Francisco Umbral


Francisco Alejandro Pérez Martínez, better known as Francisco Umbral, was a Spanish journalist, novelist, biographer and essayist.

Style

Although he was born in Madrid, a city that has inspired most of his work, his early years were spent in Valladolid. His mother travelled to Madrid for his birth, because he was an illegitimate child. His mother's indifference and distance from him left him with an enduring sadness, as did the death of his only son at the age of six, which caused him to write his saddest and most personal book, Mortal y rosa. This fostered a characteristic bitter and stiff outlook in the author, devoid of hopefulness, absolutely submerged in literature, which has provoked many controversies and hostilities.
In Valladolid, he began his journalistic career at El Norte de Castilla, under the tutorship of Miguel Delibes. In 1961, he went to Madrid as a correspondent for said newspaper and quickly became a prestigious reporter and columnist in magazines such as La Estafeta Literaria, Mundo Hispánico and Interviú, and in influential newspapers such as Ya and ABC, although he is best known for his writings for the daily newspapers El País and El Mundo.
At El País, he was one of the reporters who was best able to describe the countercultural movement known as La Movida, but his literary quality undoubtedly came from his creative fecundity, his linguistic sensibility and the extreme originality of his style: very careful and complex, creative in its syntax, very metaphorically developed and flexible, abundant in neologisms and intertextual allusions; in sum, of a demanding lyric and aesthetic quality. He exercised a type of anti-bourgeois criticism of customs and manners, without renouncing the most intensely romantic ego, and, in the words of Novalis, having the intent of giving the dignity of the unknown to everyday life, impregnating it with a desolate tenderness. As a political reporter, Umbral was a highly trenchant writer. Having become a successful journalist and writer, he worked with Spain's most varied and influential magazines and newspapers. Among the many published volumes of his articles, the following stand out:
  • Diario de un snob
  • Spleen de Madrid
  • España cañí
  • Iba yo a comprar el pan
  • Los políticos
  • Crónicas postfranquistas
  • Las Jais
  • Spleen de Madrid-2
  • España como invento
  • La belleza convulsa
  • Memorias de un hijo del siglo
  • Mis placeres y mis días.
Among non-readers, he is remembered by an appearance in Mercedes Milá's TV program Queremos saber in Antena 3 TV. After some conversation, Umbral interrupted the conversation claiming that he had come to talk about his then latest book, La década roja, not to entertain the presenter.

Work

Narratives

Highlights of his very extensive narrative production, in which autobiographical aspects stand out, include:
  • Tamouré
  • Balada de gamberros
  • Travesía de Madrid
  • Las vírgenes
  • Si hubiéramos sabido que el amor era eso
  • El Giocondo about the homosexual milieu of Madrid
  • Las europeas
  • Memorias de un niño de derechas
  • Los males sagrados
  • Mortal y rosa
  • Las ninfas
  • Los amores diurnos
  • Los helechos arborescentes
  • La bestia rosa
  • Los ángeles custodios
  • Las ánimas del purgatorio,
  • Trilogía de Madrid
  • Pío XII, escolta mora y un general sin un ojo
  • Nada en el domingo
  • El día en que violé a Alma Mahler
  • El fulgor de África
  • Y Tierno Galván ascendió a los cielos
  • Leyenda del César Visionario, Madrid, 1940
  • Las señoritas de Aviñón
  • Madrid 1950, Capital del dolor
  • La forja de un ladrón
  • Historias de amor y Viagra
In 1985, Umbral began a series of novels about the most important events in the history of twentieth-century Spain, after the fashion of the Episodios nacionales of Benito Pérez Galdós for the nineteenth century.

Essays

He also wrote a set of very personal essays, under such titles as:
  • La escritura perpetua *
  • Las palabras de la tribu
  • Diccionario de literatura
  • Madrid, tribu urbana
  • Los alucinados
  • Cela: un cadáver exquisito
  • ¿Y cómo eran las ligas de Madame Bovary?.
His preoccupation with slang is shown by:
  • Diccionario para pobres
  • Diccionario cheli
  • Las palabras de la tribu.

Biographies and autobiographies

He also published biographical and literary essays presenting original views about classical authors of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as:
  • Larra, anatomía de un dandy
  • Lorca, poeta maldito
  • Ramón y las vanguardias
  • Valle-Inclán: los botines blancos de piqué
Other biographies are more revealing:
Although autobiography is also present throughout his journalistic work, several of his works are explicitly autobiographical:

Honours and awards