Even if his family agreed only in classical music by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms, the homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez was enriched by a vallenato group, singing with a bandoneon in a tribute to the Nobel prize laureate.

“His name is Garcia Marquez, but we call him Gabo”, said one verse.

The presence of the Colombian musicians was well received by the admirers crowding the halls in the Palace of Bellas Artes, dressed with yellow shirts and Colombian style hats, presenting books and yellow rose bouquets, and throwing paper butterflies through the air.

A string quartet and a chamber orchestra, on each side of the first floor of the Palace, alternate their classical pieces with tango, while friends and colleagues of Garcia Marquez, like Alvaro Pombo, William Ospina, Hector Vasconcelos and his editors, performed the honor guard besides the vase containing the ashes of the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.

The security measures are extreme, allowing only a few seconds to the admirers saying their last goodbye to the writer.

The loving tribute of the readers is testified by Mercedes Barcha, widow of the writer born on March 6, 1927, and his sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, their families and the Colombian community in Mexico

Gabriel Jose de la Concordia Garcia Marquez was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha.

He started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, inspired by his birthplace Aracataca, and most of them explore the theme of solitude.

The motorcade transporting hise ashes arrived at the Palace of Bellas Artes, in preparation for the homage, which will be headed by the presidents of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, and Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos.