Tiago García Ferrara

An once-revered but falled out of favor Spanish novelist, essayist, poet and memoirist. Literary experts assumed he was the real V. M. Straka.

He was notoriously moody and melancholic.

Ostrero from Ship of Theseus was probably based on him.

Biography
He was born in Valencia in 1887. While still a university student he saw his first success with Baila, Josefina. He spent the next years (as he later acknowledged) searching for more serious and mature subject matter. He returns with a series of books that advocated for economic equality and agricultural reform in Spain's rural regions. He became more politically active, infamous among all levels of power, and eventually a prominent voice in the Republican cause.

Picasso did a blue-period portrait of him but he destroyed it as it made him too sad looking at it.

He married a much younger woman and started a family. During the Spanish Civil War he fought for the republican side until late 1936 when his wife and kids were threatened. There is a general agreement that he lost his willingness to risk his life and his family’s safety to the point of abandoning the Republican cause and capitulating to the Fascists in late 37.

In October 37 he was in Hotel Florida with Ernest Hemingway, Dos Passos, Amarante Durand and were seen in a picture. V. Finch wrote him a letter saying that C. should not have taken their friend there, and that he should not let their friend stay.

He is considered responsible for Durand's death as he disappeared shortly before the fascists got her. After this he was disgraced both in Spain and the literary community, he fell and out of print and never wrote again. In August 38 he was banished from S group.

He retreated into isolation, struggling to support his family on their unproductive apple orchard and, reportedly, crippled by depression and regret.

During a fascist air raid in the final days of the war (1939?), one of his sons was killed and his heart was shattered for the rest of his life.

He was found hanged from one of his trees on October 30, 1945. A suicide note nailed to the trunk contained an apology to his family for disappointing them (notably no mention about his treachery). There is a biography of him with a photograph of his note.

Legacy
F. X. Caldeira left cryptic messages in SoT that Ferrara was not a traitor.

J. Lorens wrote The many faces of Tiago García Ferrara mentioning the Picasso portrait.

Works
His memoirs and essays were boldly—even wildly—frank and confessional, socially, politically, and in every other way.

Baila, Josefina (1905), a wildly popular account of young love, and En el Vino, Mi Vida (1909) were his first successes while still a student.

Of his mature prose works, Somos los Toros (1931) was the most popular and critically well-regarded. La Paradoja del Jueves (1924) is generally acknowledged as his finest collection of poetry. Lines 31-32 mentions children sold to the Arab market.