Camilo José Cela

Camilo Jose Cela Trulock (Iria Flavia, A Coruña, 11 May 1916 – Madrid, 17 January 2002). Spanish writer and scholar. Nobel Prize winner in Literature.
In 1925 his family moves to Madrid. Before finishing his post-secondary studies, he fell ill and was admitted to the sanatorium of Guadarrama (Madrid) during 1931 and 1932, where he devoted himself to reading.

In 1934 he was accepted into the University Complutense in Madrid to study medicine. Nevertheless, he soon started attending lectures as an unregistered student in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, where the poet Pedro Salinas lectured in Contemporary Literature. Cela showed him his first poems and received his encouragement and advice. This meeting was key for the young Cela, who decided to be a writer. In college he met Alonso Zamora Vicente, Maria Zambrano and Miguel Hernández and through them came into contact with other intellectuals of Madrid at that time. In the middle of the civil war, he finished his first work, the collection of poems Pisando la dudosa luz del día.

In 1940 he started to study law and that year his first works were published. His first major work, La familia de Pascual Duarte, was published two years later. In spite of his success, he had problems with the church, having its second edition banned (It was finally published in Buenos Aires). Shortly after, Cela abandoned his law studies to devote to writing professionally.

In 1944 he started to write La colmena. Later, he produced two exhibitions with his paintings and in 1946 Journey to the Alcarria and The Alcarria Songbook were published. In 1951, La colmena was published in Buenos Aires and was immediately banned in Spain.
In 1954, he moved to the island of Mallorca, where he spent a good part of his life. In 1957 he was appointed a member of the Spanish Royal Academy and given Seat Q.

During the Spanish transition to democracy, he carried out an important role in public life being nominated by the king to sit in the Senate after the dictatorship. Thus, he took part in the revision of the Spanish constitution drafted by the congress.

In the following years, he kept publishing frequently. Two novels stand out from this period: Mazurca para dos muertos and Cristo versus Arizona. Renowned as one of the great writers of the 20th century, in the last two decades of his life he received many awards and prizes. Among these, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts (1987), the Nobel Prize in Literature (1989), the Cervantes Award for Literature (1995). In 1996, on his 80th birthday. the king Juan Carlos I gave him the title of Marquis of Iria Flavia