User:Emmavatra/sandbox

Fernando Sánchez Dragó (Madrid, October 2, 1936) is a Spanish writer.

Biography
Born in Salamanca, one of the 21 districts that form the city of Madrid, he studied at The School of Our Lady of the Pilar. He is posthumous son of Fernando Sánchez Monreal, journalist and director of the news agency Febus, director and owner of the agency Noti-Sport and editor-in-chief of the newspaper La Voz, which had a conservative republican ideology (relative to the party of Miguel Maura, Conservative Republican Party). His father was murdered by the Spanish Civil War insurgents in September 1936 near Burgos after being reported to the fascist authorities. The circumstances after the Civil War did not allow him to find out which side had killed his father until 1956. Dragó narrates the trip of his father, since he had left Madrid to report on the military uprising of the 17 of July 1936 until he died murdered in Burgos, in his novel Muertes paralelas (Parallel deaths).

He has graduated in Romance Philology (1959) and in Modern Languages, specializing in Italian (1962), and Doctor of Philosophy in Languages by the University of Madrid. He taught Spanish Literature at Cervantes Institute in Madrid. Throughout the fifties and sixties he participated in anti-Franco protests, especially in the events of 1956, which led him to prison. During his youth, he was a member of the Communist Party of Spain, [PCE], and as a result of his opposition activity against the Franco dictatorship, he served sixteen months in prison and remained in exile for seven years. Despite his initial communist affiliation, he has subsequently defined his ideology as individualist anarchism. His political thinking is based on a heterodox and radical liberalism, building his own thought, intermingling Perennialism, Greek philosophy (especially the pre-Socratic, Epicureanism, Stoicism, Cynic and Hellenistic schools) and the Eastern philosophy, such as Taoism or Hinduism, and a extreme defense of individual rights such as life and private property. He also defends bullfighting and he declared himself to be seditionist, anti-statist and Eurosceptic. For this reason, on the day of Spain's entry into the European Union (an organization he described as a "Leninist monster"), he sent a telegram to the Ministry of Justice requesting "against the infamy and the crime of high treason committed" the statelessness. Strictly speaking, he may be considered a individualist libertarian anarchist sui generis (Anarcho-capitalism), to which sometimes he himself has alluded publicly. Dragó detests Puritanism, Developmentalism, Multiculturalism (which he compares with the Fall of the Western Roman Empire), Goodism, Progressivism, Protestantism, Technology, Gender Ideology, Globalization, Neoliberalism, Political Correctness and Postmodernity.

In terms of international politics, he has criticized the United States of America, NATO, the European Union and the UN. He claims that they had set off “all the great wars in the last 20 years: the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the Yugoslav Wars, the American war in Afghanistan, the Libyan Civil and, of course, the Syrian Civil War”. He has accused Obama (who for Sáncez is bellicose) and he has referred to him as “a multinationals’ wimp, the Federal Reserve’s puppet, an invertebrate Don Tancredo, an Islamic fundamentalism who is part of a fifth column group. Moreover, he has accused Cameron and Hollande for “praising Islamic fundamentalism, since Syrian rebels are mostly Al-Qaeda's partisans, and of breaking the weak balance in the Middle East”. He also supports Marine Le Pen and he regrets a party with the same characteristics does not exist in Spain. He supports Vladimir Putin due to the annexation of Crimea. He classified it as “the most significant historic event since the Berlin Wall became pieces of rubble”. Nowadays, he supports the Spanish political party Vox, claiming that “the voter in Europe has two opposed options: a centripetal identitarian movement, which is both conservative and sovereign and is represented by Vox in Spain or a centrifugal multiculturalism, which is pro-European, progressive, and supports the Islam. This last option is represented by all the other parties.

His view of Europe is pessimistic: “Europe is drowning. It is a disaster. There is nothing to do. Europe will be the Third World soon”. His view related to the emergence of new geopolitical blocs is “ in the universal history there are telluric movements that gain access at breakneck speed when time comes, and there is no one who can stop them. There was a Mediterranean millennium: the one of the Nativity, of Hellas, of Egypt, etc. Then, there was an Atlantic millennium: the one of the United States, England, the colonial empires, etc. Nowadays, we are in the millennium of the Pacific. There are three big blocs that emerge in the world: one is Russia, another is China and the Southeast Asia and the last one is the Muslim countries. Muslim countries are fragmented, but when they unite Europe will become a theme park, a museum”.

The writer believes we are living the Kali Yuga stage of Hinduism. We are in a flabby totalitarianism where there is only vacuity, as Aldous Huxley reflects in Brave New World, ugliness raised to the category of art, suppression of the criteria of excellence and corruption of language, demagogy and revolts of the mobs, the yardstick of egalitarianism, the levelling that castrates (men’s feminization and women’s masculinization) against the ontological distinction of both sexes, the transformation of free thinking in the inanity of it, materialistic and reductionist scientism, the substitution of real for the unreal, tweeters who believe they are Shakespeare and they act like Girolamo Savonarola, a [Globalization|globalization]] that kneels down before the altars of the sacred consumption, the utmost mercantilism and political correctness as the new Inquisition.

