César Vidal Manzanares (born 9 May 1958, Madrid) is a Spanish author and radio host.
Early life
Vidal was born in Madrid on 9 May 1958, in the Puente de Vallecas neighborhood. He attended secondary school at the Escuelas Pías de San Antón. Born into a Catholic family, he became a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of fifteen before later converting to evangelical Christianity.[1] His brother is the jurist and writer, Gustavo Vidal Manzanares [es].[citation needed]
Career
Vidal earned has a PhD in law from Alfonso X El Sabio University, and a degree in theology and philosophy from Logos University, where he is a member of the Board of Regents.[citation needed]
He hosted the radio showLa Linterna [es] on Cadena COPE from 2004 to 2009. In 2009, he quit COPE to launch a radio station, esRadio [es], with Federico Jiménez Losantos. In 2013, he abandoned that project due to disagreements with a partner.[5] Since 2014, he has hosted La Voz (The Voice), a radio program that broadcasts from the United States.[4][unreliable source?]
Vidal has written more than 100 books, and several have been on bestseller lists and received historical and literary awards.[8][unreliable source?]
He specializes in historical studies about totalitarian regimes and the history of religions. His book El Holocausto (The Holocaust) is the first complete history of the Holocaust written by a Spaniard.[citation needed] His book Las Brigadas Internacionales (The International Brigades) has been described by American historian Stanley G. Payne as "the most complete book about the International Brigades published in any language, in any time, and in any place."[9][unreliable source?] Payne also said that La Guerra Que Ganó Franco (The War that Franco Won) "is the best military history of the Spanish Civil War in one volume."[citation needed] In his books about the Spanish Civil War, Vidal used original Soviet sources to make claims about the role of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and the Cold War. In Paracuellos- Katin: El Genocidio de la Izquierda (Paracuellos-Katin: The Genocide by the Left) and Checas de Madrid: Las cárceles republicanas al descubierto (Checas de Madrid: Republican Prisons Uncovered), Vidal estimated the number of people murdered during the Spanish Civil War by leftist groups. Among his studies in the history of religions, he has received praise for his trilogy on founders of religions: Jesus, el Judio (Jesus, the Jew); Buda, el Principe (Buddha, the Prince); and Mahoma, el Guia (Mohammed, the Guide).[citation needed] Vidal was the first to translate historical sources such as The Egyptian History of Manetho, The Gnostic Gospels of Nag Hammadi, The Complete Narrative of Ancient Egypt, and Komintern Documents to Spanish.[citation needed]
In his books about the Spanish Civil War (La Guerra que Ganó Franco, Checas de Madrid and Paracuellos-Katyn:El Genocidio de la Izquierda), he presents revisionist views of the conflict that conflict with mainstream historians, but are shared by fellow conservatives like Pío Moa and Ricardo de la Cierva.[citation needed]
On his show, Vidal has claimed that Islam and France have been Spain's main enemies throughout its history.[citation needed] He has theorized that May 68 was "a CIA operation to destabilize general de Gaulle" ("una operación de la CIA para desestabilizar al general De Gaulle").[13] He believes Basque is a "primitive language" ("una lengua tan primitiva").[14] He is skeptical of the theory of evolution.[15]
