Miguel Delibes

Miguel Delibes, (b. Oct. 17, 1920, Valladolid, Spain—d. March 12, 2010, Valladolid), Spanish novelist, essayist, and journalist who wrote widely of travel, the outdoors, sport, and his native Valladolid. His realist fiction is best known for its critical analysis of 20th-century Spanish society.

Delibes was the third of eight sons born to a schoolteacher and a government administrator. As a boy, he developed a love of sport and the outdoors. At 17 he enlisted in the Spanish navy, hoping to avoid infantry combat in the Spanish Civil War. The war, however, would affect him powerfully and figure in his later writings. Following his military service, Delibes returned home, where he studied commerce and law at the University of Valladolid. He was also hired as a caricaturist for the Valladolid newspaper El Norte de Castilla (“The North of Castile”). His future wife, Ángeles de Castro, encouraged Delibes to pursue his love of literature, and he finished his first novel, La sombra del ciprés es alargada (“The Shadow of the Cypress Is Extended”), in 1948. Delibes became director of El Norte de Castilla in 1958, but his advocacy for Castilian causes in the face of government censorship brought about his resignation in 1963. The plight of Castile also informed his novel Las ratas (1962; “The Rats”; Eng. trans. Smoke on the Ground).

From the 1950s onward Delibes published widely. Major titles include El camino (1950; The Path), La hoja roja (1959; “The Red Leaf”), Cinco horas con Mario (1966; Five Hours with Mario), Las guerras de nuestros antepasados (1975; The Wars of Our Ancestors), and El hereje (1998; The Heretic). Delibes suffered years of depression following his wife’s death in 1974. Nearly two decades later she would form the dominant figure of his novel Señora de rojo sobre fondo gris (1991; “Lady in Red on a Gray Background”). Many of Delibes’s works were adapted for screen and stage, and he collected numerous awards, including the Cervantes Prize in 1993.