If there is something that sets Fernando Delgado apart, it is his generosity. He was always willing to help a young poet looking for advice, a journalist who needed a contact, or a bookstore that was new and needed help getting known. Journalism and literature shaped a very intense and committed life, which he spent mainly between his beloved Canary Islands (where he was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife) and Madrid (where he settled in the death throes of the Franco regime and soon established himself). a journalist and writer. ) and Faura, the small Valencian town where he settled two decades ago and where he died this Sunday at the age of 77.
There he died, very close to the sea, as he wanted, between orange trees, in the spacious townhouse that he renovated just a few kilometers from the beach, to write, read, live with his partner and the large group of I miss his meetings, coffee drinking, lunches and dinners, many of them poets, novelists, painters and sculptors, also journalists, politicians, local residents, very different people. Fernando Delgado's relationship capital matched his former movie star's tall stature and good looks. He was an all-round journalist, but his specialty, he couldn't help but be, was undoubtedly culture. Between 1996 and 2005 he directed the program A vivir on Cadena SER and before that he was director of Radio 3 (1981) and RNE (from 1982 to 1986 and between 1990 and 1991). On TVE, he broke the mold of limited news programming with his personal cultural recommendations and knowing smile.
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When he arrived in Madrid after an experience in the Canary Islands, he began, without knowing it, to live next to the poet Francisco Brines. It was like a premonition. “Poetry is what interests me most.” “I consider myself a frustrated poet, not because I am worse than many other poets, but because I believe that one is always a bad poet,” he told this newspaper in an interview. Delgado became a very close friend of the Valencian Cervantes Prize winner, whom he accompanied at the Elca farm in Oliva until the end of his life in 2021.
In 1995, Delgado won the Planeta Award with “The Other's Look” while anchoring TVE's weekend news program, a story full of obsessions and jealousies whose protagonist is a manager of the Madrid upper bourgeoisie of the eighties. In 2005 he left journalism and began to devote himself entirely to literature. In 2015 he received the Azorín Prize for His Eyes on Me. The eight books of his poetic work received awards such as the Julio Tovar and the Antonio de Viana. The novel The Escape Who Read His Obituary (Planeta) stars a man who is presumed dead after he is accused of murdering the chief who raped his wife during the Franco regime. With this work he completed his so-called Drowned Man trilogy, consisting of You were not in heaven, Isla sin mar. “Literature makes you search and look at things, including your own life, even if you invent other worlds, in a different way,” he said in another interview with this newspaper.
His last novel was Todos al Hell (Editorial Planeta), a novel about the corruption experienced in Vallina since the mid-1990s, a copy of Valencia. “This is a fictional novel with imaginary passages and unavoidable references to reality.” “In other words, everything in it is imaginary and at the same time very recognizable,” explained Delgado in a March 2022 interview in EL PAÍ S. There he seemed tired and announced that he would no longer write fiction. Fernando's infectious vitalism waned, but without losing his capacity for outrage at the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the “rottenness of politics.”
He always seemed to be politically committed to the left, although he only became active in recent years. In 2015, he agreed to be a regional deputy of the PSPV-PSOE between 2015 and 2019, at the suggestion of the future Valencian president, the socialist Ximo Puig. The journalist defined himself as “a Christian without a church, a lifelong socialist, but now with a party.” “I have always been very politicized, since my youth, when I had political and also religious spaces,” he recalled. His speech as
Very few people leave an indelible mark.
For me, Fernando Delgado was one of them.
Fernando has just left us. And the sadness is immense.
I only take comfort in everything he taught us and loved us.
And that Paco Brines is already enjoying being up there with him.
Thank you my friend. pic.twitter.com/RLn7CTf1A0— Ximo Puig (@ximopuig) February 18, 2024
Puig wrote on his X account: “Very few people leave an indelible mark.” For me, Fernando Delgado was one of them. The grief is immense. I only take comfort in everything he taught us and loved us. And that Paco Brines is already enjoying being up there with him. Thank you, friend.â€
He received a National Television Ondas Award and an Antena de Oro in recognition of his journalistic career. He also won the 1995 Pérez Galdós Award and the Planeta Award for The Look of the Other.
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