Aitana Alberti, daughter of the poet Rafael Alberti, passed away in Havana at the age of 84. She had lived in Cuba since 1984, where she chaired the chair bearing her father's name and worked at a cultural center dedicated to the Generation of '27. Her death recalls the cultural bond between Spain and Cuba and the need to preserve the Ibero-American literary legacy.
Digital preservation: archiving the memory of the Generation of '27 📜
The loss of Aitana Alberti underscores the urgency of digitizing the literary heritage of the Generation of '27. Projects such as virtual libraries and open repositories allow for storing manuscripts, letters, and recordings. To prevent the legacy from fading away, Spanish and Cuban institutions should coordinate platforms with standardized metadata. Without this technical infrastructure, access to key documents depends on vulnerable physical archives.
When you inherit a library and the government doesn't pay for hosting 💸
Imagine inheriting a bunch of poems from your father and having to keep them alive without anyone answering the phone. Aitana Alberti spent decades acting as the guardian of the Alberti legacy in Cuba, likely with more willpower than budget. Now that she's gone, someone will have to decide whether the verses go up to the cloud or stay in a cardboard box. The Generation of '27 deserves better luck than a broken hard drive.