Luis Martín Santos

Luis Martín-Santos Ribera (11 November 1924 – 21 January 1964) was a Spanish psychiatrist and author of Tiempo de silencio (Time of Silence), considered one of the greatest Spanish novels of the twentieth century.

Martín-Santos was born in Larache, Morocco in 1924. Son of the military doctor Leandro Martín-Santos, at five years of age his family moved to San Sebastián, where he would ultimately spend most of his life. He studied medicine in Salamanca and received his doctorate in psychiatry in Madrid, where he developed friendships with specialists like doctors Juan José López Ibor, Pedro Laín Entralgo, and Carlos Castilla del Pino. At the same time, he became interested in literature and spent time at the Café Gijón, where he met many prominent writers of his generation like Ignacio Aldecoa, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, and Juan Benet. He also spent time with Alfonso Sastre.

As a journalist, he published Tauromaquia (Bullfighting) and Noticia del coloquio sobre realismo y realidad en la literatura contemporánea (News from the Colloquy on Realism and Reality in Contemporary Literature). As a poet, he wrote Grana Gris which was published in 1945. His most important work was done as a narrator, an area in which he is considered to have initiated the technical revolution of the Spanish social novel during the sixties.

In 1951 he became director of the psychiatric hospital of San Sebastián and subsequently reintegrated into the life San Sebastián. He participated in the so-called "Academia Errante," a debate forum created by restless Spanish intellectuals in the sixties who were searching for new forms of expression. He read Jean-Paul Sartre extensively and became interested in existentialism.

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