Amado José del Pino González

He was born in Tamarindo, in the current municipality of Florencia, Ciego de Ávila. He holds a degree in Performing Arts, with a specialization in Theatrology and Dramaturgy from the Instituto Superior de Arte (1982).

He has worked as a critic, theatrical advisor, and editor-writer for various publications, and has even worked as a screenwriter for Cuban Television. Among his works are titles such as: "El zapato sucio", "Tren hacia la dicha", "Penumbra en el noveno cuarto", "Triángulo", "Teatro", etc.

Throughout his professional career he has received numerous awards: UNEAC Theater Prize in 2003, Annual Theater Criticism Prize in 2003, José Antonio Fernández de Castro Cultural Journalism Prize in 2000, National Journalism Contest Prize 26 de Julio on five occasions, etc.

In 2006 he received a special mention from the Jury for his work with Tania Cordero titled "Los amigos cubanos de Miguel Hernández", at the International Journalism Prize of the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation.

Interested in the figure of Miguel Hernández, he is closely linked to the Foundation that bears his name, and is preparing a theatrical work about some passages from the poet's life during the civil war.

He has worked as an advisor for the Conjunto Dramático de Camagüey and for Teatro Caribeño.

His dramaturgical production has earned him important awards. He is credited with the titles Tren hacia la dicha (Conjunto Dramático de Pinar del Río, dir. M. Miranda, 1987); El zapato sucio —Virgilio Piñera Dramaturgy Prize (2002); Literary Criticism Prize (2003)— (Teatro D Dos, dir. Julio César Ramírez, 2003); Penumbra en el noveno cuarto —UNEAC Prize (2003)— (dir. Osvaldo Doimeadiós, 2004) and Triángulo (Vital Teatro, dir. Alejandro Palomino, 2004).

He has also deployed intense activity as a critic in numerous specialized publications —Tablas (of which he was editor (1985-1988), Conjunto, Revolución y Cultura, La Gaceta de Cuba—and in the cultural section of various capital newspapers.

He has published a selection of his critical studies under the title Sueños del mago. Ensayos sobre dramaturgia cubana contemporánea (2003), which won the Rine Leal Prize that same year. In 2000 he was awarded the José Antonio Fernández de Castro Cultural Journalism Prize, which recognizes the body of this outstanding work. He has occasionally worked as an actor in film —Clandestinos (dir. Fernando Pérez, 1987)— and on television.

For six years Amado has lived between Spain and Cuba: he spent almost four years in Murcia and has spent two more in Madrid, flying across the Atlantic frequently. However, his theater always dialogues with his native land. In September 2011 we saw him in La Habana for the premiere of his work Cuatro menos, which received the Carlos Arniches Prize of Alicante. The Bertold Brecht theater, located in the Vedado neighborhood, was packed with people, with spectators on the floor and on the stairs, experiencing the performance viscerally, nodding, applauding, laughing nervously. The work is very critical and openly raises all the delicate issues that complicate Cuba today: "Although certain critics have considered it a flaw, Cuatro menos is, voluntarily, the least literary of my works, and the most Ibsenian, civic and journalistic: there is observation of reality and pronouncement on it".

Nevertheless, there is much of Spain in one of his works, of brilliant poetic craftsmanship: Reino dividido revolves around the Spanish Civil War and the friendship that united Miguel Hernández and Pablo de la Torriente Brau. Thanks to this work, premiered in La Habana, Amado del Pino fulfilled the dream of performing in Spain and in 2010 toured Orihuela, Alicante, Granada, Sevilla, Linares and León, thus commemorating the centenary of Miguel Hernández. "There were precious performances, like the one in Alicante, which coincided with the days of the anniversary of Miguel's death and was full of Hernández enthusiasts, or the one in Linares, where thanks to Andrés Sorel, a great friend of Cuban culture, a three-day event was held and, as a closing, instead of a speech, was the staging of the work. That was very nice". Amado recalls those days and his gesture, smiling throughout the entire encounter, is now radiant: "A journalist once told me that this was the Miguel Hernández work that had not been written in Spain. It would be pedantic of me to say that, when it is only the humble Cuban version".

The work is the fruit of research sponsored by the Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau (and its director Víctor Casaus, a great specialist of Pablo de la Torriente) and the Miguel Hernández Cultural Foundation, conducted by Amado del Pino and Tania Cordero, journalist, cultural manager and, furthermore, his wife. Based on the few known facts about the encounter between both writers, del Pino imagines the entire story: "The documented life of the encounters between Miguel Hernández and Pablo de la Torriente fits in one page. Both know each other and Pablo appoints Miguel Commissioner of Culture. When Pablo falls, who falls very early, in December of 36 in Majadahonda, Miguel writes an extraordinary poem: the 'Elegía segunda' (the first had been at the death of García Lorca): 'I will remain in Spain, comrade / you told me with an enamored gesture […] because this is one of the dead that grow and enlarge / even though time devastates their giant skeleton'. Later Miguel writes a work, Pastor de la muerte (in my opinion not very good, like all of Miguel's, who is one of the greatest poets of the language but a very static playwright), where one of the characters, who is a reflection of Pablo, he calls El Cubano. That is what is documented; the rest is mine, everything is invented". It is precisely a discovery made during the research that became the trigger for writing Reino dividido: "There is no doubt that Miguel Hernández's 'Elegía a Ramón Sijé' is one of the great elegies of the language, along with Jorge Manrique's Coplas a la muerte de su padre. However, in Orihuela I discovered that Miguel and Ramón are at odds when the latter dies. Miguel would think: 'I am in my twenties and have a whole life to reconcile with him', but suddenly his friend dies. There is a dramatic level there; when I learn that Sijé and Miguel are confronted for political and even religious reasons, I tell myself: this work must be written".

In addition to his two indisputable protagonists, over forty characters pass through the work, such as Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Miguel Altolaguirre, José María Chacón y Calvo, María Zambrano or Teté Casuso, Pablo de la Torriente's wife, who fascinates the playwright: "Teté Casuso interested me greatly, as she was a fascinating character: a somewhat bad poet, because she is a kind of echo of Juana de Ibarbourou and Alfonsina Storni, and at the same time cool, because she is one of the first feminist poets. Furthermore, she helps Fidel Castro in the Granma expedition but ends up at odds with the Revolution. When Reino dividido is written, the name of Teté Casuso, who had been the muse, the girl, the adoration of Pablo de la Torriente Brau, has not appeared in a Cuban public medium for thirty years".

Parallel to Reino dividido, whose text is published by the Centro Pablo, Amado co-wrote with Tania Cordero a monograph, still unpublished, titled Los amigos cubanos de Miguel Hernández, which analyzes the role of Cubans in the Congress of Antifascist Writers of 1937 in Valencia, that of the speakers (and those who were not) at the tribute to Miguel Hernández in La Habana in January 1943, and the reception of his work in Cuba since the Revolution. "Tania and I worked on the book much more than on the play. But anyway, there it is, without a publisher, waiting for luck or better times…".

Del Pino has been a judge for the Tirso de Molina Prize, has taught theater workshops and lectures at the Menéndez Pelayo University and at the University of Alicante. And, of course, he writes.

Amado del Pino died in Madrid at age 56.