Draft:Jesús Izcaray

Justo Jesús Izcaray Cebriano (Béjar, Salamanca, Spain, December 14, 1908–Madrid, Spain, January 10, 1980) was a Spanish journalist and writer.

In 1938 he won the National Prize for Literature in the democratically elected Second Spanish Republic for Madrid es nuestro, a compilation of his chronicles on the defense of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, together with those of journalists Clemente Cimorra, Mariano Perla and Eduardo de Ontañón.

Early life and training
Son of Petra Isidora Izcaray Cebriano (1885–1959), unmarried, and of unknown father, he was baptized in the parish of San Juan Bautista with the names of Justo Jesús and registered with the two surnames of his mother. He learned his first letters at the Salesian school in his hometown, and was raised by his aunt Carola, Gregoria Carolina Izcaray Izquierdo (1848–1922), at the Fonda del Comercio, then located at 24–26 Sánchez Ocaña Street, inherited from her late husband, Ignacio Rodríguez.

Family and social difficulties in Béjar at the beginning of the 20th century led Aunt Carola, and the nieces she had taken in at her inn, to move the business to Madrid in 1915. They returned to Béjar in the spring of 1916 to take the seven-year-old Jesús with them. He had turned seven years old and would live in Madrid for the next three years, experiencing hunger and misery in repeated attempts to save a boarding house that failed wherever it was relocated. For that child, the various locations were learning platforms, the foundations of his future life. From the streets of San Bernardo, Fuencarral and Monteleón in Madrid he enjoyed the joy of children's games, the showiness of the military parades in the Plaza de Oriente, the movies in neighborhood cinemas, the paintings in the Prado Museum, the music of small orchestras in cafes, unique sweets from the bakery of San Onofre, the causes behind workers' demonstrations and unruly boyhood groups in the Malasaña neighborhood.

The Izcaray family finally left Madrid to settle in Burgos, where they were employed in the playing card factory of Antonio Moliner.

Jesús received his first communion in the church of San Lesmes Abad in Burgos on May 13, 1920. Having dropped out of the Marist school in Burgos, his family enrolled him in some private classes. The adolescent began his self-education with abundant and nourishing readings of the Spanish classics of literature.

After the death of his aunt Carola and a devastating fire in the building of the card factory, which occurred on December 19, 1922, his aunt and uncle, Carmen García Izcaray and Francisco Cameno, headed to Barcelona, and with them, their nephew. Given his ideological disagreements with Francisco Cameno, the young man requested a place as a volunteer to fulfill his military service in the Leon Infantry Regiment, No. 38, located in the Plaza de San Francisco el Grande, in Madrid.

In Madrid in the 1930s
Izcaray returned to the Spanish capital in 1929, determined to begin his career as a writer. He first joined El Imparcial —which he would leave two years later in disagreement with the newspaper's policy regarding the Statute of Catalonia—, and he would collaborate sporadically in the weekly literary supplement "Los Lunes de El Imparcial". His work as a reporter brought him into contact with the socio-political reality of the time, and his readings of Lenin definitively oriented his ideas. He ended up aligning himself among the young socialists of the left wing.

His journalistic activity continued in various Madrid newspapers. For the theatrical page of La Voz he interviewed, among others, Manuel Azaña, Celia Gámez, Amadeo Vives. For the Heraldo de Madrid he wrote reports on the vedettes and revues that were performed in the theaters of the capital: the Reina Victoria, the Nuevo Romea, the Eslava, the Fuencarral, the Pavón or the Maravillas. In the theater section that Juan Chabás ran in Luz, the young journalist published his conversations with Pedro Muñoz Seca, Eduardo Marquina, Rafael Alberti, Margarita Xirgu, Ramón Gómez de la Serna and many other voices calling for the renovation of the Spanish theater.

