Carmen Naranjo |
Madrid (EFE).- More than 40 books published, a hundred countries visited, sexual controversies, Eastern philosophies and a search for eternal youth leave the writer Fernando Sánchez-Dragó, who was proud to disagree with almost everyone world.
Born on October 2, 1936 in Madrid, this writer and journalist, who declared himself a Soriano by adoption, assured that everything he did in life was to write, in such a way that only the literary vocation was categorical for him. The rest, he said, were anecdotes.
Writing 365 days a year, as he claimed, nevertheless left him time to create his “elixir of youth”: At the age of 80, he said he took an average of 70 pills a day, yes, of natural products to fight against the ravages of time. , in a double vocation “of healer and guinea pig”.
And when at that advanced age he said he was living at about 20 years old, leading a “dangerous life” because youth was “a vocation” for him.
With a degree in Romance Philology and Modern Languages (Italian), in 1967 he moved to Japan to teach at the Gaigo Daigaku University of Foreign Languages and the History of Spanish Thought at the Tokyo Imperial University, as well as at the Japanese Diplomatic School.
Language and History teacher in several countries
Between the seventies and eighties he was a professor of Spanish Language and History at the universities of Dakar (Senegal), Fez (Morocco) and Amman (Jordan), Nairobi (Kenya), Tokyo Imperial and Tsukuba National (Japan). He was also a press correspondent in several countries.
As a writer, he won the National Essay Award (1979) and the Planeta Award (1992) and practiced various literary genres.
Among his essays is “Gárgoris y Habidis. A magical history of Spain”, four volumes for which he won the Essay Award in 1978 and which he returned to in “La España Mágica”. “Ideas for a new cultural policy”, “Finisterre” (1984), “From Priscilianism to Liberalism” and “Volapié: Toros y Tauromaquia” are other titles.
Finalist for the Planeta Prize in 1990 with his novel “The Golden Horn”, two editions later, he won the Planeta with “La prueba del laberinto”.
He also directed television programs on literature: the first “Negro sobre blanco” on La 2 de TVE, then on Telemadrid he presented “Las noches blancas” between 2005 and 2012.
In 2015 he returned to RTVE’s La 2 with “Libros con uasabi”, a literary program in which he addressed the most outstanding novelties in literature in the company of his daughter, Ayanta Barilli, the journalist and writer Anna Grau, and the actress María Pedroviejo. .
He was the son of the journalist Fernando Sánchez Monreal, assassinated at the age of 27 by a group of Falangists in the Civil War.
In interviews, Fernando Sánchez Dragó recalled how in 1956 he was arrested for being an anti-Francoist and found out from the police themselves during interrogations that his father was killed by the Francoists and not by the Republicans, as he had believed in his childhood and youth.
He was part of the Communist Party and was in exile. Since 1993 he has supported the Popular Party of José María Aznar and Vox in the 2018 elections, in addition to publishing a work on its leader, “Santiago Abascal,“ La España vertebrada ”(2019).
“Brain” of Tamames’ candidacy in the motion of no confidence
Precisely, he was the “brain” of the candidacy of Ramón Tamames for the presidency of the government in the recent and unsuccessful motion of censure that Vox presented against Pedro Sánchez, whose debate he witnessed from the guest rostrum of the Congress of Deputies.
The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, contacted Tamames at the proposal of Sánchez Dragó, his friend since he joined the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in 1956 and both were in jail together.
In 2010, he was involved in a controversy over the statements he made in the book “God breeds them…”, where he assured that he had had sexual relations with two 13-year-old Japanese “foxes”, although he later qualified that it was only “fiction”. ”.
Some relationships that he denied although his statements caused the Telemadrid works council, the chain in which he directed and presented the program “Las noches blancas”, to request the “immediate” termination of the writer’s contract.