The death of Mario Vargas Llosa, which took place in Lima on April 13, 2025, closes a decisive chapter in the history of Latin American literature. The announcement was made by his son Álvaro on the social network X, accompanied by his siblings Gonzalo and Morgana: "Our father, Mario Vargas Llosa, passed away peacefully in Lima today, surrounded by his family".

Peru decreed national mourning, with flags at half-mast in state premises. The family announced that no public ceremonies would be held, following the writer's wishes, and that his body would be cremated. His son Álvaro had shared, shortly before the writer's 89th birthday, images of the places in Lima where Vargas Llosa wrote his last two novels, Cinco Esquinas (2016) and Le dedico mi silencio (2023).

The news of his death was met with reactions from around the world. The Peruvian president, Dina Boluarte, stressed that his "intellectual genius and vast work will remain an everlasting legacy for future generations". From Spain, President Pedro Sánchez expressed his "gratitude as a reader for an immense work", while Emmanuel Macron recalled that, with his work, "he opposed freedom to fanaticism, irony to dogmas, a tenacious ideal in the face of the storms of the century".

Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 into a middle-class family in Arequipa, Peru. From a young age he showed literary inclinations, but it was in Paris where he found the fertile ground to consolidate himself as a writer. Settling there in 1959, he worked as a translator, Spanish teacher and journalist for the Spanish service of Agence France Presse. He finished his first novel, La ciudad y los perros, in Paris, winning the Biblioteca Breve prize in 1962. Vargas Llosa had imagined being a French writer, convinced that "it is impossible to be a writer in Peru, a country with no publishing houses and few bookstores".

His link with France was maintained throughout his career. An admirer of Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert, he was the first author without an original work in French to join the Académie Française. In 2016, his entire oeuvre was included in the prestigious Pléiade collection. On joining the Académie in 2023, he recalled, "It was in Paris that I became a writer."

Vargas Llosa was part of the central core of the Latin American Boom, along with figures such as Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar. This movement boosted the global projection of Latin American narrative during the 1960s and 1970s. Barcelona was one of the key stages of this period. In 1970, encouraged by the literary agent Carmen Balcells, he settled in the Catalan city, where he imposed a strict work discipline on himself. Balcells "matched his salary as a teacher" in London, "found him an apartment, doctors, schools for his children, and, as she does with other writers, imposed a timetable discipline on him".

Vargas Llosa lived in the Sarriá neighborhood, a short distance from Gabriel García Márquez. The families shared meals and childcare. The friendship fractured in 1976, after a fight in Mexico that included a blow from the Peruvian to the Colombian. The episode was left without public explanation. Vargas Llosa had said: "Let the biographers take care of that issue".

His work encompasses multiple registers and styles. La ciudad y los perros exposed the hypocrisy and rigidity of Peruvian society, based on his adolescent experience in a military academy in Lima. La casa verde presented a complex narrative structure, interweaving several stories, while Conversación en la catedral portrayed the corruption and authoritarianism of Manuel Odría's regime, leaving a question that became iconic: "At what point had Peru gone to hell?".

With La tía Julia y el escribidor, Vargas Llosa narrated his relationship with Julia Urquidi, his first wife, who was 32 years old when they married and he was only 19 years old. Later, The War at the End of the World focused on the Canudos rebellion in Brazil, and The Feast of the Goat explored the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

His books have been translated into more than 30 languages and recognized for their ability to portray the human condition in different contexts. Writer Alfredo Bryce Echenique, a friend of Vargas Llosa's, said that his death is "a mourning for Peru", noting that "no one has represented us as much as he has in the world for his work in general, his stubbornness, his cleanliness, his enormity".

Over the years, his political thinking evolved markedly. From sympathizer of the Cuban Revolution, Vargas Llosa distanced himself from Castroism in the early 1970s, especially after the imprisonment and public confession of the poet Heberto Padilla. He then turned to classical liberalism, influenced by authors such as Alexis de Tocqueville, and became a critic of totalitarianism, both left and right.

He cultivated the friendship of essayist Jean-François Revel, and defended the role of literature as a space for freedom.

The transformation of his ideas led him into politics: in 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of Peru, but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori. Shortly after, he moved to Spain and obtained Spanish nationality in 1993.

In Madrid, he consolidated his place as a global literary figure. He joined the Royal Spanish Academy and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, he said: "I have never felt like a foreigner in Europe, nor, indeed, anywhere".

His personal life also had wide public exposure. In his younger years, he was a fan of FC Barcelona, motivated in part by the presence of Hugo Sotil, one of the most outstanding Peruvian footballers of the time. Eventually, he became a Real Madrid supporter. Between 2015 and 2022, he maintained a relationship with Isabel Preysler, which made him a regular protagonist of the heart press.

More enduring was his bond with Spanish literature, to which he dedicated essays and articles, including studies on Joanot Martorell's Tirant lo Blanc, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Vargas Llosa said in Paris that it was thanks to France that he discovered "another Latin America".

The reactions to his death were multiple and transversal. From the Spanish Royal House to the Gabo Foundation, all coincided in highlighting his role as a key narrator of the Spanish language. The Foundation created by Gabriel García Márquez bade him farewell, recalling that he was "master of narrative in Spanish and a key figure in Latin American literature".

For his readers and for the history of literature, Vargas Llosa leaves a legacy that, as his family said, "will live beyond him. With Vargas Llosa's farewell, an immortal chapter of literature comes to an end. That of the Latin American Boom.

With information from AFP