Pedro Simón: what you should know about this author and books written

Have you read any of Pedro Simón's books? Do you know this author? If you have not read any of his books, or if, on the contrary, you do know him and have read his books, then we will talk about him.

You will know all the data that we have collected from this journalist and writer, not only from his literary life, but also professionally and somewhat personally. And, of course, the books you've written. Find out more about him.

Who is Pedro Simon?

The first thing you should know is that Pedro Simón is a journalist and writer (as we have told you before). He was born in Madrid in 1971, where he currently resides. He currently works at El Mundo, where you can find several articles of his authorship (He usually publishes between one and two articles a week). In fact, for that work she has managed to win the Ortega y Gasset of 2015 (for the series of reports he published in the newspaper entitled "La España del despilfarro") as well as the Award for Best Journalist of the Year from the APM in 2016.

In addition, was a finalist in the Gabo Foundation Awards in 2020 while, a year later, he won the King of Spain Prize for Journalism.

At the literary level we have the first book he published, Life, a slalom, in 2006, by the publishing house La Esfera de los Libros. In fact, he repeated with this editorial on two more occasions, with Memoirs of Alzheimer's and with Danger of Collapse. The first is an essay while the second is a novel itself.

What books has Pedro Simón written?

If Pedro Simón catches your eye right now, How about we tell you about the books he's written? In addition to the ones we have mentioned, it has some more. Until 2022, she has published a total of six books, of which we will comment below:

Life, a slalom

It was the first book that Pedro Simón wrote, although it is still something like a biography of Paco Fernández Ochoa. We leave you the synopsis:

«Life, a slalom reflects the physical and mental state of Paco Fernández Ochoa and his thoughts in the fall of 2006. Several weeks of recorded tapes, among a hill of Marlboro cartons, unspeakable confidences, memorable laughs, moments of lots of laughter, and gray days in which the sick man's thick pain could almost be cut with a knife.

«Each dawn is not one day less; each sunrise is another day”, Paco used to say. «One more day to be with your loved ones, chatting, enjoying what you can. We are sick and healing does not depend on one. Why not think that it will work out? And if not, then we will have to die. But not losing your life.

It dawned on November 6, Paco passed away and could not read the pages of his book. He did not die until that day; other cancer patients, poisoned by sorrow, are doing it while they are alive. "The one who gets scared, the one who sees everything black, the one who gets depressed, that one is already dying," he repeated. This work that encloses the smile of Pacotherapy is directed to them.

The book can be seen as a tribute to one of the men who has been best known in Spain and who has achieved the most for his country.

Alzheimer's memories

The second book, one of the ones that gave him the most notoriety, was actually an essay that he carried out to raise awareness of Alzheimer's, not at a health level, but the feelings and what can cause forgetting life. that has been lived and all the memories that are part of those people.

Its synopsis is quite shocking, that's why we leave it below.

«Alzheimer's is the ice pack that Pasqual Maragall did not know where to keep. The fried egg that made Mary Carrillo laugh. The International that did not sound familiar to Jordi Solé Tura. The nurse whom Eduardo Chillida confused with Dulcinea. The "who is Mariam" by Adolfo Suárez. The Istanbul of Tomás Zori. Leo Hernandez's chainsaw. Around the world by Navalmoral de Béjar from Carlos Boyero's aunt. The offside of the footballer Antonio Puchades. The silence of Enrique Fuentes Quintana. The Paris of Elena Borbón Barucci. Carmen Conde's blue tracksuit. Singing in the rain three times a day by Antonio Mercero.

Memories of Alzheimer's cannot be eaten, but its lines are worth as a pharmacopoeia against an illness without a cure, a disease that has 800.000 Spaniards rocking in the amniotic fluid of oblivion and countless relatives clinging to a photo album ».

Total sinister

In this case the book is based on the experiences that the victims of the economic crisis had. It is an anthology that Pedro Simón published in El Mundo and that he compiled in this book. One of those reports, “La España del despilfarro” earned him the Ortega y Gasset Prize, awarded by El País to the best journalistic works written in Spanish.

