The historian and Jesuit Fernando García de Cortázar, winner of the 2008 National History Award, died this Sunday at the Hospital de la Luz in Madrid at the age of 79, after being admitted last Thursday for an intestinal perforation, the Society of Jesus reported.
Fernando García de Cortázar y Ruiz de Aguirre (Bilbao, 1942) was the author of seventy books and also encyclopedias such as the ten-volume work La Historia en su Lugar, he also wrote about history in numerous articles in the press and for various television series such as Memory of Spain.
According to the Society of Jesus, the historian died unexpectedly at five this morning after being admitted last Thursday for an intestinal perforation. He underwent surgery, but a postoperative complication caused his death.
His body has been transferred to the San Isidro funeral home in Madrid and will be buried next Tuesday in the Loyola sanctuary, in Guipúzcoa, where he was ordained a priest in 1971 after joining the Society of Jesus in 1959.
He was also professor of History of Contemporary Spain and professor of Social and Human Sciences from 2007 to 2022. A disciple of the historian Miguel Artola, he dedicated himself to researching the history of the Basque Country, Spain and the Church. He was awarded numerous prizes such as the National History Prize in 2008 for his work History of Spain from Art (2007) and he also directed the Fundación Vocento.
García de Cortázar published last year Landscapes of the History of Spain (Espasa), an approach to the history of Spain from the places where its main episodes took place.
