Anthony Espina

Antonio Espina García (Madrid, October 29, 1891 - Madrid, February 15, 1972) was a Spanish writer —poet, narrator and essayist— and journalist, initially avant-garde. Of left-wing republican ideology, he occasionally held political positions during the Second Spanish Republic. Chronologically, he belongs to the so-called generation of 27, although he rejected that assignment, which is why he has been included among the writers of the Noucentisme.

Biography

Son of the painter and engraver Juan Espina y Capo, he attended secondary school at the Instituto de San Isidro in Madrid. He entered the Faculty of Medicine by family tradition (grandson and nephew of doctors and academics), but left the race when he was in the fourth year. After doing military service in Africa, he devoted himself to literature and journalism. He was editor of Vida Nueva and Heraldo de Madrid and in the newspapers of Nicolás María de Urgoiti El Sol , Crisol and Light. Espina was an early multifaceted author who practiced the novel, poetry, and literary and art criticism. He also wrote biographies and was a lover of the aesthetic avant-garde, frequenting the Café Pombo gathering around Ramón Gómez de la Serna. His works were not always well received by critics, despite the fact that Juan Ramón Jiménez (in his Españoles de tres mundos ) and other authors would come to adulate him; Apparently, his independence and determination not to be classified or attached to any current harmed him; He was related, however, to authors such as Mauricio Bacarisse and Juan José Domenchina, sometimes close to ultraism, creationism and surrealism, although without actually adhering to any of these schools.

In the 1920s, he wrote several articles against Miguel Primo de Rivera and supported the opposition position of Miguel de Unamuno. He traveled through France, Portugal and Morocco. He collaborated in the magazines España , La Pluma and earned the merit of being one of the essayists of the Revista de Occidente , and regular commentator of Ortega's meetings with his admirers. As an art critic, he also collaborated with La Gaceta Literaria since its founding in 1927, although he ended up breaking with the publication in 1929 due to ideological disagreements with its director, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, whose sympathies He openly rejected fascism. With José Díaz Fernández and Adolfo Salazar (who would later be replaced by Joaquín Arderíus) he directed the left-wing magazine Nueva España, published on January 30, 1930, as soon as it was produced. the fall of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, until his disappearance in 1931. In 1934 he published the collection of essays El nuevo diantre. He also wrote biographies of the bandit Luis Candelas and the famous nineteenth-century actor Julián Romea, and after the war those of Baldomero Espartero, Antonio Cánovas, Francisco de Quevedo, Ángel Ganivet. He also composed an anthology of nineteenth-century Spanish orators. His essays include El alma Garibay , published in Renuevos de Cruz y Raya by José Bergamín and El genio cómico . His book Las tertulias de Madrid will be published posthumously.

In 1933 he was denounced by the German consul when he published the article "The Hitler Case" in El Liberal of Bilbao, arguing that he was insulting a head of state. For this reason he was prosecuted and sentenced to one month and one day, which he served in the Bilbao prison of Larrinaga. He was defended by the prestigious jurist Felipe Sánchez-Román and his imprisonment raised the protests of Dr. Marañón, Pío Baroja, Ortega, Juan Ramón Jiménez and other writers and intellectuals, who signed a manifesto written by Azorín. The triumph of the Second Republic had encouraged him to participate more intensely in politics and he was a member of Manuel Azaña's party, Izquierda Republicana; He was the civil governor of Ávila and later moved with the same position to the Balearic Islands, a few weeks before the uprising of July 18, 1936. In Ávila, he had been replaced by Manuel Ciges Aparicio, also a journalist and writer, who was shot shortly after. Espina was arrested and imprisoned in Palma; in the middle of 1937 he tried to cut his wrists to escape his plight; the judge alleged mental alienation and ordered his admission to the provincial psychiatric hospital, where he remained until 1939, after the civil war had ended; he was sentenced to death and his sentence commuted.

Around 1944, he was documented in Madrid frequenting the British Institute, where he sympathized with its director, Walter Starkie, of whom he would later translate some of his works. Starting in 1945, he also attended the gathering of the Revista de Occidente , where he met his friends Fernando Vela and Valentín Andrés Álvarez. In 1946, after some failed stealth attempts, he managed to leave Spain clandestinely with the help of some smugglers. In Paris he made contact with the organization of the republican exile and collaborated in La Nouvelle Espagne ; he begins to write for the Mexican press thanks to the help of Azaña's former secretary, Santos Martínez Saura. He ends up in exile in Mexico with his family at the end of 1948; there he collaborated in the literary magazines of the republican exile: Reality/Revista de ideas, Las Españas, Los Sesenta, Cabalgata, Iberian Community and The Spanish Novel. He was appointed secretary of literature of the Spanish Ateneo de México.