“Between 2012 and 2015, Pedro Simón toured Spain to document the effects of the economic crisis on the ground and collect the testimony of the victims. He published, in the newspaper 'El Mundo', the seven series included in this volume».

collapse hazard

Collapse danger is one of the first novels, properly speaking, by Pedro Simón. In it we find an addictive story that will keep you glued to the pages of this novel. Of course, there are many characters so reading has to be somewhat slow in order to get to know the characters in depth, at least at first.

“A lousy job offer, a maddening waiting room, an HR director given over to sadism and entomology, and nine people desperately seeking a job with the stubbornness of a bug.

That is the starting point of Danger of Collapse, a polyhedral novel in which the author traces a stark etching of the crisis, the epic (if that is possible) of tangled and broken lives, like the branches of a tree rotten by woodworm and that should be cut down.

The mother who sells her watch and also her most intimate time. The university student who can't find a job or reasons to keep looking. The insomniac who committed a betrayal. The cleaning worker who is embarrassed by her smell. The businessman who used to be scary and now is disgusting. The formworker who hides his hands… In this waiting room, everyone is on the same boat. They all do it without a compass. And they're all headed down the same cliff."

Barbarian chronicles

«Pedro Simón gathers in this book reports where the guiding thread is compassion, the open wound, human journalism.

A 73-year-old junkie, the man who died live, the widow who met her husband's murderer and other stories from a Spain where you eat or are eaten.

Because There are pains that cannot be counted with words. And that they need a whole book ».

Once again, this is an anthology of reports with a common link that gave rise to the publication of a new book.

the ungrateful

"An exciting family and sentimental chronicle. The portrait of a country that looked to the future and forgot to thank the generation that made it possible.

«They prayed to us that my bed had four little corners and that four little angels guarded it for us, but my bed had at least five. And one of them was a country lady who clicked when she gave you a kiss ».

1975. The new teacher arrives with her children to a town in that Spain that is beginning to empty.. The smallest is David. The child's life consists of going to the threshing floor, skinning his knees, leaning out of a well without a curb and traveling closing his eyes in the grocery store. Until a caregiver comes home and their lives will change forever. From Emerita, David will learn everything there is to know about the scars of the body and the wounds of the soul. Thanks to the boy, she will recover something that she thought she had lost long ago.

The ungrateful is an exciting novel about a generation that lived in that Spain where people traveled without seat belts in a Simca and food was not thrown away because it had not been so long since they had gone hungry. A tribute, between tenderness and guilt, to those who accompanied us here without asking for anything in return.

A nostalgic novel that, if you are over 40-50 years old, will surely remind you of the childhood you have lived.

The misunderstood

This novel is the last one the author has published, in 2022 (so it is possible that a new one will appear soon). Cover very similar to the previous one, the plot continues with that nostalgia that we mentioned and where it deals with a topic that never goes out of style: communication between parents and adolescents.

«A memorable expedition to the heart of a family.

«We are that generation that in its childhood left the best place at the table for the father and now leaves it to the son. That's what we are," says Javier, the father.

"Adolescence can be hell. Enough with the sky of others. It is enough that you imagine them happier and more handsome than you and without the knot that you feel inside”, says Inés, the daughter.

Javier and Celia are a middle-class couple with a young son and a pre-adolescent daughter. He works in a publishing house and she in a hospital; he fixes fake lives and she fixes real lives. They try to prosper, they move to a better neighborhood, everyday life. It could be the story of many. Until an excursion to the Pyrenees takes place that changes absolutely everything.

This is the story of a journey into the abyss that speaks of many other journeys. The journey from childhood to troubled adolescence. The one that goes from childish merriment to the most sepulchral silence. The one with the parents who walk behind with his guilt and are late. The one of the grandparents who went before and to whom nobody listens. What someone does to save a life. It is also the story of that other journey that we are all afraid of: the one that speaks of our darkest and most secret past.

Los incomprendidos is a novel about family loneliness, the lack of communication between parents and children, the horror of saying, but also, and from the first page, about hope».

Now it's your turn, Did you know Pedro Simón? What book have you read by him?