Biography of Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes placeholder image was a well-known Spanish writer who was born in 1920 in the Castilian town of Valladolid. Solidly trained and with two careers behind him such as Law and Commerce, Delibes held important positions in the press, becoming director of the newspaper El Norte de Castilla where he began to publish.

Delibes was a man whose hobbies were well known to all and among which we find the hunting and football. The hunt appears in many of his novels, highlighting the great work "Los Santos inocentes", which was later taken exceptionally to the cinema with a great performance by Paco Rabal in the role of Azarías and football was the subject of various articles in the that the author gave literary form to the sensations that the beautiful sport left him.

The distinctions were something very common for Delibes, who was named a member of the Royal Academy in 1973 and who has received countless awards, including the National Literature Award, the Critics Award, the National Literature Award, the Prince of Asturias or the Cervantes.

Finally and at the age of 89 Delibes died in 2010 in Valladolid, city that had seen him born.

Books by Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes was a prolific man when it came to writing. The best known of the author are novels, the first of them being "The shadow of the cypress is elongated", which received an award. However, although he published novels from 1948, the truth is that He also published several stories, travel and hunting books, essays, and articles. Some are better known than others, but almost all of them go unnoticed for the sake of their novels.

One of the characteristics of Miguel Delibes pen it is undoubtedly the skill he has to build the characters. These are solid and perfectly credible, which makes the reader empathize with them from the beginning. In addition, being a very observant writer, he could be able to recreate what he had seen by shaping it to his liking without losing the realism with which he infused his works.

Among the best known books of the author we can highlight:

• The shadow of the cypress is elongated (1948, Nadal Prize 1947)

• The road (1950)

• My idolized son Sisi (1953)

• Diary of a hunter (1955, National Prize for Literature)

• The Rats (1962, Critics Award)

• The dethroned prince (1973)

• The holy innocents (1981)

• Love letters from a voluptuous sexagenarian (1983)

• Lady in Red on a Gray Background (1991)

• The heretic (1998, National Prize for Literature)

In addition, separate mention should be the books A novelist discovers America (1956); The hunt for Spain (1972); Adventures, fortunes and misadventures of a hunter on tail (1979); Castilla, the Castilian and the Castilians (1979); Spain 1939-1950: Death and resurrection of the novel (2004).

Awards

Throughout his career as a writer, Miguel Delibes has received multiple awards and recognitions in his works, as well as for him. The first one they gave him was in 1948 for his novel "The cypress shade is elongated". It was the Nadal Prize that made him become better known and his books attracted attention.

A few years later, in 1955, he won the National Narrative Prize, not precisely for a novel, but for "Diary of a hunter", a genre that he also played in several years of his life.

The 1957 Fastenrath Prize, related to the Royal Spanish Academy, he received for another of his books, "Naps with a south wind."

These three awards were very important to his career. However, it was not until 25 years later that he managed to win a new prize, the Prince of Asturias de las Letras, awarded to Miguel Delibes in 1982.

From that date, the prizes and recognitions were followed practically one a year. Thus, he obtained the Doctor honoris causa from the University of Valladolid in 1983; in 1985 he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; He was Favorite Son in Valladolid in 1986 and Doctor honoris causa by the Complutense University of Madrid (in 1987), of the University of Sarre (in 1990), of the University of Alcalá de Henares (in 1996), and of the University of Salamanca (in 2008); as well as adopted son of Molledo, in Cantabria, in 2009.

As for awards, some are noteworthy, such as the City of Barcelona Award (for his book, Wood of a Hero); the National Prize for Spanish Letters (1991); the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1993); the National Narrative Prize for El hereje (1999; or the Vocento Prize for Human Values ​​(2006).

The adaptations of Delibes's books for film and television

Thanks to the success of Miguel Delibes' books, many began to look at them to adapt them to film and television.

The first adaptation of one of his works was for the cinema, with his novel El camino (written in 1950) and adapted into a film in 1963. It is the only work that has also been adapted, a few years later, in 1978, into a series of television composed of five chapters.

Starting in 1976, Delibes's works became a muse for film adaptations, being able to see the books in real image My idolized son Sisi, which was named in the film Family Portrait; The dethroned prince, with Daddy's war; or one of his biggest hits, The holy innocents, for which Alfredo Landa himself and Francisco Rabal won the award for best male performance at Cannes.

The last of the adapted works was Diary of a retiree in the film A Perfect Couple (1997) with Antonio Resines, Mabel Lozano ...

Curiosities of Miguel Delibes

One of the curiosities of Miguel Delibes that you can visit if you walk through Valladolid is that, in the same house where he was born, on Recoletos street, which still exists, there is a plaque with a phrase from the writer that says: "I am like a tree that grows where it is planted", which is interpreted that it did not matter where he was in the world, he managed to adapt and flourish with his art.

His artistic career began making cartoons, not writing. The first cartoons are from the newspaper "El Norte de Castilla", a job he got thanks to studying at the School of Arts and Crafts. However, at that time the newspaper was very small and all hands were used to do other jobs. For this reason, shortly afterwards he demonstrated the literary quality that he possessed and began to write in it. To the point that, after a time, he was the director of the newspaper, although he had to resign during the Franco era due to the pressure they exerted on him.

In fact, although he abandoned journalism for his role as a writer, once the Franco era was over, the newspaper "El País" offered him to be the director and they even tempted him with one of his greatest vices: a private hunting ground near Madrid. Delibes rejected him because he did not want to move from his Valladolid.

Something striking is the way he started writing books. Many know that his true muse was his wife, Ángeles de Castro. What perhaps has not been related so much is that, the first years of the writer, he had an average of one book a year. But also have a child a year.

One of the most important phrases of the author is, without a doubt: "A people without literature is a mute people."

Miguel Delibes married his wife in 1946. However, she died in 1974, leaving the author plunged into a great depression that caused his books to begin to be more spaced out in time. Delibes has always been considered a melancholic, sad, sullen man ... and part of that humor was due to the loss of his great love and muse.