Miguel Delibes Setién (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɣel deˈliβes]; 17 October 1920 – 12 March 2010) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor associated with the Generation of '36 movement. From 1975 until his death, he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, where he occupied letter "e" seat. Educated in commerce, he began his career as a cartoonist and columnist. He later became the editor for the regional newspaper El Norte de Castilla before gradually devoting himself exclusively to writing novels.
He was a connoisseur of the flora and fauna of Castile and was passionate about hunting and the countryside. These were common themes in his writing, and he often wrote from the perspective of a city-dweller who remained connected with the rural world.
He was one of the leading figures of post-Civil War Spanish literature, winning numerous literary prizes. Several of his works have been adapted into plays or have been turned into films, winning awards at the Cannes Film Festival among others. He has been ranked with Heinrich Böll and Graham Greene as one of the most prominent Catholic writers of the second half of the twentieth century. He was deeply affected by the death of his wife in 1974. In 1998 he was diagnosed with colon cancer, from which he never fully recovered. He died in 2010.
Miguel Delibes was born in Valladolid on 17 October 1920, the third of eight children from the marriage between María Setién and Adolfo Delibes. His father was born and died in the Cantabrian town Molledo, where Miguel spent many summers. The writer was named an adopted son of Valladolid in 2009. The name Delibes was of French origin and came from Toulouse. Miguel's grandfather was the brother of the French composer Léo Delibes, and had moved to Spain to participate in the construction of the railway in Cantabria. His father was a law professor at the Valladolid Business School. Miguel attended the College of Our Lady of Lourdes in Valladolid. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he enlisted in the Navy on the Nationalist side in 1938. He served on the cruiser Canarias, which operated in the Mallorcan region. At the end of the war in 1939, he returned to his home town, where he studied commerce and law. He then enrolled at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios (School of Arts and Crafts) of Valladolid, where he honed his artistic skills. In 1941 he secured a job as a cartoonist with the leading newspaper of Valladolid, El Norte de Castilla.
On April 23, 1946, he married Ángeles de Castro, who later became one of his greatest literary inspirations. They spent their honeymoon in Molledo, Cantabria.
After his marriage, Delibes' literary career really started to take off, beginning a three-year period that defined his career. In 1947 he began writing his first novel, La sombra del ciprés es alargada (The cypress casts a long shadow), which won the Premio Nadal the following year, marking his emergence on the Spanish literary scene. His novel Aún es de día (It is still daytime) was published, heavily censored, in 1948.
His family grew during this same period. His son Miguel, who would later become a famous biologist, was born in 1947. His daughter Ángeles, who would also become a renowned biologist and researcher, was born the following year, and in 1949 his third child, Germán, was born.
In 1950, a new stage in the writer's literary career commenced. After suffering a bout of tuberculosis, he published El camino (The road), his third novel. The novel tells the discovery of life and the experiences of a boy who moves from the countryside to the city. The work constituted his final consecration in the Spanish post-war narrative. That year saw the birth of his daughter Elisa, who later became a graduate of Hispanic and French Studies.
In 1952, he was appointed deputy director of the newspaper El Norte de Castilla, and his battles with censorship became increasingly direct and frequent. The writer entered a new phase in his life in which he would publish a new work virtually every year, namely: Mi idolatrado hijo Sisí (My adored son Sissi) 1953, La partida (The departure) 1954, Diario de un cazador (Diary of a hunter) 1955 –Premio Nacional de Narrativa–, Un novelista descubre América (A novelist discovers America) 1956, Siestas con viento sur (Siestas with southern wind) 1957 –Fastenrath Award–, Diario de un emigrante (Diary of an emigrant) 1958, and La hoja roja (The red leaf), 1959. This last novel was existentialist in content and deals with a photographer who recalls his life on the brink of his retirement. In 1956, his son Juan Delibes was born. He would become a biologist like his siblings and fan of hunting and fishing like his father. In 1958, the writer was appointed director of El Norte de Castilla.
The 1960s represented the heyday of Delibes' literary career. The period was marked by the birth of his sixth son, Adolfo (later a graduate in biology) and a visit to Germany, where he visited several universities. The literary period opened with the publication of Viejas historias de Castilla la Vieja (Old Tales of Old Castile) in 1960, and Por esos mundos (In these worlds) in 1961. In 1962, Delibes published Las ratas (The Rats), one of his masterpieces. It constructs a story from a series of autobiographical anecdotes which evoke the rural environment of a Castilian village that has disappeared. The book won the Premio de la Crítica (Critics Award for Castilian fiction). In the same year Camino, the last of his seven children, would be born. Camino later graduated in Philosophy and Letters. Also in that year, the film version of El camino, directed by Ana Mariscal, was shot. 1963 was a turbulent year: Delibes resigned on June 8 as director of El Norte de Castilla after several disagreements with Manuel Fraga, Minister of Information and Tourism. In 1964, he spent six months in the United States as a visiting professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature of the University of Maryland. After his return, he wrote and published Cinco horas con Mario (Five Hours with Mario), which is considered his masterpiece. The novel is the monologue of a woman who holds a wake for her late husband while she recounts the memories of him. Other books published upon his return from the US included USA y yo (The United States and I) and La milana. In the following years he visited Czechoslovakia and published Parábola del náufrago (literally: The Parable of the Castaway, translated into English as The Hedge by Frances M. Lopez-Morillas). Later in the 1970s, he followed up with several books about hunting, an activity about which he was passionate, and stories. Subsequently, he published Un año de mi vida (A Year of my Life), a personal diary.
On 1 February 1973, Miguel Delibes was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy, occupying chair "e", which was left vacant after the death of Julio Guillén. That same year, in December, he was also elected to the Hispanic Society of America. Before the end of the year, he published El príncipe destronado (The dethroned prince), his eleventh novel. On 22 November 1974 his wife, Angela de Castro, died at the age of 50. Her death profoundly marked the writer for the rest of his life.
Finally, on 25 May 1975, he delivered his inaugural address to the Royal Spanish Academy. Damaso Alonso, one of the leading members of the Generation of '27 and then president of the Royal Spanish Academy handed the academic medal to Miguel Delibes His induction speech, which dealt with The meaning of progress from my work, which he later edited into a book entitled Un mundo que agoniza (A world that is agonizing). That same year, his twelfth novel Las guerras de nuestros antepasados (The Wars of our Ancestors) saw the light. In the next three years, he published several books on hunting and his only book about fishing, Mis amigas las truchas (My Friends the Trout). This time period closed with the publication of El disputado voto del señor Cayo (The Disputed Vote of Mr. Cayo), his thirteenth novel. In 1979, the stage adaptation of Five Hours with Mario premiered in Spain starring the leading actress of Valladolid, Lola Herrera. Due to its success, the play was revived several times. That year, he released Castilla, lo castellano, los castellanos (Castile, Castilian Culture, the Castilians), a narrative anthology.