August 1897 – May, 1944 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

) was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 journalist

Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 and writer, an enthusiastic supporter of the Second Spanish Republic

Second Spanish Republic

The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

 and friend of the new President Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña Díaz was a Spanish politician. He was the first Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic , and later served again as Prime Minister , and then as the second and last President of the Republic . The Spanish Civil War broke out while he was President...

.

Biography

His father was also a journalist and he began working in the newspaper El Liberal in Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

 whilst he was still very young.

In 1922 he moved with his wife and daughter to Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 and there he worked in the El Heraldo de Madrid with other young promising journalists.

In 1927 he won the most prestigious journalist prize in Spain, Mariano de Cavia with a feature article on Ruth Elder, the first woman who flew across the Atlantic on her own. Because he was very enthusiastic about the future he embarked on many risky flights including an adventurous flight to the new USSR, which gave him material for three new books: Around the world in an aircraft; A bourgeois in red Russia and A Bolshevik in love.

In 1930 he wrote one of the best ever written books on bull fighting, Belmonte, killer of bulls, which was translated into English and French, and in 1931 he is designated Director of a new and independent national newspaper, Ahora, ideologically related to the Republic and to Manuel Azaña.

The following years he travelled through Europe constantly and the result was two more books on the Russian revolution, What is left of the Empire of Tzars, published in 1931, and Juan Martinez who was there, published in 1934 which tells the story of a Spanish dancer who was caught in Russia during the 1917 revolution.

Chaves Nogales was a moderate left-wing republican democrat who defined himself as antifascist and antirevolutionary. When the Spanish civil war broke out he worked for the cause of the Republic until the government abandoned Madrid and moved to Valencia, then Chaves like so many other Spanish intellectuals, was forced to leave Spain.

In exile in 1936 in Paris he worked for Cooperation Paris Service which sent articles to various South American news papers. In Paris he collaborated with the L’Europe Nouvelle and Candide.

In 1937 he published a new book Heroes, Beasts and Martyrs of Spain, considered one of the best book based on stories that illustrate the suffering supported by both sides of the civil war, the book was reedited in 2001. In its prologue Manuel Chaves writes brutality and stupidity reigned in Spain fed equally by the fever of communism and the blandness of fascism.

Due to his many articles denouncing the advance of German fascism he was on the Gestapo list and was once again forced to abandon Paris when the German army approached the French capital.

In 1940 he arrived in London and between 1941 and 1942 he directed The Atlantic Pacific Press Agency, worked at the Evening Standard where he had his own column, and collaborated with BBC Overseas Broadcasts.

His wife and four children had returned to the south of Spain in 1940 fleeing from the German invasion of France and so Manuel Chaves Nogales lived on his own in London for four years whilst he continued his work as a journalist fighting against extreme right and extreme left positions. He died in 1944, when he was only 46 years old, and is buried in London.

Works

• Juan Belmonte, matador de toros; su vida y sus hazañas: Estampa, Madrid 1935.

Reprinted: Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1992.

• Juan Belmonte, killer of bulls

W.W. Norton company inc. New Cork 1939. (English edition edited and translated by Leslie Charteris

Leslie Charteris

Leslie Charteris , born Leslie Charles Bowyer-Yin, was a half-Chinese, half English author of primarily mystery fiction, as well as a screenwriter. He was best known for his many books chronicling the adventures of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint."-Early life:Charteris was born to a Chinese father...

)

• Juan Belmonte, matador de taureaux. Verdier, Lagrase, 1990.

• A sangre y fuego. Héroes, Bestias y Mártires de España: Ercilla, Santiago de Chile 1937.

Reedited Espasa Editorial, Madrid. 2001.

• Heroes and Beasts of Spain: Traducción a inglés, New York 1939.

• El maestro Juan Martínez que estaba allí: Estampa 1934.

Second edition, Colección Castillejo Narrativa, Sevilla 1992.
Reedited: Libros del Asteroide, Barcelona 2006.

• The Fall on France: Editores Claudio García & Cía., Montevideo 1941.
• La agonía de Francia: Biblioteca de Autores Sevillanos, Diputación de Sevilla 2001.

• La ciudad, Talleres de La Voz, Sevilla 1921.
• La ciudad, Universidad de Sevilla, colección de bolsillo 1977.
• La ciudad, Reeditado 2005.

• Narraciones Maravillosas y biografías ejemplares de algunos grandes hombres humildes y desconocidos: Caro Raggio, Madrid 1920.

Libros Clan A. Gráficas S.L. 1994.

• La vuelta a Europa en avión. Un pequeño burgués en la Rusia roja: Mundo Latino

C.I.A.P., Madrid 1929.

• La bolchevique enamorada (El amor en la Rusia roja): Esther Barcelona 1929.