The journalist and writer Antonio Burgos died this Wednesday at the age of 80 after being hospitalized for a complication of a chronic respiratory disease. Burgos, to whom the Andalusian Government was going to present the Professional Career Award in the 38th edition of the Andalusian Journalism Awards, is one of the most relevant figures in Spanish journalism in the last half century.

The news of his death has been advanced by the newspaper ‘ABC‘, his home for decades. Graduated in Philosophy and Letters and in Romance Philology, he is considered a master of article writingwhich is attested to by numerous and prestigious awards throughout his career, such as the Mariano de Cavia, the Mariano José de Larra, the Joaquín Romero Murube, the Luca de Tena and the González Ruano, among many others.

His journalistic career began in 1966, when he joined the staff of the newspaper ‘ABC de Sevilla’ as an editor. In those years, he also collaborated in publications such as ‘Hermano Lobo’ and ‘La Codorniz’ and served as correspondent in Andalusia for the newspaper ‘Madrid’ and the magazine ‘Triunfo’, representative of the journalism that faced the last years of the dictatorship with a critical spirit. .

At that time he wrote one of his most significant books: ‘Andalusia, Third World?‘, in which he carried out an analysis of Andalusia in the 60s and, stretching the limits of censorship of the moment, expressed his critical vision of the social and political regime in which Spain lived.

For many years his voice has been one of the most significant in the defense of the cultural, social and heritage values ​​of Andalusia, a territory in which he developed much of his extensive journalistic and literary work. Starting in 1977, she consolidated her dedication to writing articles, without abandoning her daily work of writing and writing novels. His column, under the generic title of ‘El Recuadro’, made him one of the most famous journalists in Spain.

He newspaper ‘ABC’ has been his professional home par excellence, except in the period between 1990 and 2004, when he moved his column to ‘Diario 16’ and, later, to ‘El Mundo’. In 2004, he returned to ‘ABC’, and did it again, with ‘El Recuadro’. In ‘ABC of Seville’ he also created the ‘Old Town’ section, in which, under the pseudonym Abel Infanzón, he developed an intense defense of the historical heritage of Seville, in those years a victim of urban speculation.

Convinced monarchist, in his writings He has defended the Constitution and the monarchy Parliamentary of Spain. He was also a crier in 1988 at the Cádiz Carnival along with Carlos Cano, with whom he wrote the copla ‘Habanera de Cádiz’ that the Granada singer-songwriter recorded on the album ‘Cuaderno de Coplas’. In 2008, he gave the Holy Week proclamation in Seville. He is Adopted Son of the City of Cádiz (2002) and Favorite Son of Andalusia (2020) along with the bullfighter and friend Curro Romero.