Benigno Alberto Cardín Garay
(January 15, 1948 - January 26, 1992) Spain
Essayist and activist
Cardín was born in Villamayor (Asturias) and spent a number of years in Mexico during his childhood; he studied at the Jesuit school of Gijón. It was here that he had his sexual initiation. After a few more years in Spain, where he studied at Salamanca University where he studied Philosophy and Litterature, and in Oviedo where he graduate in History od Fine Arts, He moved to London and in 1973 to Barcelona, where he lived for most of his life and died.
 Cardín is probably the key figure in Spanish gay culture after Francoism and his case illustrates the pressures and contadictions suffered by Spanish gay intellectuals. He collaborated on a number of cultural journals, worked on translation of gay authors and took part in several debates during the 1970s and early 1980s. But is the variety of his oeuvre that makes assessment of a daunting task: fiction, anthropological essays, sociology, literary criticism, historical research, poetry and journalism are only some of the areas in which he worked.
Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001 - et alii
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