Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes
Miguel Delibes is a novelist, essayist and academic whose works are amongst the most important published in Spain during the second half of the 20th century. While he travelled widely (even teaching in the USA), and covered an enormous variety of different areas, the subject matter to which he has always returned is his homeland of Castile and Leon - as he himself says: "I am as a tree, that grows where it was planted".

Early Years
Delibes was born in Valladolid in October 1920, the third of eight children (all boys) of academic Adolfo Delibes and Maria Setien. His childhood was curtailed when in 1938, at only 17, he was called up to fight in the Navy during the Civil War; and, like so many of his generation, the events that took place were to affect him profoundly.

After the war, Delibes returned to Valladolid to resume his studies and take up Law at the University. But the Law was unlikely to detain him from his true calling for long; by 1941 he had dropped the subject, gravitated to a more creative calling and become a writer for the newspaper 'El Norte de Castilla'.

First Works
Having been encouraged by his partner, Angeles de Castro, to dedicate himself to becoming a novelist, his first novel, The Shadow of the Cypress is Long (La Sombra del Cipres es Alargada), is published in 1947. It wins the Nadal Prize the following year - the first in a long string of awards he is to win.

During the 50s and early 60s, however, he continues to work in a journalistic capacity while also writing novels; The Road (El Camino, 1950) and The Red Leaf (La Hoja Roja, 1959) - a couple of his defining books - are published, while in 1963 he publishes The Rats (Las Ratas), a thinly veiled attack on the Francoist regime and a portrayal of the grim conditions in rural Castile.

Later Years
The next few years are to see a flurry of titles (and awards), and a branching out into the subjects of hunting and, during a secondment at the University of Maryland, travel writing. In 1973, he becomes a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language, as an acknowledgement of both his literary and academic achievements and the role he still has to play in Spanish letters.

But in 1974, Delibes's world is turned upside down with the death of his wife and guiding influence, Angeles. Eventually casting off the despair into which this crisis throws him, he throws himself back into his work with renewed vigour, and even makes the significant move into cinema and theatre with, respectively, The Innocent Saints (Los Santos Inocentes) and Five Hours with Mario (Cinco Horas con Mario).

The 80s and early 90s are studded with prizes and acknowledgement of the importance of his life and works, culminating in being awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most important literary award in the Spanish-speaking world. His later years, are far from unproductive, however. In 1998, at the age of 78, The Heretic (El Hereje) is published; set in 16th century Valladolid, many consider it to be his greatest work.