FRANCISCO SUAY

The work of Francisco Suay is well known amongst anglers in Spain through the wealth of articles and occasional pieces he published in angling magazines of the 1950s and 60s under the pseudonym of 'Genuine Angler'. However, when the translator of Gilthead, John Langridge, came to research his life he found that little was known about him. He obviously knew a great deal about angling and had a gift for narrative. He also illustrated his writing with his own line drawings. Apart from La dorada (The Gilthead Sea Bream) of 1959, he also published two other books - El black-bass (The Black Bass) in 1968 and Pexcando la trucha (Fishing for trout) in 1986.

Suay lived for a great many years in France, in Montpellier, very probably as a refugee from the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 39) and sent his manuscripts to the Spanish magazines from there. John Langridge suspects that, although Spanish by birth (possibly from Catalonia), Suay may have moved to France at an early age and adopted the French language as his first language, as there is evidence of some surprising linguistic errors in his work.