41 Facts About Fernando Arrabal

Fernando Arrabal Teran was born on August 11,1932 and is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist, and poet.

Fernando Arrabal was born in Melilla and settled in France in 1955.

Fernando Arrabal has directed seven full-length feature films and has published over 100 plays; 14 novels; 800 poetry collections, chapbooks, and artists' books; several essays; and his notorious "Letter to General Franco" during the dictator's lifetime.

Fernando Arrabal's complete plays have been published, in multiple languages, in a two-volume edition totaling over two thousand pages.

In 1962, Fernando Arrabal co-founded the Panic Movement with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Roland Topor, inspired by the god Pan.

Fernando Arrabal was elected Transcendent Satrap of the College de Pataphysique in 1990.

Fernando Arrabal spent three years as a member of Andre Breton's surrealist group and was a friend of Andy Warhol and Tristan Tzara.

Fernando Arrabal's theatre is a wild, brutal, cacophonous, and joyously provocative world.

Fernando Arrabal is the artistic heir of Kafka's lucidity and Jarry's humor; in his violence, Arrabal is related to Sade and Artaud.

On July 17,1936, when insurrections within the military were staged against the constitutional government of the Second Spanish Republic, launching the Spanish Civil War, Fernando Arrabal's father remained faithful to the Republic and was sentenced to death for mutiny.

Fernando Arrabal's sentence was later commuted to 30 years' imprisonment.

Fernando Arrabal was transferred between prisons, from Santi Espiritu in Melilla to Monte Hacho in Ceuta, where he attempted suicide, as well as Ciudad Rodrigo and Burgos.

Fernando Arrabal was meant to think carefully, since he risked a death sentence for mutiny if he did not join them in their insurrection.

Fernando Arrabal was enrolled in a local Catholic school from 1937 until 1940, when the Civil War ended and he moved with his mother to Madrid.

Fernando Arrabal was awarded the national prize for gifted children in 1941.

Fernando Arrabal continued his studies at Las Escuelas Pias de San Anton, a church school whose alumni have included Victor Hugo and Jacinto Benavente y Martinez.

Fernando Arrabal later studied at another distinguished Madrid school, Colegio Padres Escolapios De Getafe.

Fernando Arrabal was an avid reader and was eager to experience life.

In 1947, when his mother ordered him to attend preparatory classes for entrance to the Academia General Militar, Fernando Arrabal protested by playing hooky.

Fernando Arrabal subsequently sent him to Tolosa, where he studied business at the Escuela Teorico-Practica de la Industria y el Comercio del Papel, in 1949.

In 1951, Fernando Arrabal began working in the paper industry at La Papelera Espanola.

Fernando Arrabal moved to Valencia and passed his bachillerato, the first non-compulsory educational option in Spain for admission to university.

Fernando Arrabal later moved to Madrid and began legal studies.

Fernando Arrabal was finishing his early play Picnic, then titled The Soldiers, and writing El triciclo, at first titled Men with a Tricycle.

In 1954, Fernando Arrabal hitchhiked to Paris to attend a performance of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children given by the touring Berliner Ensemble.

Fernando Arrabal had been known for being anti-Francoist and anti-monarchist and interested in anarchist trends in cultural production.

Fernando Arrabal had ties with the Communist Party of Spain during his exile, but a rupture seems to have occurred in 1977 due to a conflict with his play The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria being performed in Barcelona with artists reputed to have Communist Party ties.

Fernando Arrabal was among the more controversial writers of his time, and his work has been recognized internationally.

Fernando Arrabal was reportedly a finalist for the Nobel Prize in 2005 due to the solicitation of several institutions and individuals.

Fernando Arrabal has written and directed seven feature-length films, and has been awarded the Premio Pier Paolo Pasolini for his contributions to cinema.

In 2005, a 3-disc box set of Fernando Arrabal's films was released by Cult Epics with Viva la muerte, I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse, and The Tree of Guernica.

Several of Fernando Arrabal's plays have been adapted for film, including Le grand ceremonial, directed by Pierre-Alain Jolivet; El triciclo, directed by Luis Argueta; El ladron de suenos, directed by Arroyo; Pique-nique, directed by Louis Senechal; Guernica, directed by Peter Lilienthal; and Fando y Lis, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Fernando Arrabal is madly in love with Faustbal under the sky's cupola.

Fernando Arrabal tries to possess her through the torrent of his tower, employing the services of Mephistopheles himself.

In October 1985, Fernando Arrabal made his debut as an opera stage director at the Opera Royal de Belgique, where he directed Manuel de Falla's La vida breve and Enrique Granados' Goyescas.

Fernando Arrabal has made over 700 artists' books in collaboration with Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Roland Topor, Julius Baltazar, Antonio Saura, Olivier O Olivier, Maxime Godard, Jean Cortot, Jorge Camacho, Ralph Gibson, Enrico Baj, Gustavo Charif, Milan Kundera, Michel Houellebecq and others.

In 2015, some of Fernando Arrabal's poems were adapted with music by the band Seagoat Bones on their etude album Phonemes.

Fernando Arrabal's plays were frequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City throughout the 1970s.

Fernando Arrabal has a strong interest in chess and has attended many chess tournaments.

Fernando Arrabal is close to American chess Grandmaster Gata Kamsky and advocated for Kamsky on his chess blog during Kamsky's negotiations with FIDE over a World Chess Championship match.

For over thirty years, Fernando Arrabal has written a column on chess for the French weekly news magazine L'Express.