Playwright, novelist, poet and essayist Antonio Gala passed away this Sunday at the age of 92.Approved by a statement by the Antonio Gala Foundation Board of Trustees and family.
The funeral chapel will be set up in the Antonio Gala Foundation’s meeting room and will remain open from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm this Monday.
A precocious writer, he wrote a short story at age five and wrote his first play at age seven. At the age of fourteen he gave a lecture at the Círculo de la Amistad in Córdoba.
In 1951, at the age of 15, he entered the University of Seville to study Law and registered two more careers in Madrid: Philosophy and Literature and Political and Economic Sciences. During his university years, he published his first poems in the journals Escorial, Platero, Cántico and founded two journals: Aljibe and Arquero de Poesía, together with Gloria Fuertes and Julio Mariscal Montes.
After graduating, he began competitive exams for a state attorney, following his father’s post, but dropped out in his second year. In the following years he lives in Jerez de la Frontera and Córdoba. When he returns to Madrid, he teaches Philosophy and Art History at different schools to earn a living. He went to Italy in 1962 and stayed there for about a year.
At this stage, Antonio Gala wrote his poetry book Intimate Enemy (1959). He received the second prize at the Adonais Poetry Prize. In the spring of 1963, on his return to Spain, he received the Las Albinas award for his story Solstice de Verano. In July he was awarded the Calderón de la Barca National Award for his comedy Los Verdes Campos del Edén. Thus began a long and fruitful career as a playwright, writing plays such as Anillos para una dama (1973) or Petra Regalada (1980).
He wrote columns for newspapers such as Pueblo, Sábado Gráfico, Actualidad Española, El País and El Mundo. He is currently collaborating in El Mundo’s column, La Tronera, of which he published a compilation in 1996. Many of the series of articles were later published as books. This is the case of Talks with Troylo (1981); In his own hands (1985); Autumn Lady’s Notebook (1985); dedicated to Tobias (1988); Sound loneliness (1991) and Who goes with me (1994).
In addition to the columnist, He is also a lecturer in literary subjects.especially theatre. In this last aspect, titles such as Teatro de hoy, teatro de mañana (1978) or El mito de la libertad (1992) stand out. He won the Premio Planeta for his first novel, The Red Manuscript (1990). This was followed by The Turkish Passion (1994), Beyond the Garden (1995), The Rule of Three (1996), The Outskirts of God (1999), The Impossible Oblivion (2001) and The Garden Guest (2002). He subsequently published the books The Owner of the Wound (2003) and The Pedestal of Statues (2007). The publication of compilations such as Granada de los Nazaríes or Andaluz and Córdoba de Gala (1993), both of 1994’s, is the result of his interest in Andalusian culture, of which he felt a part.
There are books published at an early age in his poetic works., Intimate Enemy, and others much closer in time: Cordoba Poems (1994), The Two-Headed Eagle: Love Texts (1994), Love Poems (1997), and Tobías’ Soulless Poem (2005). In addition to the aforementioned Adonais, Planeta and Calderón de la Barca Awards, he received the following awards, among others: City of Barcelona Award 1965; Theater Forum Award 1971; 1972 National Literary Award, Audience Award, and Critic’s Award; Golden Quixote Award 1972-73; the Antena de Oro Prize and the 1973 Mayte Prize; National Screenplay Award 1973 and Audiovisual Media Award 1976.