In 1953 he was nominated consul of Colombia in Europe, but he stayed most of the time in Bilbao where he studied Simon Bolívar and Ignatius of Loyola. His friend Thornton Wilder and Jean-Paul Sartre asked to include his name in the list of candidates to the Nobel Prize in Literature of 1955 and two times he was nominated.Jorge A. Zapata Z.: "Fernando González Ochoa". Monografías.com. Retrieved on May 9, 2008. The writers Gabriela Mistral, Jacinto Benavente and Miguel de Unamuno admired his work.
