Juan García Hortelano (14 February 1928 – 3 April 1992) was a Spanish writer. He was born in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Valentine's Day Valentine's Day, also called Saint Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, thr ...

1928. His father was a doctor. When the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlism, Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebeli ...

broke out, he was sent with his siblings to Cuenca, only returning to Madrid in 1937 where he lived with his maternal grandparents. The libraries at school and home turned him into an avid reader. Following the war, he entered college in 1941, later studying law at Madrid University. He joined the

Civil Service The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

in 1953. Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to writing with fervour and discipline without abandoning his administrative job in Madrid. He cultivated friendships with writers and intellectuals of his generation:

Juan Benet Juan Benet (7 October 1927 – 5 January 1993) was a Spanish novelist, dramatist and essayist who also worked as a civil engineer. Early life Benet was born in Madrid. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, his father was killed, and he left fo ...

Carlos Barral Carlos Barral i Agesta (1928–1989) was a Spanish poet, considered (along with Jaime Gil de Biedma) to be one of the greatest poets of the so-called generation of the 1950s. He helped to establish the Formentor Group and their literary awards t ...

Jaime Gil de Biedma Jaime Gil de Biedma y Alba (13 November 1929 – 8 January 1990) was a Spanish post-Civil War poet. He was born in Nava de la Asunción on 13 November 1929. He stopped writing poetry some ten years before his death. He insisted that the charac ...

Juan Marsé Juan Marsé Carbó (8 January 1933 – 18 July 2020) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, and screenwriter who used Spanish as his literary language. In 2008, he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, "the Spanish-language equivalent" to the Nobel P ...

and Ángel González. He won the

Premio Biblioteca Breve The Premio Biblioteca Breve is a literary award given annually by the publisher Seix Barral (now part of Grupo Planeta) to an unpublished novel in the Spanish language. Its prize is €30,000 and publication of the winning work. It is delivered in ...

in 1959 for his novel ''Nuevas amistades'', followed by the Prix Formentor for ''Tormenta de verano'' (translated into English by Ilsa Barea as ''Summer Storm''.) His work belongs to the social realist movement pursued by some Spanish writers of the 1950s. His 1972 book ''El gran momento de Mary Tribune'' became his biggest commercial success. His work has been translated in a dozen languages and he also translated

Boris Vian Boris Vian (; 10 March 1920 – 23 June 1959) was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer who is primarily remembered for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sull ...

, Celine, and Robert Walser into Spanish. He died in Madrid in April 1992.Bio
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Garcia Hortelano, Juan Spanish male novelists 1928 births 1992 deaths Complutense University of Madrid alumni