Spanish writer and journalist Fernando Sanchez Drago He died this Monday of a heart attack at the age of 86. He was at his house in the town of Castilfrío de la Sierra, province of Soria, as confirmed to efe the mayor, Joaquin Cobo.
The first to assist Sánchez Dragó were his own neighbors, including a nurse. They tried to revive him until the emergency services arrived, consisting of an ambulance and a helicopter.
With great sadness, from Editorial Planeta we deeply regret to announce the death this morning of our dear author and friend Fernando Sánchez Dragó.
Our deepest condolences to all his family and friends.
Rest in peace Fernando! pic.twitter.com/rLvsE04TlI
– Editorial Planeta (@edit_planeta) April 10, 2023
Sánchez Dragó, who lived with his partner, was a trained philologist, as well as a writer, journalist, essayist, literary critic and television presenter. National Essay Award (1979) and Planeta Award (1992), he practiced all literary genres.
Often controversial, the author leaves more than 40 published books, a hundred countries visited, sexual controversies, Eastern philosophies and a search for eternal youth, the Spanish agency points out.
Born on October 2, 1936 in Madrid, he was proud to disagree with almost everyone and assured that everything he did in life was to write, since only the literary vocation was categorical for him. The rest, he said, were anecdotes.
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.
From the communist party to the extreme right
Between the 1970s and 1980s he was a professor of Spanish Language and History at universities in Senegal, Morocco, Jordan, Kenya and Japan. He was also a press correspondent in several countries.
Among other works, he wrote Gargoris and Habidis. A magical history of Spainin four volumes, for which he won the National Essay Award, a topic that he dealt with again in “La España Mágica”.
Finalist for the Premio Planeta in 1990 with the novel the golden horntwo years later he achieved it with the maze test. He also directed television programs on literature.
He was part of the Communist Party of Spain, was imprisoned several times during the Franco dictatorship, and went into exile. Already in a democracy, he supported the Popular Party in 1993, and in the 2019 general elections he opted for Vox, of the extreme right.
In 2010 he was involved in a controversy over the statements he made in the book God creates them…where he assured that he had had sexual relations with two 13-year-old Japanese “bitches”, although he later qualified that it was only “fiction”.
Script-Novel in Cuba
In the mid-nineties, according to what he told in RTVE, visited Cuba to write a script for the actor and producer Andy García. It eventually became his penultimate novel, speak to me (2021), since the result was not “anti-Castro enough” for the producer, as told so.
In Cuba, he found himself “with a frozen Spain, an ancient Spain, the Spain of my childhood and even the Spain of the Golden Age. I was captivated by Cuba. And, then, I actually started to write this script, ”he pointed out to RTVE.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12 noon, José Luis Garci and I will present my latest book -“Habáname”, edited by Harkonnen- at the Cuban restaurant “La Negra Tomasa” in Madrid. Will Hedy Lamarr come, who has prefaced it? That is the big unknown. She will have mojitos and daiquiris. pic.twitter.com/yy9oxY6fuz
— Fernando Sánchez Dragó (@F_Sanchez_Drago) June 7, 2021
“I also visited the Cuba of Miami, in the United States, which I liked much less and, writing this script, I got a creative fever, I went into the Hotel Nacional, which still exists, and nothing, I spent twelve hours a day there. day typing,” he said.
Moments before suffering the heart attack, he had posted a message on Twitter where he was seen with his cat on his head and assured: “Nano the cat says good morning to me. He knows that the secret of almost everything is in the head”.
