Juan Jesus Armas Marcelo

Juan Jesús Armas Marcelo (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, July 22, 1946), also known as Juan José Armas Marcelo or J.J. Armas Marcelo, is a Spanish writer and journalist.

Biography

He completed his primary and secondary studies with the Jesuits. He graduated in 1968 in Classical Philology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Between 1974 and 1977 he traveled and repeatedly changed his residence, until in 1978 he moved to the Spanish capital, where he settled and domiciled his editorial, literary and journalistic activities. He currently lives between Madrid and a town in the Sierra de Guadarrama.

Armas Marcelo published his first literary notebooks Monólogos y scherzos pour Nathalie between 1970 and 1972 in Inventarios Provisionales, a collection edited in Las Palmas by the poet Eugenio Padorno. These first publications already caused him problems with the Dictatorship, and he was sentenced in the War Council on September 15, 1972 to six months in prison for covert insults to the Army. In 1974 his first novel came out, The chameleon on the carpet , which won the Pérez Galdós Award the following year. Since then he has continued cultivating narrative, winning other awards, such as the International Plaza and Janés for The Gods of Themselves (1989), a novel that Alfaguara would publish in its final version seven years later, or the Ciudad from Torrevieja for The Order of the Tiger (2003).

As a journalist, he has collaborated on radio and television as well as in the written press. She was a cultural commentator, from 1990 to 1995, for Between today and tomorrow , a nightly news program on Tele 5 directed by Luis Mariñas; She later collaborated with Jesús Hermida on the Antena 3 TV program & # 34; Hermida y Cía & # 34;. Later he was a guest speaker on the program El primer café, directed by Antonio San José on Antena 3 TV and for nine years he was a regular talk show host on Protagonistas, by Luis del Olmo, on Onda Cero, as well as a collaborator of Julia's Afternoons, presented by Julia Otero on the same radio station.

He collaborated on Radio Nacional de España with his space Provisional Inventories in the weekend program of José Manuel Rodríguez; He was a talk show host and regular contributor to Las mañanas de Radio Nacional in the Antonio Jiménez program. He has written for numerous media in Spain and Latin America, among them the weekly Tiempo and the magazine Letras Libres, he maintains the thirds of Madrid's ABC and a weekly column in Blanco y Negro Cultural.

He was director of the American Tribune of the Casa de América in Madrid (from July 1997 to April 1998); He directed the program Los libros of La 2 de RTVE and its Canal Internacional (September 1998 until June 2002) and was a regular member of Los desayunos de Televisión Española , which directed Marinas. From April to August 2002 he broadcast his series of interviews Entre las islas on TVE in the Canary Islands.

Between 2010 and 2020, he directed the Vargas Llosa Chair, attached at that time to the Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library Foundation.

Some of his works have been translated into other languages and he has prefaced books by well-known authors such as Paul Bowles, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa or Guillermo Cabrera Infante; he has received important distinctions.

Armas Marcelo is currently a corresponding member of the Royal Hispano-American Academy (Cádiz), of the Peruvian Academy of Language, of the Panamanian Academy of Language; corresponding member of the North American Academy of Spanish Language; since August 2015, of the Colombian Academy of the Spanish Language, and in October 2015 he joined, also as a corresponding member, the Venezuelan Academy of the Spanish Language. He is a corresponding member of the Chilean Academy of the Spanish Language, as well as the Uruguayan Academy of the Language, the Nicaraguan Academy of the Spanish Language and the Honduran Academy of the Language. In 2014 he was awarded a Meritorious Person for Peruvian Culture by the Ministry of Culture of the government of that country. In February 2021 he was named corresponding academic in Madrid of the Mexican Academy of the Spanish Language.In July 2018 he was awarded an Honoris Causa Doctorate by the University of Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru.

Works

• The chameleon on the carpet, novel, Plaza y Janés, Barcelona, 1974
• State of coma, novel, Plaza and Janés, 1976
• Calima, novel, Sedmay, Madrid, 1978
• The burned ships, novel, Argos Vergara, Barcelona, 1982 (Plaza and Janés, 1987)
• The tree of good and evil, novel, Plaza y Janés, 1985 (Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1995)
• The gods of themselves, novel, Plaza y Janés, 1989 (Alfaguara, Madrid, 1996)
• Tirios, Trojans and Contemporaryarticles and literary essays; Academy of History of Venezuela Caracas, 1987
• The other archipelagoCanary Diaspora Rehearsal in America; 1988
• Vargas Llosa. The vice of writingtrial; 1991 (Alfaguara, 2002)
• Madrid, Distrito Federal, novel, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1994
• Proposal for a mestizo literaturerehearsal, 1994
• The years we were Marilynpersonal memory of the first two decades in democratic Spain; 1995
• As we are, articles published in the journal daily ABC1996
• When we were the best, novel, Temas de Hoy, Madrid, 1997
• So in Havana as in the sky, novel, Alfaguara, Madrid, 1998
• Cuba in the hearttrial, 1998
• The child of mourning and the cook of the Pope, novel, Alfaguara, 2001
• The Order of Tiger, novel, Alfaguara, 2003
• Almost all women, novel Plaza & Janés, 2004
• South of the Resurrection, novel, Plaza and Janés, 2006
• Celebration of the weather, articles published in ABCD Arts and LettersJanes Square, 2008
• Mercedes Pinto: a family shadowrehearsal, 2009
• The night Bolivar betrayed Miranda, novel, Edhasa, Barcelona, 2011 Francisco de Miranda Chronology produced by Juan Carlos Chirinos).
• Havana Requiem for Fidel, novel, Alfaguara, 2014
• Neither for love nor for forgetfulness. Memories, 1, memories, Renaissance, 2018

Awards and recognitions

• Perez Galdós Award for Novela 1975 The chameleon on the carpet
• Novela Plaza and Janés International Prize 1989 The gods of themselves
• Don Balon Sports Literature Award 1997
• Order of Miranda (Venezuela, 1998)
• Gonzalez Ruano Prize for Journalism Relevo in the Leopard Empire, published in ABC, 1998.
• Doctor Honoris Causa by Universidad Latina de Panama, 2002
• Novela City International Prize 2003 for The tiger order
• Predilect Son of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2004
• Gold Medal of the White City of Arequipa, 2012
• In December 2012 he won the ABC Cultural Award.
• Francisco Umbral Award for the Book of the Year published in 2014, for his novel Havana Requiem for Fidel.