• Death of Naoko, Emma Nogueiro and the other women in the life of Sánchez Dragó (always younger and with short hair)
  • Relations This is how Antonio Escohotado raised the woman to Fernando Sánchez Dragó
  • Relationships Akela, you and I, puppy man, are of the same blood

Fernando Sánchez Dragó boasted of children, although he himself acknowledged that he had not been a good father. "Life has given me a master's degree in parenthood," said the writer, who died Monday at age 86, in an interview with La Vanguardia in 2013. He had just become a father for the fourth time at age 75. The boy, whom he named Akela, after the wolf of The Jungle Book, was born at home and is the result of the writer's relationship with Naoko, a Japanese 38 years younger than him who became his third wife. In the same interview Sánchez Dragó also said that when Akela turned 18 he would take him on a trip to Asia. He has not been able to keep that promise.

Sánchez Dragó and Naoko shortly after giving birth to Akela.EM

Drago's sentimental and sexual life was intense and not without controversy because of his preference for women much younger than him. He even boasted of having sex with two 13-year-old Japanese teenagers. The writer had four children with as many women. He referred to them as "the herd." The eldest, Alejandro Sánchez Salama, is 63 years old (Dragó himself joked that he could be his younger brother's grandfather) and is not well known. Alejandro is the result of the writer's second marriage to Beatriz Salama, a relationship that broke down when she left him for his friend Antonio Escohotado with whom, despite everything, he continued to maintain his friendship. Escohotado himself narrated that episode in his autobiographical book Mi Ibiza privada (Espasa). Salama and the essayist ended up getting married and remained together until Escohotado's death in 2021.

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Ayanta Barilli (54) is the second of Sándrez Dragó's children and the best known. Actress and writer, in 2018 she was a finalist for the Planeta Prize with Un mar violeta oscuro. Ayanta is the daughter of Caterina Barilli, a professor of History and Philosophy whom Dragó met in Italy. Ayanta spent her childhood in Rome but the death of her mother from breast cancer, when she was 9 years old, marked her deeply. He moved to Madrid, where his father lived, with whom he maintained a difficult relationship for several years. In 2005 he published his first book, Un año de amor, where he compiled the best love letters collected in his radio program of the Cope and in 2013 came to light Pacto de sangre, written with his father, about paternal-filial relationships. In addition, he directs the radio program A Media Luz, of esRadio.

The third daughter, Aixa (42), was born from the writer's relationship with the French Martine Saiz Pee. Very little is known about Aixa and what has transpired was revealed by her father in one of his columns in EL MUNDO, Dragolandia, published in 2010. "My other daughter, Aixa, who now lives in Cairo (has given him to learn Arabic. That will be good for us when Al Qaeda recovers Andalus), he usually reads Dragolandia and the same thing stings me. Children are like that. Relax, baby! You are also very pretty. Insh'Allah!"

At 75 came Akela, of whom Dragó was very proud. Last December he posted a tweet announcing that the boy had begun to follow in his footsteps as a writer. "My ten-year-old son Akela has started writing a book: 'My Cat Stories.' It takes three or four pages now. I would like to reproduce them here, but I don't know how to do it. I have blown some words into him, very few, and I have corrected his accents, which are not very good for him...", he wrote.

A few days later, on December 26, he uploaded another message saying that Akela had read part of the book. "Yesterday, at the Eleusino Meeting on Sacred Zoology. My family and other animals (cats, especially). Akela and Ayanta spoke. Professors Piñero and Hernández de la Fuente, and me, too. My young son read part of his first book. Swept. Today we continue."

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