Camilo José Cela

Camilo José Cela (1916–2002) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and essayist associated with Spain's Generation of '36. His debut novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942), established his reputation and helped define tremendismo, a narrative style marked by stark, often violent depictions of rural Spanish life.

He followed it with La colmena (The Hive, 1951), an experimental, fragmented portrait of postwar Madrid, and San Camilo, 1936 (1969), among many other novels, travel books, and essays. He founded the literary review Papeles de Son Armadans in 1956 and was elected to the Real Academia Española in 1957.

Cela was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989 and the Premio Cervantes in 1995.