Fernando Sanchez Drago
Fernando Sánchez DragóCite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag
The controversy around these statements was enormous, such that the union sections of Unión General de Trabajadores, Comisiones Obreras, and Confederación General del Trabajo in Telemadrid, where Dragó presented the program Las noches blancas, demanded his dismissal. The author responded that the anecdote was a provocative embellishment, and that the people alluded to were really older young women, with whom he never established relations.[1]
Despite the scandal, Dragó was defended by the then female president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre,[2] and would be the subject of a manifesto in his defense written by his co-author Boadella, the renowned philosophers Fernando Savater and Gustavo Bueno, the writers Luis Racionero, María Dueñas, Montero Glez, Luis Alberto de Cuenca, Benjamín Prado and Juan Bonilla, and the Oscar-winning filmmaker José Luis Garci, among others.
Esperanza Aguirre argued that "The history of literature is full of stories of absolutely reprehensible acts. García Márquez, Henry Miller, Gil de Biedma... What's wrong, do we have to burn the books at the stake? Do we have to burn the authors?"[3] In the Manifesto, the signatories defended freedom of expression, against what they saw as modern-day book burning:
- It is incomprehensible that such hatred should be unleashed against a writer for having referred , in an otherwise literary manner, to a fact unequivocally protected by law: having maintained some hint of sexual relations with minors who are over a certain age and who act with their full consent.[4]
References
- ↑ Dragó retracts his statement: "Nobody cheated anyone", Vanitatis (2010), English translated.
- ↑ Aguirre defends Sanchez Drago, Society (2010), English translated.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Leading intellectuals support a manifesto in defense of Sánchez Dragó, El Mundo (English translation which includes the full Manifesto text).