Jose Ortega Munilla

José Ortega Munilla (Cárdenas, October 26, 1856 - Madrid, December 30, 1922) was a Spanish writer and journalist, father of José Ortega y Gasset. A good part of his career was linked to the newspaper El Imparcial , of which he became director. In his facet as a novelist he was attached to literary realism.

Biography

He was born on October 26, 1856 in Cárdenas, on the island of Cuba, although he was taken to Madrid when he was only a few months old and he always considered himself a Madrid native. He is the son of José Ortega Zapata, originally from Valladolid, and María del Pilar Munilla Urquiza, from Extremadura. His father was a member of the moderate party and held an important position in the Cuban colonial administration, although his main activity was journalism. Ortega Munilla began his studies in the seminaries of Cuenca and Gerona, which he abandoned when the revolution of 1868 broke out to start law studies. At that time he was a restless young man who shared the progressive spirit of the Revolution.

He was editor of La Iberia, the organ of the party of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. With his friend Miguel Moya he founded the literary magazine La Linterna and also published with him a bullfighting newspaper, El Chiclanero . Due to his literary work, he was part of the realist generation of 1968, he shared with the positivist philosophy and the Krausist currents and became a defender of naturalism in literature. He began writing a section, & # 34; Crónica semanal & # 34;, in Los Lunes de El Imparcial , a section within El Imparcial .

Ortega Munilla in his office photographed by Franzen (White and Black12 January 1901)

On June 9, 1881, he married a daughter of the founder of El Imparcial, Dolores Gasset y Chinchilla (1860-1939). Four children were born from this marriage: Eduardo, who died in exile in Caracas in February 1965; Rafaela, who died in 1940; Manuel, the author of the Biography of El Imparcial, who died in September 1965; and the best known, José Ortega y Gasset, the philosopher who died in 1955.

He obtained the act of deputy in Congress for the district of Padrón (La Coruña) in the elections of April 27, 1898. He will be re-elected, without interruption, for the same district until the elections of May 8, 1910 (a total of of seven electoral calls).

Ortega Munilla was elected a full member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1902, and entered with a speech on Ramón de Campoamor; Although he began as a contributor to Los Lunes de El Imparcial, he went on to work in the literary section of the newspaper, the most prestigious of its time and which had been founded by his father-in-law, Eduardo Gasset, a liberal monarchist, and later went on to direct it. He was one of the managers of the trust, and protector of the newspaper El Sol , subjected to the cultural influence of his son José Ortega y Gasset. He turned his press chain into the springboard for the writers of the generation of '98 who were beginning to make their way: Azorín, Pío Baroja and Valle-Inclán. In 1916 he traveled with his son through Argentina, but when he returned the doctor advised him to retire most of the time in Vitoria. In 1917 he was interviewed by El Caballero Audaz, who described him thus:

Yes, here lives the one who for more than thirty years led El Imparcial; the one who was a long time axis of national life, the illustrious journalist around whom he turned all the Spanish politics; the one who with an article knocked down a government; the one who put his good view on political cabinets; the one who depicted wallets, the distinguished writer who was flattered by all the rulers.

After suffering hemiplegia in September, he died on December 30, 1922 at his home in Madrid.

Work

Ortega Munilla caricatured by Lengo Alma Española (1904)

As a journalist, he wrote more than a thousand articles and chronicles for fifty Spanish-language newspapers. He stood out for his indisputable talent for humor, a loose, metaphorical and colorful style, attentive to popular language, and a narrative agility that he kept until the end of his life, when ABC opened its columns to him, except for a long intermission between 1900 and 1916 in which he did not publish any title. His favorite themes are helpless childhood and irrational decisions. He was especially influenced by Charles Dickens, Honoré Balzac and Benito Pérez Galdós.He began his career as a storyteller from the sentimental post-romantic novel. He grouped his novels from 1879 to 1884 under the name Contemporary Relations . From the 1880s he wrote realist novels. He adhered to naturalism from The bottom of the barrel (1881-84), looking for social themes, which reappear in The brown cloth (1916).