After a brief period in Diario de Madrid, Manuel Chaves Nogales hired him, in February 1935, to write for the graphic newspaper Ahora. By then, Jesús Izcaray had already written, together with Nicolás Escanilla, his first book, El socialismo español después de octubre (Posición de líderes y masas). In 1936 he also began to collaborate sporadically in the magazine Estampa. Izcaray participated in the siege of the Montaña barracks, in Madrid, and, as soldier and journalist during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, he met members of the International Brigades and sent his chronicles from various fronts, to Ahora and Estampa. At the end of 1936, he began to write for Mundo Obrero and Frente Rojo, the publications of the Communist Party of Spain. He joined the communist party in December of the same year.

Exile in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War
When the Government of the Second Spanish Republic changed location to Valencia, Izcaray left Madrid as well. He did so on November 6, 1936, cramped together in the newspaper's company car with Manuel Chaves Nogales, Paulino Masip, Manuel D. Benavides and Clemente Cimorra. However, in solidarity with the militiamen with whom he had fought, he decided to return to the defense of Madrid. His friend and colleague Cimorra returned with him.

Sent to Barcelona in 1938 as deputy director of Frente Rojo, the Bejarano author would remain in Barcelona until his departure for exile on February 9, 1939. He entered France through the town of Portbou (Girona), together with Colonel Juan Guilloto León, "Modesto", and Wenceslao Roces. After a few months in the Argelès-sur-Mer concentration camp, he took advantage of the generous openness of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas towards Spanish Republican exiles and sailed from Sète (France) on the steamship Sinaia on May 25. He disembarked in the Mexican port of Veracruz on June 13, 1939, together with his wife Elena Caamaño Cimadevila. The couple settled in Mexico City. Until they could find employment, they were dependent upon aid from their own political party and the economic support of the SERE, Servicio de Evacuación de Republicanos Españoles (Evacuation Service for Spanish Refugees) —presided over by Juan Negrín—, or the JARE, Junta de Auxilio a los Republicanos Españoles (Aid Committee for Spanish Republicans) —created by Indalecio Prieto—, through the Comité Técnico de Ayuda a los Refugiados Españoles (Technical Committee to Aid Spanish Republicans) in Mexico.

In Mexico City, the exiled journalist contributed to the founding of ''España Popular. Semanario al servicio del pueblo español'', whose first issue appeared on February 18, 1940. The publication masthead showed José Renau, as owner director, and J. Izcaray, as editor-in-chief.

Izcaray wrote prolifically during his time in Mexico, although many of his works remained unsigned. This is the case of the film scripts he wrote with Alfonso Lapeña, an adaptation of the novel Divorciadas, by Mexican author Julia Guzmán, or the musical comedy entitled Tarde de lluvia, and a biography of Rossini that never made it to the screen. In addition to managing España Popular, he sent articles to the Mexican magazine Estampa —published by the newspaper of the Mexican capital, Excélsior—, and undertook a biography of the maestro Agustín Lara.

Joining the guerrillas in Spain
On April 8, 1941, Izcaray obtained his Mexican naturalization card and, later, his Mexican passport. In 1944, with the mission of strengthening the anti-Francoist guerrilla struggle in Spain, he embarked on the steamship Cabo de Hornos in Buenos Aires, bound for Lisbon, where he arrived on December 31. With the documents of another comrade, he clandestinely entered Spain through the mountains of Galicia and, to avoid staying in Madrid, where he could be recognized, he joined the guerrillas in the Levante area. He recounted his experiences with the guerrillas in a series of reports published by a number of newspapers -Mundo Obrero, Ce Soir, Alger Républicain, Regards, L'Operaio Italiano and España Popular-, before compiling them in two volumes, Las guerrillas de Levante (1948) and Treinta días con los guerrilleros de Levante (1951).

Exile in France
Izcaray took leave of Spain again in 1946, and eventually relocated in Paris. There he directed Mundo Obrero, reviewed works by contemporary Spanish authors for magazines such as Nuestra Bandera, Cuadernos de Cultura, Nuestras Ideas, Europe, Realidad, and began his dedication to literature; short stories and novels that would be translated into French, Italian, German, Bulgarian, Dutch, Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Chinese and Russian: La hondonada (1961), Noche adelante (Novelas breves y cuentos) (1962), Las ruinas de la muralla (1965), Madame García, tras los cristales, and his projected tetralogy, El río hacia el mar, a mixture of fiction and memoirs, of which he published only two novels —Un muchacho en la Puerta del Sol (1978), and Cuando estallaron los volcanes (1979)—, and left unfinished a draft of what would be the third, Puente de sangre.

