Camilo José Cela (1916-2002) was a Spanish narrator, poet and academic, a native of La Coruña, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1989 for his career. He stood out for addressing different literary genres.
He was the author of novels, short stories, travel books, essays, newspaper articles, plays and poems within the modernist current. He even wrote a screenplay for the movies. He was also the founder of the literary magazine Roles of Son Armadans in the 1950s, as well as the Alfaguara publishing house.
Within his narrative work the novels stand out Pascual Duarte's family Y Beehive, in which he produced a critical, crude and spontaneous portrait of postwar Spanish society, developing a literary style that became known as "tremendismo".
In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, he received the Prince of Asturias Prize for literature in 1987 and the Cervantes Prize in 1995. He was also appointed a member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language in 1957, among many other awards..
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Camilo José Cela Turlock was born on May 11, 1916 in Iria Flavia, a parish in the province of La Coruña, Spain. He was baptized in the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor.
He was the first child of the marriage formed by Camilo Crisanto Cela y Fernández and Camila Emanuela Trulock and Bertorini. Both parents were Galician by birth, although the mother was of British and Italian descent. Camila was the daughter of Jonh Trulock, manager of the first railway line in Galicia.
Until 1925 the family lived in Vigo, where the author's childhood passed. In that year they moved to Madrid, where Camilo José was enrolled in the Piarist school on Polier Street..
Later he studied at the Chamberí Maristas school and finally at the San Isidro Institute in Madrid, where he finally completed his secondary education in 1934..
In 1931 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and admitted to the Guadarrama Antituberculous Sanatorium, where he remained for long months at rest. During that period, he nurtured his intellectual activity with the reading of philosophical works by José Ortega y Gasset and other classical Hispanic authors..
The hospitalization in the sanatorium served as inspiration for the writing of Pavilion at rest, one of the author's first novels, which narrates the experiences and reflections of seven patients in a hospital ward. It was published in 1943.
After graduating from a University Bachelor of Science, he entered the Faculty of Medicine of the Complutense University of Madrid. In his youth he attended as a listener to the contemporary literature classes taught by the poet Pedro Salinas at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the same university. Those classes, and the influence of the illustrious professor, turned his life towards literary making.
Pedro Salinas advised him on the writing of his first poems. Through Salinas, Camilo met important figures of the literary and intellectual environment who were in Madrid at that time.
Among the characters with whom Cela rubbed shoulders at that time, the poet Miguel Hernández, the philosopher María Zambrano, the writer Max Aub and the philologist Alonso Zamora Vicente stood out. With the latter he established a lasting friendship.
In 1936 the Spanish Civil War broke out and Camilo José Cela, of a right-wing tendency, joined the front as a soldier. He was injured and transferred to the hospital in Logroño, where the Medical Court declared him "totally useless" to continue serving in the military..
In 1938 he wrote his first collection of poems, entitled Stepping in the dubious light of day. For his part, Poems of a cruel adolescence, Surrealist theme, it was published in 1945. That same year The monastery and the words, second book of poems by the author.
Once the Civil War was over, Camilo José Cela dropped out of Medicine and began to attend some courses at the Faculty of Law.
However, in 1940 he began working in a textile industries office. For this reason, he left university studies and dedicated himself to working and writing his first novel, entitled Pascual Duarte's family.
In 1942 he relapsed from tuberculosis and again had to be admitted to the Hoyo de Manzanares Sanatorium. There he met the editor and printer of Burgos, Rafael Ibáñez de Aldecoa, through his sister, Felisa.
Ediciones Albecoa was in charge of editing and publishing, during that same year, Pascual Duarte's family. Simultaneously he wrote his second novel, Pavilion at rest. Both works were censored in Madrid.
During these early years of the Franco dictatorship, he collaborated with the postwar press, with articles consistent with his right-wing political ideas. He entered the Madrid Investigation and Surveillance Police Corps as a censor and served in that position during the years 1943 and 1944.
In 1944 he married María del Rosario Conde Picavea, a native of Guijón, who for many years collaborated with the writer in the transcription of his productions. A son, Camilo José Arcadio Cela Conde, was born from the marriage on January 17, 1946.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he published numerous short stories, short novels and essays in Madrid newspapers of the time..
During those years, his first travel books also came to light, among which are Trip to the Alcarria Y Guadarrama notebook, all of them with descriptions of Spain.
Through these territories he made numerous trips throughout his life. He also continued in the 1950s with the writing of poems, compiled in various compilations.
In 1949 he collaborated with the script of the film The basement, Directed by the San Sebastian filmmaker Jaime de Mayora Dutheil and produced by Estudios Augustus Films de Madrid.
In the filming he played one of the main protagonists, so he not only ventured into the world of cinema as a screenwriter, but also as an actor.
The basement It was premiered at the Cine Coliseum on Gran Vía in Madrid, on January 12, 1950.
In 1951, what for many critics was his top novel was published in Buenos Aires., Beehive. This is because in Spain it was censored, both by the ecclesiastical institution and by the regime.
Camilo José Cela was working on this work from 1945 until its publication. In the Argentine capital it came to light through Emecé Editores, with the omission of some passages with explicit sexual content.
