The 100th anniversary of Francisco García Pavón revives the debate on a reference point for stories and detective novels.

He won the Critics and Nadal awards and once directed the Taurus publishing house, but his thousands of readers have disappeared. Sonia García Soubriet keeps a folder of black and white photographs of her father, writer Francisco García Pavón (Tomelloso [Castile-La Mancha], 1919-Madrid, 1989).

In one photo, García Pavón poses smiling in front of the family grave, in the cemetery of Tomelloso, the same spot in which he was buried in 1989. “My father was very drawn to death,” says his daughter. In García Pavón’s work, there is a constant nearness to death, as these lines of Las hermanas coloradas (The Red Sisters) reads: “Divided by our roles, belongings, and suits, the family burial place dismantled for other neighbors, and the tombstone broken, that which was our life and presence, our words and dengue, remained so far from reality, like air, just like before being born.” García Pavón won the Nadal Award 50 years ago with that novel.

This month, the 100th anniversary of his birth was commemorated, an event that few remember beyond his native Tomelloso.

Read the whole article here: BABELIA