Arrabal Fernando Spanish Playwright Novelist Poet

The real name of Arrabal Fernando was Fernando Arrabal Terán and he was born in the year 1932 in Spain. He is one of the most well known Spanish playwrights of all times. This extremely talented writer had also worked as a screenwriter, novelist, poet as well as a film director. He went on to live in France in the later years of his life.

Arrabal Fernando was a gifted child from the very beginning. He started to learn early on. As a child the family was based in the city of Ciudad Rodrigo at Salamanca in Spain His talent was soon recognized when at the age of ten he was honored with the award of Gifted Children which gave him national recognition. The talented child went onto to attend and complete a university degree in Madrid.

However Arrabal Fernando had a troubled childhood. His father was an army officer who was opposed to General Francisco Franco. However this led to him being sentenced to death. This decision against his life was taken in the beginning of the Spanish Civil however later on the life sentence was converted to life imprisonment. The authors father kept on being deported from one jail to the newt one. Finally on November 4, 1941 he made his escape and then disappeared forever.

Arrabal Fernando had always been tortured at the thoughts of his fathers strange and unexplained disappearance. According to some of his contemporaries it was because of this tortured childhood that Arrabals works have a moral flavor. The artist went onto direct as many as seven full fledged feature films. As author he has also published more then fourteen novels, one-hundred plays, seven collections of poetry as well as many essays. He had also published well-known Letter to General Franco which was written during Francos lifetime.

Arrabal Fernandos plays have become so famous that they have been published in large number of languages including French as well as Spanish. Influenced by the Greek God Pan the author started a movement called the Panic Movement. This movement was started in the year 1962 along with other authors like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor. The kind of theater that he was encouraging was the extremely provocating. It was a portrayal of how this decaying world was even when it was still advancing.

Arrabal Fernando satirizes politics and at the same time offers completely radical and ground breaking expressions in his plays. Not surprisingly most of his works have always courted controversy and have been either very highly acclaimed or extremely critiqued by the critics. However he has won a number of awards like the Nabokov Prize, the Theatre of the Académie Française as well as Espasa Prize for Essay Writing. Fernando Arrabal