He defends the destiny of nations, its importance in history, the collective unconscious, the necessity of sacredness, the pedagogy of myths, the recognition of excellence and the existence of races. In addition, he states that the reductio at Hitlerum is a resource of the contemporary pensée unique to silence the heterodoxes. He is one of the few Spanish writers that have claimed, along with Juan Manuel de Prada ,supporting Brexit and Donald Trump’s candidacy for presidency.

He also lashes out feminism, which in his opinion is promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation, other plutocratic institutions and the CIA with the aim of doubling tax revenues by incorporating women into the working world “the progressive destruction of families, the natural environment where moral values are instilled and personality is built up: parents will be missing and they will be forced to take their children to school concentration camps for being lobotomized, turned into robots and transformed into submissive citizens which will go with their head bowed to vote and to pay to the Treasury". He is critical with Judaism, in particular with Ashquenazi Jews, some of his positions being described as antisemite by authors as Gonzalo Álvarez Chillida or César Vidal.

Nowadays, he describes himself as “a man without labels”. However, from his leftism and opposition to Franco of his youth to his recently liberal condition, he has gone through a way that has taken him to the spiritual orientalism. The attitude towards life he has been acquiring over the years could be summarized in the following words:

He has been a professor of Spanish language, literature and history at universities of several countries, like Japan, Senegal, Morocco and Kenya. He has cultivated journalism, literary criticism and journey storytelling (he has traveled to more than seventy countries as a journalist or as a simply traveler). Currently, he lives in Castilfrío de la Sierra in the Spanish province of Soria with his young Japanese wife, Naoko, who is 37 younger than him. He has four children, each one from a different mother, one of them being the actress, writer and TV presenter Ayanta Barilli.

Throughout his life, he has won several prizes (see the awards below). The National Prize of Literature should be pointed out, which he obtained in 1979 thanks to his essay work Gargoris and Habidis, a magical history of Spain in which he analysed The two Spains. A new species of beetle discovered in Namibia was named Somaticus sanchezdragoi in honour of him. Despite their ideological differences, Jorge Verstrynge is his friend.

Style
He looks for complex expression and understands literary language as something completely away from common language.This results in the choice of usual, erudite vocabulary; in the use of enumerations and adjectives; in the profusion of metaphors and in the use of compound sentences and syntactic structures with a hard nesting. His style has been criticised for being excessively verbal and over elaborated, for lacking content, etc. Nevertheless, other critics have valued his big amount of literary resources and the writer’s literary registers; they see that verbal excess as a kind of literary torrent.

Subjects
He treats in a recurrent way subjects like spirituality, conscience development, wisdom, religions and literature. Some novels as El camino del corazón (The Heart’s Road) or Muertes Paralelas (Parallel Deaths) are highly autobiographical. Other essays as Gárgoris y Habidis (Gárgoris and Habidis) or El sendero de la mano izquierda  (The Left Hand Path) show his thinking. One of its essential characteristics is the harmony with the philosophical universe of the East, the rejection of the modern Western world and “Judaeo-Christianity”. Following that thinking, when he analyses History of Spain in his novel Gárgoris and Habidis, he rejects the European rationalism and Christianity (although he understands the figure of Christ as the Jungian archetype of a hero and values the pagan legacy syncretised in Catholicism in face of the biblical and iconoclastic protestant literalism), opposing to mystical values originating in Gnosticism and in an Antiquity that he considers totally unknown: “The 6th century BC is Buddha’s century, and also Confucius’, Laozi’s, Zarathusta’s, the orphic movements’, Pythagoras’, the pre-Socratics’, etc. That was the best moment of Universal History. Everything we know was said in that century and from then on, the world is on an unstoppable decline.

