms.

Carlos Gardel and Armando Defino meet

Armando's brother was a theater agent, and he introduced Gardel to Defino. At that time, Gardel was experiencing financial difficulties and needed someone to put his accounts in order. Armando was that person and he took over from that moment on as administrator and organizer of his assets and later became Carlos Gardel's executor.

After the fatal accident in Medellín, Armando was empowered by Bertha to carry out the repatriation procedures and also took care of all of Carlos Gardel's assets abroad.

When my father met my mother, and the inheritance 

My father had been a doctor in Catalonia and there he worked in a very famous laboratory called De Belarden, where the tuberculosis vaccine was discovered. He emigrated to Argentina as a political exile and in the Casal de Catalunya in Buenos Aires he met a Catalan compatriot who helped him by sending him patients until he revalidated his title to legally practice medicine in Argentina. That Spanish compatriot –who would later be my grandfather- thought that her daughter had tuberculosis due to her extreme thinness, and he went to my father for studies. The diagnosis was negative. My future mother only suffered from malnutrition and she had to gain weight. A change in eating habits and climate was indicated.

A farm in Río Ceballos, Córdoba, was the solution and after three months she returned to Buenos Aires fully recovered, much plumper and with a different face. As a courtesy for not having charged him for the studies and consultations, my grandfather invited the Catalan doctor to a party in the casino of the plant where he worked. There the doctor found my mother and when he saw her he was captivated by her, who was actually quite angry about the tuberculosis study that he had ordered her to carry out. In any case, they fell in love there and got married on January 6, 1940. A year later I was born, then my brother, and then my sister.

Defino loved children, but had not been able to have children. She became fond of us, being me the favorite. Since then, Armando and Adela took me everywhere, to the theaters, the movies, and even to revue theaters, hidden from my mom. When we stayed at Armando's house at night, we always had a Gardel movie; Armando prepared a 16 mm projector, and showed us Gardel's films.

Armando had a family life, separated from the world of tango. I have met Edmundo Guibourg and his wife at his house, linked to Armando by friendship with Gardel, and I don't remember anyone else. Our two families were very close; They went to the country house at night to play cards all together. Adela says in her will that my mother became the adoptive or “heart” daughter of Armando and Adela, and that same love was transferred to me.

In 1953 Armando fell ill. He had a heart attack that he survived, but he was no longer able to continue working. Not having savings and no other economic resources other than work, he sold the Yaraví country house and my parents offered them to move in with us. My father rented an apartment at San Juan 3658, almost Boedo, and he gave Armando the front part of the apartment while we kept the back part; Since then we all live together. My mother was a dentist and she had her office in the same house. She and Adela thought it would be better to all go live together in one house, and they bought a Petit Hotel in Recoleta that had belonged to Silvina Bullrich, at 2459 Galileo street. As a small detail, I had had Silvina's room and My mother set up her office on the ground floor, Armando was left with a large living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen, and we settled on the first floor.

Armando passed away in June 1962, when I was 21 years old. Adela was left alone and there the pollution began, the parade of people who came to ask her for Gardel's belongings. All those people made us angry; They came to take away, or steal the memories. Adela had a closet full of Gardel test discs. Those people cried for her and she gave them records until there were none left. We angered the world of tango because of those people, some delinquents who came to strip a poor woman. Armando never wanted to profit from Gardel; He was a very honest man, with a lot of integrity, and what he perceived of rights from Gardel was only enough for him to live on.

 A few years after Armando's death, I had graduated, got married, and my father was very ill. The house was too big for them and my mom decided to move. They sold the property on Galileo Street but were swindled. They were going to give them some money and two small apartments; We received the money but the buying group declared bankruptcy and we never received the apartments. With the money they gave us, my parents bought a house at 1700 Laprida street. Adela lived on the ground floor and my mother had her office there; on the upper floor there was a living room, a bedroom and a kitchen.

We had already all married; Only my younger brother was single. Shortly after my father suffered a heart attack and died in surgery at the Italian Hospital. With many economic difficulties we had to ask for money to be able to bury him. It was a terrible moment, even though he was a doctor; Doctor Liotta had operated on him. Years passed; My grandfather Ramón died and my grandmother moved to an apartment across from my mother's house and the three women spent their days together. On a trip to the countryside where Adela was visiting my sister, she died while she was sleeping. At the same time that they were burying her, a “friendly” family that they had helped when they came from Spain, entered her apartment and stole everything that was left of her.