In Cleopatra Pérez (1884), her most markedly naturalistic novel, the protagonist who lends her name to the novel, beloved of the Duke of Ripamilán, has a son by this nobleman: Valentín, abandoned and adopted by the Rubín couple. When the duke dies, he bequeaths a fortune to his son, so Valentin returns to his mother. Circumstances obscure this paternity and Cleopatra denies her son for the second time, who commits suicide.

From Madrid to Chaco

Other novels of his are La cicada (1879), whose subject continued in Sor Lucila (1880), his first novels, so excessively sentimental that they can be called tear-jerking; The Faun and the Dryad (1882); Gloomy Idyll (1887) and La señorita de Cisniega (1918). He also wrote the novels Don Juan Solo , a psychological study of loneliness; Panza al trote (1885), where he anticipated the foundations of the aesthetics that would later be called tremendousism; The direct train (1880), his most beloved work and praised by Leopoldo Alas, of costumbrista character, and The brown cloth . He stood out in the short story with pieces such as El yegüerizo, Fifina, Tremielga (1897) and El espejuelo de la gloria (1897). He also wrote travel books, such as Viajes de un cronista (1892), Viñetas del Sardinero and Seas and Mountains (1887). For the theater he composed Estracilla (1918), which adapted his novel of the same title published the previous year.As a literary critic he does not possess much value: he was too indulgent and laudatory.

Published Writings

• Lucio Tréllez. Contemporary relationship1879.
• The cigar. Contemporary relationship1879.
• Sister Lucila. Contemporary relationship continuation of The cigar1880.
• The direct train1880.
• The bottom of the ton. Contemporary relationship1880.
• The psalter. Tales and notes1881, narrations.
• The Fauna and the Drada. Contemporary relationship1882, narrations.
• Contemporary relations, 1883, narrations
• Printing tests. Accounts and articles1883, stories and articles.
• Panza-al-trote. Contemporary relationship. Notes for the sketch of a figure1883 and 1885
• Cleopatra Pérez. Contemporary relationship1884. Juan Ignacio Ferreras: Madrid: Cátedra, 1976, 1993 and 2007.
• Starving orgy1884.
• Idilio lugubre1887.
• Viñetas del Sardinero: Relationships1887 and 1900, trips.
• Seas and mountains: Vigo, San Sebastian, Panticosa, Linares, the Pyrenees, Bilbao1887, trips.
• Don Juan Solo. Contemporary relationship1889.
• Travel of a chronicler1892, trips in Tangier, Berlin, Malaga, Cadiz, Paris and Rome, illustrated by Angel Pons.
• Fifina: stories and sketches1893, narratives.
• The Sponge of Glory, 1897, narratives
• Tremielga, 1900, narratives.
• In memory of Campoamor. (Income speech at R. A. Spanish on March 30, 1902. Answer: D. Juan Valera)1902.
• The brown cloth. Chronicle of a Glass in 18901916 and 1921.
• The Lady of the Swanga1918.
• The bottling cat1918, short novel.
• The Princess of Eboli1918, short novel.
• Strrazilla. Madrid pages of 18661917 and 1918, theatre.
• Calandria1919, short novel.
• Miracles1919, short novel.
• The world marches1919, short novel.
• Contemporary relations: short novels1919, ten short novels.
• Spanish Psalms1920, narrations.
• Aldea sierva (species of national living). Conference1920.
• Eladia (arts of a story)1920.
• The girl from Mexico1921, short novel.
• The three sorians1921, short novel.
• The Voice of Children1922.
• The adventurer1922.
• Giordano or the tale of the five dogs1922, short novel.
• From Madrid to Chaco: a trip to the lands of the Silver. Chronicles written for El Diario de la Marina de La Habana in 1916, s. a., but 1917, and 1922, trips.
• A very convenient woman1923, short novel
• Chispas del yunque1923. Articles of the author appeared in Abc from Madrid between October 7, 1920 and September 16, 1922.
• Steel sphericals1929.
• Frateretto, golden tale and love, s. a.
• The living and the dead, s. a., but 1895, novel. Translated to Italian in 1902 by Ginevra Speraz.