Camilo José Cela: Man of letters and firm expression (+seeding)

Published at: 17/01/2026 08:12 AM

On January 17, 2022, Camilo José Cela, a Spanish writer who excelled as a prose writer in the genres of the novel, the short story and the travel book, died.

He was born on May 11, 1916. From a very young age, he loved poetry and in 1942 he achieved sudden notoriety with the novel The Family by Pascual Duarte, one of the few outstanding works of the decade.

In 1951 he published his most famous novel, La Colmena, an overview of Madrid's life around 1942 in the depressive post-war environment.

Other of her works include: They are later Mrs. Cadwell talks to his son (1953), a novel in epistolary form that contains a confession on the frontiers of delirium; and La Catira (1955), whose action takes place in Venezuela; the short story collections The Windmill (1956), Tobogán de Hambrientos (1962), Garito de Hospicianos (1963) and El Ciudadano Iscariote Reclús (1965), and travel books such as Del Miño a Bidasoa (1952), Jews, Moors and Christians ( 1956) and Journey to the Pyrenees of Lérida (1965), as published on the Biographies And Lives Portal .

In the following years he continued to publish frequently. His novels Mazurca for the Dead (1983) and Christ versus Arizona (1988) stand out from this period.

Already established as one of the great writers of the century, during the last two decades of his life, tributes, awards and the most diverse awards followed one another. These include the Prince of Asturias for Literature (1987), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1989) and El Miguel de Cervantes (1995). In 1996, on his eightieth birthday, King Juan Carlos I awarded him the title of Marquis of Iria Flavia.

Mazo News Team