Torrente Ballester, Gonzalo

▪ 2000

      Spanish writer and literary critic (b. June 13, 1910, Serantes, near El Ferrol, Spain—d. Jan. 27, 1999, Salamanca, Spain), was inducted into the Real Academia Española in 1977, was honoured in 1981 with Spain's National Prize for Literature, and was awarded the Cervantes Prize for literature in 1985; lauded in later years as a literary master, he created dynamic novels that were steeped in irony and supernatural events and that featured both gritty and picturesque Galician settings. While a student in Madrid, Torrente wrote for La Tierra, an anarchist newspaper, but in 1937, a year after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he joined the fascist Falange. His first novel, Javier Mariño (1943), was censored by the Franco government. Torrente gained respect as a literary historian with his critical works Panorama de la literatura española contemporánea (1956) and Teatro español contemporáneo (1957, 2nd ed. 1968). Between 1958 and 1962 he published the trilogy Los gozos y las sombras, the saga of a family struggling against political tyranny; these books were adapted as a television series in the 1980s. Another novel, Don Juan (1963), which was Torrente's personal favourite, was largely ignored by critics because of his public opposition to government policies. After Torrente returned from a professorship at the State University of New York at Albany, he published La saga/fuga de J.B. (1972), a work that brought him popular renown, as did the screen adaptation of his Crónica del rey pasmado (1989), which was directed by Imanol Uribe. Because Torrente's means were limited and his family large (11 children from two marriages), he taught high school and wrote prodigiously, crafting 25 novels, in order to maintain an income. His perspective on life, and his work, oscillated between rationalism and intellect on the one hand and myth and imagination on the other. He found inspiration in his Galician roots, and his creativity was sharpened by the superstitious family members who had helped to shape his childhood.

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