Lourdes Ortiz

Lourdes Ortiz (b. 1943, Madrid, Spain) is a Spanish writer of novels, plays, poems and essays. She has worked for several different newspapers and magazines, including El País, El Mundo, and Diario 16, mainly focusing on social and political topics.

Oritz was educated in a convent school where she studied philosophy and literature until the age of sixteen. At nineteen years old, she married a poet named Jesus Munarriz, with whom she had a son, and divorced in 1968. She than became partners with philosopher Fernano Savater, and later went on to having relations with actor and writer Daniel Sarasola in the eighties. She went on to studying geography and history in the Complutense University of Madrid and taught art history in Spain’s Royal School for Dramatic Arts, where she was the director from 1991 to 1993. She has collaborated with different newspapers and magazines including El País, El Mundo, and Diario 16, writing opinion-based columns on social and political issues. In 1999, she began working on a television show called "Así es la Vida", which translates to "This is How Life Is", that accompanied the morning news on the network Telecinco. Despite her involvement in the news industry, Ortiz has stated that she has a greater passion for writing novels rather than newspaper articles. She believes that novels exhibit dimensions of her own time and finds them more challenging to write.

Ortiz is known for her variety of work in drama, poetry, essays, and fiction. One of her most popular novels is Luz de memoria (1976). It tells the story of a man who after suffering an emotional crisis, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She subsequently published Picadura mortal (1979) which entails how a detective named Barbara Sands investigates the disappearance of a businessman in the Canary Islands. Her next novel, En días como éstos (1981), addresses issues of terrorism and violence. Ortiz then published Magpie (1982), a historical novel about Queen Urraca of Castile and León and mother of Alfonso VII. This story focuses on the dialogue between the queen and the imprisoned monk who brings her food. In this novel, the author utilizes archaic language in order to recreate the medieval atmosphere as well as to describe the strong and ambitious nature of the protagonist. Another one of her well-known pieces is Archángeles (1986), which is a reflection on the passage of time, and ironic and retrospective to those who were protagonists in Spain during the sixties.

Her other novels include Camas (1989), Antes de la batalla (1992), La fuente de la vida (1995), Fatima de los naufragios (1998), La liberated (1998), and Una mirada insólita sobre Pablo y Nerón (1999). In the field of drama, Lourdes Ortiz has published Las murals de Jericó (1980), Penteo (1983), and Fedra (1984). Her novel La fuente de la vida made her the finalist of the Planet Prize. Ortiz has also worked with several publications, has translated books from French and has maintained an active involvement in politics.

Her works include: