“I loved her and I love her very much. I respected her and her respect and I have her in my heart. She has spent these days almost without sleep. Last Saturday I saw her for the last time, we were together for a long time, she was super happy, I gave her a few kisses and she told me 'stay longer, come back soon'. She realized that it was wrong, but also that she was very loved. And that is very important”, Bartomeu Català, a Mallorcan priest and president of Proyecto Hombre in the Balearic Islands, tells ABC emotionally, one of Cristina Macaya's best friends.
The businesswoman and philanthropist passed away this Thursday at her home in Mallorca, at the age of 77, after several years of fighting cancer. A disease that, as Father Bartomeu says, lived in the distance: “she suffered and suffered from it but she contemplated it, she did not experience it. She had had operations for years, went to the clinic for chemotherapy and then went to the supermarket to buy because she had people for dinner. In recent years I have been impressed by his physical and mental strength”.
Together they managed to build the headquarters of Proyecto Hombre on the island. “He not only said but did. With Proyecto Hombre he turned to very small details and even very big things”. For Macaya it was one of her great works and one of which she also felt very proud, as she told this writer two summers ago during a visit to her estate in Establiments with her friend, Ágatha. Ruiz de la Prada. “I don't like collecting alms. I have to help working on the project. We have a building of 10.000 square meters. Expect a lot of people. The most difficult thing to give up is addiction to alcohol and now we have had to bring in specialists to cure addiction to mobile phones and video games, ”she explained.
As president of the Red Cross in Spain, she also left her mark by creating the famous Gold raffle. “I realized that with 800 centers, more than twenty hospitals, that could not be sustained. So I invented the gold thing because it gave me a lot of money. It was 1980 and the Minister of Economy, Leal Maldonado did not want to authorize it. So I looked for my life and he asked my friend Carlos Bustelo, then Minister of Industry, to sign an unimportant paper for me that would give me a prize. Then I called him to thank him and tell him what a bitch he had done to her by signing that order, ”he told this newspaper, laughing.
edgy fashion
"Cristina has been one of the best patrons we have had in Spain, but both at a social and work level," says Santiago Vandrés, who was her head couturier. “Fashion was in her, she was avant-garde and she always asked you for more, she wanted to give the best of herself. She was her letter of introduction to others when she went somewhere, ”she explained. She loved participating in her creation but she hated trying on: “She has always been the same size, she was genetic from her mother that she was also a super skinny woman and that she always stayed at the same weight. We had the same size and she told me 'you try it on and I'll try it on already finished' (she laughs)”. But, besides her dresses, her true passion was shoes. She had an innumerable collection and placed them like sculptures around her dressing room. "She said that she had from 35 to 37, depending on how she liked it, she suffered to put it on," recalls the designer Vandrés.
arrive; Cristina Macaya with Plácido Arango, to whom she was together for 17 years. Left; Cristina Macaya with the Mallorcan priest and friend Bartomeu Català. Right; actor michael douglas
At the Maca de Castro restaurant, in Port de L'Alcudía, its owner and chef –a Michelin star laureate– mourns the loss of her friend. “She was a unique person and now I realize the importance that she has had in my life. In the end, much of who I am is thanks to her. Unintentionally, she helped me position myself on the island and out of here. She opened many doors for me, even at an international level, ”says Maca. He didn't say goodbye to her because Cristina didn't like it. “She was French,” she says. If the young cook of her friend's is going to miss something, it will be the early mornings when they went out to an event or a party and always ended with a custom that had become a ritual, eating sobrasada at the kitchen bar.
If everyone who knew her well agrees on something, it is that she was a free spirit who always did what she wanted, but in favor of the people. The 'Lady of the Valley' as some nicknamed her because of her paradisiacal estate of more than 50 hectares, 'Es Canyar', in Establiments and because she made parties on the island fashionable. “She interacted with everyone there, but above all with the people of Mallorca. She said that things had to be done with the Mallorcans, what happens is that she later had that cosmopolitan and international imprint of many people, ”explained José María Mohedano, lawyer, former politician and close friend of Macaya. In addition to her role as her hostess, she highlights her role as an art patron and how she helped prominent painters on the island to stand out and sell.
planted Clinton
He has coincided with Michael Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta-Jones in 'Es Canyar'. "The first place he took her when they went to Mallorca, newlyweds, was to meet Cristina," he recalls. And it is that Macaya already had a relationship with Kirk Douglas, father of the actor, and with politicians and royals from all over the world. Mohedano recalls an anecdote from when Bill Clinton came to spend a few days at Cristina's farm on the island. «When the president of the United States arrived in the afternoon with all his entourage, he received him and then dressed in sequins and told him 'here is your house, but tonight I have a party in Barcelona.' And he went to the airport and came back the next day, ”he recalls. And it is that Macaya did not give importance to those things and she knew how to be happy and make others happy. Along with her friends, her family will be an important pillar for her. She is always aware of her four children (Sandra, Cristina, Javier and María) the result of her marriage to the businessman Javier Macaya and her 18 grandchildren. All ordered in the United States.
She was romantically linked to Plácido Arango, a Mexican businessman, founder of Grupo Vips and a great art patron for 17 years. Was it the great love of her life? “I was only married once. Plácido and I got along very well, we knew how to give each other our space. Love has nothing to do with my life, they do not change me nor do I like being married, ”she replied to this newspaper.
Today, Saturday, in the church of Santa Cruz in Palma de Mallorca, she will celebrate her funeral mass and, later, she will be buried in the island's cemetery, since she always opposed being cremated. The tireless traveler with the eternal smile and penetrating gaze has already embarked on her longest journey. D.E.P
