Llano, Manuel

Manuel Llano is a native of the village of Sopenha in the Spanish province of Cantabria . He spent his childhood mainly with his grandparents in the town of Kabuerniga . The Lyamo family was not rich and the boy worked since childhood - first as an assistant to a shepherd, later - as an assistant to a pharmacist.

Having matured, Manuel moved to the main city of Cantabria, Santander , and tried to study marine affairs at one of the local schools, but very quickly came to the conclusion that this was not his way. Ultimately, he receives a school teacher diploma and begins teaching at a small rural school in the Cantabrian town of Elguhera .

In parallel, he tries himself as a journalist - writes for local newspapers and the main newspaper of the region “El Pueblo Cantabro”. In those same years, his first literary works appeared. For the rest of his life, Lyamo combines literature with journalism, earning the last bread, despite the fact that economic difficulties (including those related to the Civil War ) constantly led to the closure of magazines and the search for a new job.

Already in the first works of Llano, traits were formed that would be characteristic of all his further work - proximity to folk life, the weaving of the narrative fabric with the ancient mythology of Cantabria, the widespread use of the Cantabrian dialect , which flourished his works in a special way. Among the most striking are the novel “The Sun of Deaths”, storybooks.

Already in 1925, he gives readings of his works in major cities of the country, to get acquainted with many writers, and two years later, one of the leading Spanish novelists of that time, Jose Asorin, specially comes to quiet Santander to visit Llano. Later, Manuel Llano maintained friendly relations with such iconic figures of Spanish literature as Miguel de Unamuno and Gerardo Diego.

• Biography of Manuel Llano (Spanish)