Work

 * España Viva (Spain Is Alive) (196
 * Gárgoris y Habidis. Una Historia Mágica de España (Gárgoris and Habidis, a Magical History of Spain) ISBN 978-84-08-03817-7 (1978)
 * La España Mágica. Epítome de Gárgoris y Habidis (The Magical Spain. Epitome of Gárgoris and Habidis)(1983)
 * El dorado (The Golden) (1984)
 * Finisterre: Sobre Viajes, Travesías, Naufragios y Navegaciones (Fisterra: About Trips, Crossings, Shipwrecks and Sailings) (1984)
 * Ideas para una Nueva Política Cultural (Some Ideas for a New Cultural Politics) (1984)
 * Las Fuentes del Nilo (The Springs of the Nile) ISBN 978-84-08-08367-2 (1986)
 * Del Priscilianismo al Liberalismo: Doble salto sin red (From Priscillianism to Liberalism: A Double Jump without a Net)(1987)
 * Volapié: Toros y Tauromagia (Wounding Thrust: Bulls and Bullmagic) ((1987)
 * El camino del Corazón (The Heart's Road) ISBN 978-84-08-04926-5 (1990)
 * La prueba del Laberinto (The Labyrinth Race) ISBN 978-84-08-00155-3 (1992)
 * La dragontea: Diario de un Guerrero (The dragontea: Diary of a Warrior) ISBN 978-84-320-5956-8 (1992)
 * Calendario Espiritual (Spiritual Calendar) (1992)
 * Discurso Numantino: Segunda y última salida de los ingeniosos hidalgos Gárgoris y Habidis (Speech from Numantia: Second and Final Departure of the Ingenious Gentlemen Gárgoris and Habidis) ISBN 978-84-08-01401-0 (1995)
 * La del Alba Sería (The Dawn Would Be) ISBN 978-84-08-04517-5 (1996)
 * Diccionario de la España Mágica (Dictionary of the Magical Spain) (1997)
 * En el alambre de Shiva (In the Shiva's Wire) ISBN 978-84-08-02330-2 (1997)
 * El camino hacia Ítaca (Road to Ithaca) ISBN 978-84-08-02561-0 (1998)
 * Historia Mágica del Camino de Santiago (The Magical History of the Way of St. James) ISBN 978-84-08-03045-4 (1999)
 * Carta de Jesús al Papa (Letter from Jesus to the Pope) ISBN 978-84-08-03794-1 (Planeta, 2001)
 * El Sendero de la Mano Izquierda (The Left Hand Path) ISBN 978-84-270-2851-7 (Martínez Roca, 2002)
 * Sentado Alegre en la Popa (Sitting Cherfull in the Stern) ISBN 978-84-08-05268-5 (2004)
 * Kokoro: A Vida o Muerte (Kokoro: To Life or Death) ISBN 978-84-9734-428-9 (Madrid, La Esfera de los Libros, 2005)
 * Muertes Paralelas (Parallel Deaths) ISBN 978-84-08-07240-9 (Barcelona, Planeta, 2006)
 * Libertad, fraternidad, desigualdad. Derechazos (Freedom, Fraternity, Inequality. Right Jabs) ISBN 978-84-96840-06-5 (Áltera, Madrid, 2007).
 * Diario de la Noche. Los textos más polémicos del informativo nocturno más personal (Diary of the Night. The most Controversial Texts of the most Personal Nocturnal News) ISBN 978-84-08-07443-4 (Planeta, 2007)
 * Y si habla mal de España, es español ( And if He Speaks Bad about Spain, He Is Spanish) ISBN 978-84-08-07697-1 (Planeta, 2008)
 * Soseki: Inmortal y tigre (Soseki: Immortal and Tiger)(Planeta, 2009)
 * Historia mágica del camino de Santiago (The Magical History of the Way of St. James) (Planeta, 2010)
 * Dios los cría... y ellos hablan de sexo, drogas, España, corrupción... (Birds of a Feather Flock... Speak About Sex, Drugs, Spain, Corruption...)(Planeta, 2010)
 * Esos días azules. Memorias de un niño raro (Those Blue Days. Memories of a Strange Boy)(Planeta, 2011)
 * Pacto de sangre: vidas cruzadas (Blood Pact: Crossed Lifes) (Fernando Sánchez Dragó y Ayanta Barilli) (Temas de Hoy, 2013)
 * La canción de Roldán: Crimen y castigo (Roldan's Song: Crime and Punishment) (Editorial Planeta, 2015)

As a writer

 * Premio Nacional de Ensayo (España) Gárgoris y Habidis. Una historia mágica de España. (Gárgoris and Habidis, a Magical History of Spain) (1979)
 * Premio Planeta for La prueba del laberinto (The Labyrinth Race) (1992)
 * Premio Espiritualidad Martínez Roca for El Sendero de la Mano Izquierda (The Left Hand Path) (2002)
 * Premio Fernando Lara of novel for Muertes paralelas (Parallel Deaths) (2006).

As a journalist
As a newspaper, radio and television journalist, he has worked in different countries. He has been awarded Premio Ondas for El mundo por montera and Premio Nacional de Fomento de la Lectura for Negro sobre blanco.

His work on TV
He has been TV presenter and talk-show guest at several cultural programs in TV:

On Televisión Española:


 * Encuentros con las letras (1979 - 1980)
 * Biblioteca nacional (1983)
 * La noche (1989)
 * El mundo por montera (1989 - 1990)
 * Negro sobre blanco (1997 - 2004)
 * Libros con uasabi (2015 - present)

On Nou Televisió:


 * El faro de Alejandría (2002)

On Telemadrid:


 * Diario de la noche (2007 - 2008)
 * Las Noches Blancas (2004 - 2009)

On Cuatro (TV channel):


 * Cuarto milenio (2007 - 2008)

On Telecinco:


 * El gran debate (2012 - 2013)
 * Sábado Deluxe (2017 - present)