Returning to Spain in 1953, he worked for Editorial Aguilar, like other refined republican intellectuals and journalists, preparing biographies of famous people for a young audience, and composing the eighteenth-century autobiography Life of Diego Torres and Villarroel. In this publishing house he also published El cuarto poder. One hundred years of Spanish journalism (1960). His friendship with Luis Calvo allowed him to also collaborate in ABC , under the pseudonym "Simón de Atocha" –although they would end up doing without him–, and in the second period of the Revista from the West . In those years he joins the gathering that he gathers at the Café Lion (together with Cibeles), other returnees from exile such as Francisco Ayala or José Bergamín. In May 1968, he had to appear before the Public Order Court, denounced by Gregorio Marañón Moya, son of the doctor who was a supporter of Francoism, for publishing articles against the Spanish dictatorship in Spanish-American newspapers, without being prosecuted.

He died in Madrid on February 15, 1972 and was buried in the Civil Cemetery.

Work and themes

Poetry

His poetry works include Umbrales (1918) and Signario (1923), with an introspective theme. Espina's poems are written with lightness and grace, having been compared to the styles of José Moreno Villa and Ramón Gómez de la Serna, authors with whom he maintained a certain affinity.

Prose

The usual interpretation of Espina's novelistic prose has been made with criteria used for the study of nineteenth-century narrative. Such criteria are not adequate to approach books that are organized in narrative units whose deciphering demands the operability of a reader not limited to the passive reception of the text. Her narrative style has been defined as violent and daring.

José Ortega y Gasset, thinking about the poetry and prose of the twenties, spoke of a superior algebra of metaphors. Certainly the images govern Espina's prose, loaded with an intention that is not limited to the style but, quite the contrary, reaches the society of his time; Espina writes against tackiness and vulgarity. In these fictions there is a mixture very typical of the avant-garde moment, noting the predominance of intelligence and the preference for the poetic image.

He also addressed popular topics, such as the biography of the Madrid bandit Luis Candelas, the Spanish Robin Hood, a fighter but without blood crimes, who treated his victims with courtesy, and was executed by a vile garrote.

Spina Bibliography

Lyrical

• Umbrales, Madrid: Angel Alcoy, 1918.
• Signature, Madrid: Index Library, 1923.
• Selected works2 vols. Gloria Rey Faraldos, Madrid, Fundación Santander Central Hispano, 2000.

Narrative

• Pájaro Pinto, Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1927. Reissued by Gloria Rey, Madrid: Chair, 2001.
• Moon of glasses, Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1929. Reissued by Gloria Rey, Madrid: Chair, 2001
• Ten wins in hand, Barcelona: Ed. Destination, 1944.

Essay

• Divagations. ♪, Madrid: Pueyo, 1919.
• The contemporary comic, Madrid: La Lectura, Imp. Linear city, 1927.
• The new diantre, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1934.
• The book of the air, Madrid: Aguilar, 1957.
• The fourth power. Hundred years of Spanish journalism, Madrid: Aguilar, 1960.
• The soul Garibay, Santiago de Chile/Madrid: Cruz del Sur (Renuevos de Cruz y Raya, n.o 13-14), 1964.
• The comic genius and other essays, Santiago de Chile/Madrid: Cruz del Sur (Renuevos de Cruz y Raya, n.o 17-18), 1965.
• Literature essaysed. to the care of Gloria Rey, Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1994.
• The eloquenceed. by Oscar Ayala, Madrid: Libertarias/Prodhufi, 1995.
• Las tertulias de Madrid (postum).

Biographies

• Luis Candelas, the bandit of Madrid, Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1929. Republished by Jaime More Ferrer, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1996.
• Romea or the comedian, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1935.
• Ganivet: Man and Work Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1942 (4.a ed., 1972).
• Cervantes, Madrid: Editions Atlas, 1943.
• Quevedo, Madrid: Editions Atlas, 1945. Reedited as Quevedo, estudio y antologíaMadrid, Cía. Spanish bibliography, 1962.
• Cánovas del Castillo, Madrid: Pegaso, 1946.
• Sparter or "Camp the national will!", Madrid: Editorial Gran Capitán, 1949.
• Chopin: the man, the artist Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe, 1952.
• Federico the Great, Madrid: Aguilar, 1956.
• Carlomagno, Madrid: Aguilar, 1957.
• Julius Caesar, Madrid: Aguilar, 1958.
• Juan Sebastián Elcano, Madrid: Aguilar, 1959.
• Shakespeare, study and anthology, Madrid: Cía. Spanish bibliography, [1962].
• Six Spanish lives [María Isidra de Guzmán, Diego de Torres Villarroel, María Luisa de Parma, Isidoro Máiquez, Lola Montes, Julián Romea], Madrid: Taurus, 1967.
• Voltaire and the 18th century, Madrid/Gijón: Editions Jucar, 1974.