Background
Wenceslao Flórez was born on February 11, 1885, in La Coruña, Galicia. He was the son of Antonio Luis Fernández Lago and Florentina Flórez Núñez.
1909
Wenceslao Flórez (in the middle)
1923
Wenceslao Flórez
1949
Wenceslao Flórez
Wenceslao Flórez
Wenceslao Flórez
Wenceslao Flórez
Wenceslao Flórez
Wenceslao Flórez was born on February 11, 1885, in La Coruña, Galicia. He was the son of Antonio Luis Fernández Lago and Florentina Flórez Núñez.
Wenceslao Flórez left school at fifteen and started to work because of his father's death.
Wenceslao Flórez's father's death forced him to abandon his education, and he dedicated himself to journalism. His first job was with A Coruña's La Mañana. Then, he worked at the El Heraldo de Galicia, Diario de A Coruña, and Tierra Gallega. At the age of seventeen, Wenceslao led La Defensa de Betanzos magazine, and at the age of eighteen - the newspaper Diario Ferrolano. Wenceslao held a leadership position at the Diario Ferrolano about for a year and a half. Then, he returned to A Coruña and held a senior position at the El Noroeste de La Coruña.
Wenceslao Flórez took his first steps as a writer with Manuel Maria Puga, Carré brothers, Tettamanci, Manuel Casas, Ángel del Castillo, among others. But who impressed him was Castelao, one of the cartoonists who most often illustrated his work.
Wenceslao was very successful with writing social and national satire, and much of his work contained brash humor and profound irony. His novels were in Spanish, and some of his stories in the Galician language. Wenceslao Flórez published about forty novels and books of humorous stories, characterized by wonderful ironic humor of Galician prejudice, sometimes close to fantastic.
His early novels focused on describing Galician provincial life using a naturalistic approach that lacks a melancholy note. Among them are La procesión de los días and Volvoreta. Con Ha entrado un ladrón began to practice skeptical humor, which was characteristic of later creations, such as El secreto de Barba Azul, Relato inmoral, El malvado Carabel and El hombre que compró un automóvil. Volvereta, Ha entrado un ladrón, and Unos pasos de mujer are three novels that exemplified Fernández Flórez's early stage of narration.
Wenceslao Flórez's book, El Secreto del Barba-Azul, marked the start of the second stage in the development of Wenceslao's comic technique. This novel showed a sharp departure from earlier realistic works, as the characters became caricatures and the places became symbolic. Another "development" in Wenceslao Flórez's technique observed in Relato inmoral. Closely allied to the theme of love and sex was that of the mores of Spanish society in which the character seemed to find sexual gratification.
During the civil war, fleeing the militia guarding the guard, Wenceslao Flórez' found refuge in the embassy of the Argentine Republic, from where he went to seek shelter in the embassy in Madrid. Under the protection of this embassy, he was able to go to Valencia in March 1937, which was the first step towards leaving Spain. In his experience at the Dutch Embassy and Madrid in 1936 and 1937, Wenceslao subsequently wrote two novels, Una Isla en el mar Rojo and La Novela número 13, the bitter descriptions of Madrid in the era of the Popular Front.
Another aspect of Wenceslao Flórez's career was his relationship with cinema. The period of its collaboration was from the 1940s to the 1950s. In 1944 he participated in the script of the film Destiny apologizes by José Luis Sáenz de Heredia. Some of his works had adapted into Rafael Gil's films, such as The man who wanted to kill himself and Light footprint in 1943.
(The book was published after Wenceslao Flórez's death in ...)
1979Wenceslao Flórez was a follower and admirer of the politics of Antonio Maura. He radicalized his political views, and blamed the Spanish Falange in the newspaper ABC Franciscanism for his attitude, in his opinion, not cruel to the newly formed political entity. This brought him mortal threats at the start of the civil war.
Wenceslao Flórez offered a desolate and bitter vision of life and of the world that was both personal and universal in his works.
Quotes from others about the person
Delfín Carbonell: "Wenceslao Flórez proves capable of painting two facets of existence: the humorist face and the tragic-humorist. His world is a world of laughter and tears that proves a deep preoccupation with the fundamental heartfelt problem or the significance of existence. He presents examples of vulgar persons... men profoundly mortified by the accident of circumstances they do not understand or are unable to rise above."