Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, Goya of Honor 2019

Narciso 'Chicho' Ibáñez Serrador will receive the award for paving the way for an entire generation of Spanish filmmakers and for his exceptional contribution to genre cinema.

Creator of cult films of genre cinema such as Who can kill a child? y The residence, Narciso ‘Chicho’ Ibáñez Serrador, the man who helped popularize horror and fantasy cinema in Spain, will receive the Goya of Honor 2019.

The Board of Directors of the Film Academy agreed to recognize the filmmaker, television producer, screenwriter, theater director and actor with the honorary award from the Spanish Film Awards for being a unique and original creator of nightmares, paving the way for an entire generation of Spanish filmmakers, who have always recognized his influence, and for his contribution to fantasy, suspense and horror.

His legacy in the seventh art continues in internationally recognized directors such as Juan Antonio Bayona, Rodrigo Cortés, Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Jaume Balagueró, Mateo Gil, Enrique Urbizu and Paco Plaza, among others. Along with the last five, he developed in 2006 Movies to Not Sleep, a series of six horror TV movies, of which Ibáñez Serrador directed La culpa.

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (1935, Montevideo, Uruguay) is the only child of the acting couple Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Pepita Serrador. Raised between tours and stages, due to an illness he suffered as a child he became an avid reader and developed his intellectual vocation.

In the 1950s, already in Spain, he worked as an actor in his mother's theater company and, shortly after, he moved into theater direction. In 1957 he returned to Argentina and, together with his father, began a successful collaboration in theater, radio and television. Ibáñez Serrador became a renowned professional as an actor, director and scriptwriter on Argentine television, often signing his texts with the pseudonym Luis Peñafiel.

With theater being his origins – “my school, my university, my ancestors”, in his own words – he discovered that directing and writing attracted him more than acting, becoming what he called “author who directs” or “author who performs”.

He arrived in Spain in 1963, with tapes of his work in Argentina that he presented on Spanish Television, to which he transferred everything he had learned in America, revolutionizing and modernizing the television of the sixties in our country with series such as Tomorrow can be true or The story of Saint Michel, but especially with Stories to not sleep (1966). Added to these are the titles for the small screen The Last Clock, The Asphalt, Stories of Frivolity and The Television (1974). Specialized in literary adaptations and biographies of famous people, especially in his Argentine period, however, it was his science fiction and horror stories that impacted the public the most.

He also cultivated this genre in cinema, giving rise to emblematic Spanish fantasy and horror titles: The residence (1969) y Who can kill a child? (1976), of which he was scriptwriter and director.

His hallmark also included humor, with the previous presentations he made in Stories to keep you from sleeping or in the cycles of My favorite terrors, to which he added a touch of irony and comedy. The career of this popularizer of the classics of the genre also includes radio novels and the plays Aprobado en chastidad, El agujerito and El Águila y la Nieve.

He founded the production company Prointel in 1970 to develop his own productions in film, television, theater and advertising, among which are the legendary program One two, three, answer again.

The career of the “shy” man who scared, amused and made the public think was recognized with the National Television Award in 2010, the Master of Fantastic Award at the Nocturna Festival, the Ondas Award for Best Program for Let's talk about sex, Antena de Oro awards, Iris Award and Feroz de Honor Award, among other awards, to which is now added the Goya de Honor 2019.