MADRID – Literary lion Francisco Ayala, who died this week at the age of 103, on Wednesday was bid an emotional and warm farewell by Spain’s political and cultural elites.

King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe, with their presence in the funeral chapel of the writer, sought to give evidence of the regret felt in the Royal Household over the death of the essayist and novelist.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also made an appearance.

The writer’s widow, U.S. scholar Carolyn Richmond, was accompanied at all times by poet Luis Garcia Montero, a friend of the family and organizer of the events surrounding Ayala’s 100th birthday, and by the managing director of the Francisco Ayala Foundation, Rafael Juarez.

Ayala left an impressive literary legacy consisting of about 70 works, many of them written during his lengthy exile – after the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War – in Argentina, Puerto Rico, Brazil and the United States, years during which the writer did not let himself be swept up in nostalgia and said he lived them as “a privilege.”

The funeral chapel for Ayala, who witnessed virtually the entire 20th century and wrote about it with great power and intelligence, received a steady stream of visitors after opening on Tuesday afternoon to the public for three hours.

However, at the express wish of the deceased and his widow, the cremation of his remains took place in the strictest intimacy at El Escorial, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Madrid.

Enriqueta Antolin, biographer and friend of the writer, called the novelist’s equanimity “extraordinary,” adding that “he was a man who never judged anything precipitously. He only did so according to his own judgment and did not let himself be swayed by the ideas of others.”

Ayala, a brilliant storyteller, constructed in all his works a fictitious world marked by clarity, irony and disillusionment.

During his long career, he was awarded the highest literary prizes, including the National Literature Award 1983, the Premio de las Letras in 1988, the Cervantes Prize in 1991 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998. For the centennial of his birth in 2006, he saw some of his works republished, among them “Los usurpadores,” “La cabeza del cordero,” “El as de bastos,” “El jardin de las delicias” and his memoirs “Recuerdos y olvidos.” EFE