The novel was developed in Madrid in 1943, within the social context of the postwar period. It does not have a single protagonist, but it is about stories of different characters that intertwine, with a modern and playful narrative. In 1955 Beehive was finally published in Spain.
In 1954, Camilo José Cela and his family moved to Palma de Mallorca, where the author lived until 1989. There he met the famous North American writer Ernest Hemingway, the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara and many other characters..
Three years later, in 1957, he was elected to the Q chair as a member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. The ceremony was held on May 27 of that year, with a memorable speech by Cela.
In the 1950s, he agreed with the Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez to write five or six novels set in Venezuela..
Within the agreements, the works had to deal with propaganda passages of the government's policies of the president, especially those referring to immigration programs..
This agreement was only published The catira, in 1955. This novel earned him the Critics Award for Castilian Narrative the following year, in addition to a large sum of money that he was able to invest in subsequent projects. That same year he also published the short novel The windmill.
In Mallorca he founded the magazine Roles of Son Armadans in 1956, together with fellow writer José Manuel Caballero Bonald. For this project they had the collaboration of writers and intellectuals such as Gregorio Marañón, Dámaso Alonso, Alonso Zamora Vicente José María Castellet, among many others..
Roles of Son Armadans It circulated until March 1979. It was characterized by including Spanish writers exiled by the dictatorship, such as Rafael Alberti, Manuel Altolaguirre and Luis Cernuda, among others..
Camilo published texts in different languages, including Basque and Catalan. Also plastic artists such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso and Antoni Tàpies each had a number dedicated to their work.
This magazine was published in 1962 Sheaf of loveless fables, Cela's short novel that was illustrated by Picasso. New editions of Trip to the Alcarria Y Pascual Duarte's family.
In 1964 he founded the Alfaguara publishing house, in which he published many of his works and many others by Spanish writers of the time. Currently the publisher is part of the Santillana group. That same year he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Syracuse, United States..
In 1969 he published Vespers, festivity and octave of San Camilo in 1936, in Madrid, known simply as Saint Camillus, 1936. This was another work of great relevance in his career, mainly due to his narrative. It was written as a long interior monologue.
In the 1970s, with the death of the Spanish head of government, Francisco Franco, and the end of the dictatorship, he returned to public office within the democratic transition. He was elected senator of the first democratic courts, since he held between 1977 and 1979.
Among its functions was the revision of the constitutional text drawn up by the Council of Deputies, in which Spanish was designated as the official language in Spain..
During these years he also headed the Spain-Israel Friendship Society, which was in charge of promoting cultural exchange and diplomatic relations between the two countries. He also continued with his literary work, with the publication of compilations of short stories and novels.
In 1980 he was elected a member of the Royal Galician Academy. Four years later, in 1984, he was awarded the National Narrative Prize in Spain for his novel Mazurka for two dead, one of the most important recognitions of this country.
In 1987 he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, a year earlier he had received the Sant Jordi Award. In 1988, one of the most commented texts of his maturity was published, the novel Christ versus Arizona, which narrated the armed confrontation of OK Corral, which occurred in the United States in 1881, through a long prayer without interruptions until its final point.
Finally, in 1989, after several years as a strong candidate for the award, the Swedish Academy honored him with the Nobel Prize in Literature for his rich career as a storyteller and poet..
That year he also separated from his first wife, María del Rosario Conde, from whom he officially divorced in 1990. In 1991 he married the journalist Marina Castaño López.
With the novel The cross of Saint Andrew, Cela obtained the Planeta Prize in 1994. The following year, the Ministry of Culture of her native country awarded her the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Spain..
On May 17, 1996, King Juan Carlos I granted him the noble title of Marqués de Iria Flavia, in recognition of his contribution to the Spanish language and culture. On this same date, Cela turned 80 years old.
On January 17, 2002, at the age of 85, he died in Madrid, as a result of pulmonary and heart complications. His body was transferred to Iria Flavia and veiled at the headquarters of the Galician Public Foundation Camilo José Cela. He was buried in the cemetery of Adina, in his place of birth.
His narrative style was eclectic and different in each of his works. In some of his early novels, such as Pascual Duarte's family Y Beehive, he used elements of naturalism. However, he also added rawness, eroticism and violence in a spontaneous way, both in the events and in the language.
The two novels mentioned, like many other stories by the author, are set in Spanish cities during the Civil War, immediately before or in the years that followed it..
Nothing is adorned or omitted in the description of the situations and characters. This narrative style is known by the name of "tremendismo", although the same author denied that his works were qualified with this term.
He also cultivated the experimental narrative in other stories such as Saint Camillus, 1936 Y Christ versus Arizona, with the deliberate omission of punctuation marks, the use of interior monologues and other devices, always using a crude and bitter lexicon.
As a poet he devoted himself to both the surrealist style and to the writing of romances with modernist influences. He was a voracious and analytical reader. In his facet as an essayist and literary critic, the carefree and scathing attitude that characterized him was reflected..
