Miguel Delibes dies at 89; award-winning Spanish novelist

Miguel Delibes, an acclaimed and prolific novelist whose work featured gritty depictions of rural life in post-civil war Spain and psychological analyses of characters facing turning points, died Friday. He was 89.

Delibes, who had been fighting colon cancer for several years, died at his home in the north-central city of Valladolid, Spain, Spanish National Radio said, citing his family.

Delibes started as a cartoonist for a provincial newspaper before becoming a reporter, editor and finally a novelist in a career spanning more than 50 years, culminating in his winning the Spanish-speaking world’s top literary award, the Cervantes Prize, in 1993, among other accolades. He was also a member of the Spanish Royal Academy, the official watchdog of the Spanish language.

“I feel sorry that there was not enough time for him to win the Nobel, because he was one of those authors who deserved it,” said Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, Spain’s culture minister. “He was a much-read writer, incredibly prolific and also a great inspiration for other artists.”

Delibes hailed from Valladolid in the Castilian heartland of central Spain, where he was born in 1920, and his deep roots there and love of rural life -- he was an avid hunter and wrote often about it -- surfaced repeatedly in his books.

One of his most popular ones, “The Innocent Saints,” published in 1981, illustrates the impoverished existence of peasants living under a selfish and wealthy landowner. In a dramatic scene near the end, a simple-minded peasant rigs a trap that hangs the rich man after he shoots the peasant’s pet bird with a hunting rifle. The book was made into a movie in 1984 by Spanish director Mario Camus.

Another of Delibes’ most popular works was “Five Hours With Mario,” published in 1966, in which a widow sitting by her husband’s coffin muses over their time together and critiques the beliefs and social mores of provincial life.

In his acceptance speech when he won the Cervantes Prize, Delibes looked back on his career and said that life goes by quicker for writers because they spend so much time inside the heads of their characters, neglecting their own existence.

He noted that the protagonist of one of his books once commented to an older co-worker, age 70, that “if I were that age, I would die of fright.”

“Now I must admit I have that same age,” Delibes said in the speech. “How is this possible?”

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