Ramón Chao

Who is Ramón Chao?

Ramón Luís Chao Rego is a Spanish journalist and writer. He won the Premio de Virtuosismo for Piano in 1955. The same year he moved to Paris, France to study music with Nadia Boulanger and Lazare Lèvy. In 1960 he began his collaboration with the RTF's Iberian languages Service. He was head of this service ten years later. At the same time he was collaborating with the Spanish weekly Triunfo, the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, and the daily newspapers Le Monde and La Voz de Galicia.

Ramón Chao was named chevalier de Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1991 and named as an officier in 2004. In 2003 the Spanish government awarded him the Orden del Mérito Civil. In 1997 he won the prize Premio Galicia de la Comunicación. In 2001, the Liberpress prize in Gerona for his human coherence and his solidarity in the field of journalism: “pela seva coherència humana y solidaritat periodística”.

He is the father of radio journalist Antoine Chao and of the musician and singer Manu Chao, both of them members of the Mano Negra band whose Colombian adventure was described in Ramón Chao's book Mano Negra en Colombia: Un tren de hielo y fuego.