Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio is a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 writer. His father Rafael Sánchez Mazas

Rafael Sánchez Mazas

Rafael Sánchez Mazas was a Spanish nationalist writer and a leader of the Falange, a right-wing political movement created in Spain before the Spanish Civil War....

, a minor writer himself, was a founder and leader of Falange

Falange

The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....

.

Sánchez Ferlosio won the Nadal Award

Premio Nadal

Premio Nadal is a Spanish literary prize awarded annually by the publishing house Ediciones Destino, part of Planeta. It has been awarded every year on January 6 since 1944...

 for his novel El Jarama, a realistic description of a weekend party turned awkward. He contributed to the awakening of Spanish literature

Spanish literature

Spanish literature generally refers to literature written in the Spanish language within the territory that presently constitutes the state of Spain...

 after the end of the Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

, working with young writers such as Juan Goytisolo

Juan Goytisolo

Juan Goytisolo is a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist. He currently lives in a voluntary self-exile in Marrakech.-Background:Juan Goytisolo was born to an aristocratic family...

 or Ana Maria Matute

Ana María Matute

Ana María Matute is an internationally acclaimed Spanish author. She is one of the strongest voices from the posguerra, or period immediately following the Spanish Civil War...

.

But after the success of his first book, he renounced writing for twenty years. He never expressed the reasons of his silence, but for many critics it was a form of silent opposition to Franco's

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

 dictatorship.

He came back to literature with essays on cultural issues. He only came back to fiction in 1986 with a strange book, El testimonio de Yarfoz, set in an imaginary land

Fictional country

A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof....

. In 2004 he was awarded the Premio Cervantes for his literary oeuvre.

Works

• Industrias y andanzas de Alfanhuí (1951)
• El Jarama (1955)
• Las semanas del jardín (1974)
• Mientras no cambien los dioses, nada ha cambiado (1986)
• El testimonio de Yarfoz (1986)
• Vendrán más años malos y nos harán más ciegos (1992)
• Non Olet (2002)
• El Geco (2005)
• Sobre la guerra (2007)
• God & Gun. Apuntes de polemología (2008)
• Guapo y sus isótopos (2009)