I first met Carmen Martín Gaite thanks to some common friends who introduced me to her many, many years ago, when I was studying at the Complutense University, Madrid, and she had begun to write short pieces following the award of her degree from the University of Salamanca. Later, as a lecturer at the National University of Ireland, in Dublin, I taught a course on the contemporary Spanish novel and included Entre visillos on the syllabus. I well remember the enthusiasm which that novel sparked off in my students who, overcoming inevitable linguistic hurdles, could identify with those provincial Spanish girls living in a closed-off world and facing the inherent difficulties that it presented for them. For those Irish students that world was typically Spanish, yet, even if the dilemmas were not as acute, they could see similarities with the Ireland in which they were growing up. At least, that's how they saw it, and their reactions provoked considerable interest and debate in class.

In 1983, thanks to University funding to bring contemporary writers from Spain and Italy to Dublin, I invited Carmen Martín Gaite to Ireland, thinking she would be the perfect speaker to fire the students’ imagination – not only because of her excellence as a novelist, but also because of her extrovert personality, which I had glimpsed all those years before in Madrid, and my hunch was confirmed as soon as she set foot in Ireland. The official funds available were limited, so I asked her to stay in my home, an invitation which she accepted at once with delight…

I’ll never forget that week which Carmiña – as her closest friends call her, as she is from Galicia – spent in our house. Her first reaction, on being shown her room, was to rearrange the furniture. The armchair, where she could relax and read, was too far from the window and the free-standing mirror was too close, since she wasn't a woman who needed a lot of light to see her by now completely grey hair, which she brushed almost without looking. Those, at any rate, where the justifications which she gave for the rearrangements.

Her visits to our department and contact with the students were also unforgettable. I was afraid that, in the face of a visitor from Spain, the students might retreat into the timidity which was habitual on such occasions.