“You are one of mine” and we were all his. Javier Castro Villacañas, 58 years old (1964-2023), has left this life in full intellectual lucidity and in the best spiritual peace: “Dear Jesus…, I am sure that sooner or later our skeptical visions will find a point of union in dignity, in integrity and in our relationship in the afterlife with God.” These were the last words he wrote to me on the night of Wednesday the 4th, his body already devoured by cancer, and a few hours after falling asleep to find peace on the day of the Lord’s Epiphany.
A good man leaves us in the prime of his life – how unfair this is with the good ones! – in full literary creation with his warm voice on the radio and firm pen in the newspapers. Lawyer and journalist, he distributed his professional career between the universityLaw and in a wide field as a writer.
He was a professor of Constitutional Law at Camilo José Cela. In the Complutense, the rector Gustavo Villapalos appointed him legal advisor, in the courts he dedicated himself to defending good and noble causes, he directed radio programs on Inter and Decisión Radio, among others, where he made information and debate a clean activity oblivious to sectarianism and propaganda. The rigor and veracity were his maximum, embodied in hundreds of columns and reports in La RazónEl Español, El Mundo and others, which should be studied as an example of objectivity.
He never evaded controversy in an open debate without cheating, because his goal was to find the truth, of which he was always passionate. He denounced the corruption of the political system because it degraded society. He wrote “Miguel Blesa, the Wolf of Caja Madrid” (with Luis Suárez) to show the spurious use that political parties made of the common good, and as a declared Republican in the face of a corrupt monarchy he published “The failure of the monarchy”, Possibly the best essay on the establishment of the crown in King Juan Carlos, whose causes since the beginning of the Transition today are the consequence of the serious political crisis suffered by the Spanish. Convinced of the legitimacy of social rebellion against government tyranny, which proclaimed, as Eugenio did with Primavera, in his articles, radio debates and in the work “El expolio a las clasas mediados” (Luis Suárez), that they are not other than the worker himself.
Less than two months ago, Javier Castro felt the arrival of the end of his lived life, a short existence broken unexpectedly, too unexpectedly, and abruptly, but for which he prepared himself due to his firm religious beliefs and deep Christian spirituality, and for which he He has calmly received a great example of dignity as his life was. And so he left everything prepared and ready before his wife, -what great integrity!-, his children, and his brothers.
Javier Castro, on his coffin a script of the Spanish flag with the five roses, will rest next to his father Antonio who, with his uncle Demetrio, are already waiting for him in the stars to continue creating eternal poetry.