Official return to Spain
Although he entered and departed Spain illegally on several occasions during his exile in France, Izcaray's official return to Spain took place on November 14, 1976. Together with his second wife, Flora as he called her, Marcela Santandreu, they made their home in Madrid, where he continued writing articles for different national newspapers, developed new novels, and provided oversight of the publication and re-publication of some of his works in Spain.

Death
Justo Jesús Izcaray Cebriano died in the early hours of January 10, 1980, in the now closed Madrid clinic Nuestra Señora de Loreto, due to cerebral thrombosis.

Awards
National Prize for Literature, 1938 (Spanish Second Republic)

Essay

 * 1935 – El socialismo español después de octubre (Posición de líderes y masas). Co-author, Nicolás Escanilla.

Biographies

 * 1948 – Héroes de España: Casto García Roza
 * 1949 – Quien tenga honra que me siga (Manuela Sánchez, la heroína de Carres)

Chronicles and reports

 * 1937 – Crónicas de la guerra (Recopilación de artículos periodísticos)
 * 1938 – Madrid es nuestro (60 crónicas de su defensa). Includes chronicles written by Clemente Cimorra, Mariano Perla and Eduardo de Ontañón. National Prize for Literature, 1938 (Spanish Second Republic)
 * 1948 – Martyre des femmes d'Espagne
 * 1948 – Las guerrillas de Levante
 * 1951 – Treinta días con los guerrilleros de Levante
 * 1962 – Reportaje en Cuba
 * 1978 – La guerra que yo viví

Novels

 * 1961 – La hondonada
 * 1962 – Noche adelante (Novelas breves y cuentos)
 * 1965 –Las ruinas de la muralla
 * 1968 – Madame García, tras los cristales
 * 1973 – Un muchacho en la Puerta del Sol
 * 1978 – Cuando estallaron los volcanes

Bibliography /Sources

 * Aub, E. Interview to Jesús Izcaray. Madrid, Spain, October 25 and 30; November 14, 1979. Fondo de Historia Oral: Refugiados españoles en México. Archivo de la palabra. Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia Dr. Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado. Mediateca INAH (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia), Mexico. https://mediateca.inah.gob.mx/repositorio/islandora/object/entrevista%3A907 Retrieved September 9, 2022.
 * Báez-Ramos, J. (1989). El juego erótico del macho en las novelas de J. Izcaray in M. C. López Alonso (Coord.). Eros literario. (pp. 233–244) Madrid: Universidad Complutense.
 * — (1993). Jesús Izcaray: un exiliado en la órbita del realismo social in VV. AA. Cuadernos Interdisciplinarios de Estudios Literarios. (4, 1) University of Amsterdam.
 * — (1994). La obra literaria de Jesús Izcaray. Salamanca: Centro de Estudios Salmantinos.
 * — (2000). Edition and introduction: Izcaray, J. Noche adelante. Salamanca: Cervantes.
 * — (2004). Edition and introduction: Izcaray, J. La hondonada. Salamanca: Cervantes.
 * — (2006). Edition and introduction: Izcaray, J. Madame García, tras los cristales. Sada: Ediciós do Castro, Biblioteca del Exilio.
 * — (2023). Jesús Izcaray. La escritura como liberación. Béjar: Centro de Estudios Bejaranos.
 * — (2023). El fecundo nomadismo de Jesús Izcaray. Estudios Bejaranos (27), 203–216.
 * Ordóñez-Alonso, M. M. (1977). El Comité Técnico de Ayuda a los Republicanos Españoles: historia y documentos, 1939–40. México D. F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Serie Documentos. Colección Fuentes.