Town in Ávila pays tribute to well-known Costa del Sol artist

In 1960, a young man from Vélez-Málaga on the eastern Costa del Sol set off for Madrid with big dreams of being a successful painter.

The youngest of eleven siblings and son of a baker, Evaristo Guerra, now 82, recalls, "Madrid was very big for me, with so many big buildings and so many people. A friend, the photographer Pepe Sáinz, recommended that I go to live in Las Navas del Marqués, a small village in Ávila, very close to El Escorial."

In a small boarding house run by Patrocinio and Emilio, "two charming people", he painted his first 25 landscape paintings for an exhibition at the Macarrón gallery in Madrid.

"It was very cold, but I remember those years living in Las Navas del Marqués with great fondness. It was the first place where I settled down to live with my wife, María Adela Pareja," Guerra explained.

A few weeks ago, the artist returned to the town, which has changed dramatically since the 1960s and the boarding house has been transformed into a block of flats. He was there for a tribute to his work, organised by the local town hall, which formed part of an initiative to recognise 16 personalities from the world of culture, aristocracy and the arts who have been linked to the municipality throughout the years.

Las Navas del Marqués, which is just an hour by train or car from Madrid, wants to promote its tourist attractions and the name of the painter from Vélez is on a list of illustrious residents, alongside Lope de Vega, José Garnelo, José García Nieto, Juan Antonio Bardem, Camilo José Cela, Vicente Aleixandre, Fidel Pérez-Mínguez, Aniceto Marinas, Dámaso Alonso, Carmen Laforet, Eulalia de Borbón, Agustín García Calvo, Isabel Escudero, Pedro Dávila and María de Córdoba (the first marquises of the municipality) and Ángela Pérez de Barradas. The event was attended by the town's mayor, María del Mar Díaz.

"I am very grateful to the town hall for this recognition, for including me in the route and for placing a plaque where the house where I spent six years used to be," said Guerra at the event.

Guerra's biggest success was the Blanco y Negro prize awarded by the magazine of the newspaper ABC, in 1972, for his work Dos Kilómetros Para el Pueblo, one of his landscapes of almond trees in blossom with the view of Arenas, which is near to Vélez-Málaga and the village his wife is from, in the background.

"The prize was 250,000 pesetas, at that time, so imagine, and with that I bought my first flat in Vélez-Málaga," Guerra recalled.

In the mid-eighties he bought a house in the centre of Madrid, in Calle O'Donnell, in the Salamanca district, which he sold just seven years ago.

He lived there for more than three decades, although he returned to Vélez-Málaga from time to time to be inspired by the light and landscapes that he captures on his canvases.

"Great personalities passed through that house, such as the Duchess of Alba, who bought paintings from me, Rafael Alberti, footballers such as my fellow countryman Fernando Hierro, Raúl, Manolo Escobar and Rocío Jurado," he listed.

After completing his most important work almost two decades ago - the frescoes inside Los Remedios Coronada chapel in Vélez-Málaga - he decided to return to his native town for good.

On 5 September he will be 83 years old, but has no plans to retire: "I get up at 7am, a legacy from my father who was a baker," he highlighted. "I continue to paint every day, coming to the studio. I am happy here. There are days when I paint more and days when I paint less, it depends on many factors," he said.

"Art is the self-portrait of the soul," he said. "It's what I want to be put on my tombstone", he added.