Camilo José Cela was an extremely prolific author, whose literary work exceeds one hundred publications in his lifetime. It has collections of poems, novels, various stories, story books, newspaper articles, essays, travel books, memoirs, plays for theater, lexicology books and a script for movies.
- Pascual Duarte's family (1942).
- Rest pavilion (1943).
- New adventures and misadventures of Lazarillo de Tormes (1944).
- Beehive (1951).
- Mrs Caldwell talks to her son (1953).
- La catira, Stories from Venezuela (1955).
- Hungry slide (1962).
- Saint Camillus, 1936 (1969).
- Office of Darkness 5 (1973).
- Mazurka for two dead (1983).
- Christ versus Arizona (1988).
- The murder of the loser (1994).
- The cross of Saint Andrew (1994).
- Boxwood (1999).
- Those passing clouds (1945).
- The beautiful crime of the carabinero and other inventions (1947).
- The Galician and his gang and other carpetovetonic notes (1949).
- Santa Balbina 37, gas on each floor (1951).
- Timothy the misunderstood (1952).
- Artists' café and other stories (1953).
- Deck of inventions (1953).
- Dreams and figurations (1954).
- The windmill and other short novels (1956).
- New altarpiece of Don Cristobita. Inventions, figurations and hallucinations (1957).
- Stories from Spain. The blind. The fools (1958).
- Old friends (1960).
- Sheaf of loveless fables (1962).
- The loner and the dreams of Quesada (1963).
- Hall bullfighting (1963).
- Eleven football stories (1963).
- Hoists, tailpipes and colipoterras. Drama accompanied by joking and heartache (1964).
- The hero's family (1964).
- New Matritenses scenes (1965).
- The citizen Iscariot Reclús (1965).
- The flock of pigeons (1970).
- The stain on the heart and eyes (1971).
- Five glosses and many other truths of the silhouette that a man drew about himself (1971).
- Ballad of the unlucky tramp (1973).
- The rusty tacatá (1974).
- After bath stories (1974).
- Cuckold role (1976).
- The unusual and glorious feat of Archidona's cipote (1977).
- The mirror and other stories (nineteen eighty one).
- The ears of the boy Raúl (1985).
- Vocation of delivery man (1985).
- Los Caprichos by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1989).
- The man and the sea (1990).
- Bullfighting (1991).
- Cachondeos, dances and other wiggles (1993).
- The chasm of the penultimate innocence (1993).
- The Pajara Lady and Other Stories (1994).
- Family histories (1999).
- El Espinar notebook. Twelve women with flowers on their heads (2002).
- Stepping in the dubious light of day (1945).
- The monastery and the words (1945).
- Songbook of the Alcarria (1948).
- Three Galician poems (1957).
- The true story of Gumersinda Costulluela, a girl who preferred death to disgrace (1959).
- Encarnación Toledano or the downfall of men (1959).
- Trip to U.S.A. or the one who follows her kills her (1965).
- Two blind romances (1966).
- Hourglass, sundial, blood clock (1989).
- Complete poetry (nineteen ninety six).
- Trip to the Alcarria (1948).
- Avila (1952).
- From Miño to Bidasoa (1952).
- Guadarrama notebook (1952).
- Wanderer in Castile (1955).
- Jews, Moors and Christians: Notes from a wandering through Ávila, Segovia and their lands (1956).
- Andalusian first trip (1959).
- Wandering geography pages (1965).
- Trip to the Pyrenees of Lleida (1965).
- Madrid. Camilo José Cela's street, maritime and country kaleidoscope for the Kingdom and Overseas (1966).
- Barcelona. Street, maritime and country kaleidoscope of Camilo José Cela for the Kingdom and Overseas (1970).
- New trip to La Alcarria (1986).
- Galicia (1990).
Some of his works, among these prolific facets, are:
- Turned table (1945).
- My favorite pages (1956).
- Tailor's drawer (1957).
- The literary work of the painter Solana (1957).
- Four figures from '98: Unamuno, Valle-Inclán, Baroja and Azorín (1961).
- Convenient companies and other pretenses and blinds (1963).
- Ten artists from the Mallorca school (1963).
- At the service of something (1969).
- The ball of the world. Everyday scenes (1972).
- Photographs per minute (1972).
- The vain dreams, the curious angels (1979).
- Communicating vessels (nineteen eighty one).
- Don Quixote reading (nineteen eighty one).
- The strawberry tree game (1983).
- Buridan's donkey (1986).
- Spanish conversations (1987).
- Chosen Pages (1991).
- From the dovecote of Hita (1991).
- The single chameleon (1992).
- The judgment egg (1993).
- To boat soon (1994).
- The color of the morning (nineteen ninety six).
He wrote a memoir entitled La cucaña, the first part of which was published in 1959 and the second in 1993. In addition, he is owed the script for the film El sótano (1949) and three plays: María Sabina (1967), Tribute to El Bosco, I (1969) and Tribute to El Bosco, II (1999).
He was also the author of a few dictionaries and lexicology books: Secret dictionary. Volume 1 (1968), Secret Dictionary. Volume 2 (1971), Encyclopedia of eroticism (1976) and Popular Gazetteer of Spain (1998).
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