Antonio Alcalá Galiano

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (February 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

After his secondary studies at the "Real Colegio de la Purísima Concepción de Cabra [es]" (now known as "IES Aguilar y Eslava"), he travelled through the Mediterranean with his father and spent some time in Naples. In 1806, he enrolled as a cadet in the "Guardias Marinas Españolas" and the following year was named Master at the port of Seville. He was married in 1808, but separated from his wife seven years later; because, it is believed, of her infidelity due to his ugliness. After that, he briefly gained a reputation as a libertine and drunkard.

He abandoned his military career in 1812 and became a "Doceañista" (a supporter of the Spanish Constitution of 1812). Two years later, together with José Joaquín de Mora [es], he came out against the German reactionary Romanticism advocated by Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber but, after his stay in London, came to support the new aesthetic and wrote a prologue to El moro expósito (The Moor Exposed), by his friend Ángel de Saavedra; the manifesto of Spanish Romanticism.

He participated in the conspiracy that ended with the triumph of Rafael del Riego in 1820 and was considered to be a great orator; defending Liberalism during the Trienio Liberal. When Ferdinand VII was restored to power after the French invasion, he was forced into self-exile in London.

While there, he survived by teaching Spanish language and literature classes then, from 1828 to 1830, held the Chair of Spanish at the newly created

From that time, he held several ministerial positions and ambassadorships. In 1835, he was one of the co-founders of the Ateneo de Madrid. In 1863, he became a member of the Real Academia de la Historia, followed by a membership at the Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas.^[2]

He wrote a detailed autobiography, published posthumously in two versions: Recuerdos de un anciano (1878) and Memorias (1886). He was also a literary critic. His most notable work in that genre being Lecciones de literatura española, francesa, inglesa e italiana del siglo XVIII. He also composed some Lecciones de derecho político y constitucional (1843). The author, Juan Valera, was his nephew.

Selected writings

• Recuerdos de un anciano, 1878, reprinted by Grupo Planeta, 2009
  ISBN 978-84-989200-1-7

Further reading

• Raquel Sánchez Garcia, Alcalá Galiano y el liberalismo español. Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2005,
  ISBN 84-259-1293-8
• Vicente Llorens, Liberales y románticos. Una emigración española en Inglaterra 1823–1834, Castalia, 1968, reprint 2006,
  ISBN 978-84-974020-1-9
• Felipe Ximénez de Sandoval, Antonio Alcalá Galiano. El hombre que no llegó, Espasa-Calpe, 1948
• Carlos García Barrón, La obra crítica y literaria de Antonio Alcalá Galiano, Dissertation,
  University of California at Los Angeles
  , 1967

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antonio Alcalá Galiano.

• Works by Alcalá Galiano @
  Cervantes Virtual
• Digitalized works by Antonio Alcalá Galiano in the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica of the Biblioteca Nacional de España