In the year 2000 my mother was an elderly lady and she proposed to me, my sister and me; that we leave everything arranged in life, so as not to have to make a succession. From that moment until my mother's death in 2008, my sister and I didn't want to touch anything; Just then, after she was dead, we went to see the house in Río Ceballos, so that we could sell it. We didn't do it before out of respect for my parents who gave us everything. We never wanted to drink anything in my mother's life. Since the house was so large, one sector was used for vacations and another was a storage room. There we found all the belongings of Bertha and Gardel. As we were extracting these objects we were realizing the importance of all that. We only knew that it had to be preserved for the future; it was what mattered most to us. We always had a clear awareness in the family that we were the heirs of Gardel, and therefore of Bertha and Armando Defino. It had to be understood that, when Armando sold the house, I was 4 years old and my sister was 5, very little to realize what had happened, and for this reason everything was left in a limbo of history, of Gardel's inheritance, as well as of Bertha, all this because we were very distanced from the world of tango because of the collectors of memories. We had also become suspicious of collectors and, moreover, of all tango people, because of what they had done with Adela. On the other hand, we were focused on our lives; my sister as a pharmacist and I with my biochemistry profession; My children settled in the US and have their lives, just like our grandchildren, and that is why we decided to assign ownership and inheritance to Walter Santoro of everything we received from Gardel, Bertha and Armando. We believe that he will be able to carry out Armando's wishes, as he once told us: "I don't want to profit from Gardel but to keep his memory and his work alive." and that fully coincides with our wishes. Adela left it expressed in her will and asked us while she was alive to take care of the vault because Armando's remains also rested there, which are no longer there. At that time we discovered that it was very abandoned.

Alfredo Echaniz, my husband, is the one who somehow discovered the importance of all that documentation and dedicated himself to ordering it and beginning to investigate Gardel's history, and combining it with his profession as a graphic designer, ordered all the documentation, and prepared a show that we held at a friend's hotel, where for the first and only time, a large part of the collection was exhibited. Alfredo also made a book, called "Archivo Gardel", where a large part of the history of Armando Defino and life with Gardel is revealed. We believe that this is a large part of the documentation that was missing to close a chapter of our history.

We met Mr. Walter Santoro due to a conflict that was being orchestrated due to the lack of maintenance and abandonment of the Carlos Gardel Vault in the Chacharita cemetery, he asked us to be able to intervene in the conflict in favor of defending Carlos Gardel and to For this, he asked us for a power of attorney to represent us, to be able to act officially. With my sister we saw the work that he had been doing in defense of our history and our heritage, and we decided to transfer all rights to him, free of charge, with the charge and his commitment to safeguard the work and his image for the future of all Argentines and the world. 

Interview conducted by Walter Santoro. June 2019

Extract of the transfer of rightss.

Inheritance, its successions 

To date, the history of Carlos Gardel, as well as his artistic legacy, has passed through several generations, sustained by a strong sense of Buenos Aires identity and with an international projection achieved by very few of his contemporaries, in the world; but there is a hereditary succession that we will explain.

To understand this story, we must go back to the time when Carlos Gardel met Armando Defino, (year 1931) who in a very short time became his executor and friend. Some years later, Gardel asks Defino the need to leave a will, in that same conversation, he asks him that if something happens to him, that he take care of his mother -Doña Bertha Gardes-. After the tragic accident, on June 24, 1935, Armando, along with Adela and her mother Doña Pepa, moved to Doña Bertha's house, at 735 Jean Jaurés street, complying with Carlos' request, and it was Adela who took charge of caring for the two women, until her death eight years later.

successions

Carlos Gardel, leaves his mother Berthe Gardes under his will on November 7, 1933, as the universal heir of all his property and rights. Through a will dated July 2, 1942, Berthe Gardes named Armando Vicente De Fino the sole and universal heir of the assets inherited from Carlos Gardel. By will dated February 7, 1960, Armando De Fino names his wife Adela Blasco de De Fino as the sole and universal heir of all his assets and rights, clarifying that in the event that she died first or in the event of simultaneous death , after bequeathing certain properties to his nephew, and in the remaining assets he names Nuria Eulalia de Fortuny de Cortada as the sole and universal heir (whom he calls "our affectionate daughter"), asking her to "...continue Attending, as my wife and I have always done, the monument and the vault in Chacarita, where the remains of my dear and unforgettable Carlos Gardel and his mother Berthe Gardes rest." 

On October 27, 2000, by transfer of rights, Mrs. Nuria Eulalia de Fortuny de Cortada, freely donated to her daughters Nuria Eulalia Andrea Cortada de Fortuny and María Ana Inés Cortada de Fortuny all property rights and shares inherent to those rights with respect to all material or immaterial things and goods and objects that belonged to Carlos Gardel, his mother Doña Berthe Gardes and her successors during life, Armando Vicente De Fino and Doña Adela Blasco, of whom the assignor is the sole and universal heiress. 

Through assignment of rights dated August 16, 2018, Mrs. Nuria Eulalia Andrea Cortada de Fortuny and María Ana Inés Cortada de Fortuny, assign, free of charge to Mr. Walter Santoro, all property rights and shares inherent to those rights with respect to all material or immaterial things and goods and objects that belonged to Carlos Gardel, to his mother, Mrs. Berthe Gardes, in life, with the commitment to safeguard his memory and history.

Pursuant to that commitment, Mr. Walter Santoro decides to create the Carlos Gardel International Foundation for this purpose, thus beginning a new story, understanding that Carlos Gardel is a living part of the cultural history of Buenos Aires and therefore of all Argentines.

Photo recreation of Gardel's successors.

walter santoro for Carlos Gardel International Foundation