Ricardo Carvalho Calero

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Ricardo Carvalho Calero (Ferrol, 1910 - Compostela, 1990) was a philologist and Galician writer of the XX century, the first Professor of Galician Language and Literature, and the great thinker of the linguistic reintegracionism thought.

Writer, nationalist, theoretician of reintegracionism and university teacher, is one of the most prominent figures of the intellectual Galician universe of the XX century. He was born in the district of Ferrol Velho, in Ferrol, in the heart of an accommodated family, and participates of the student republicanismo of the FUE, and in the mobilization that this trade union give rise against the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. He studied laws and, subsequently, Philosophy and Letters, prepares part of the rough draft of the Statut of Autonomy proposal introduced by the Assembly of Local authorities in 1932, and collaborates with the precariously organized left nationalism in "Esquerda Galeguista" (Galician Left), and in the publications "Clarity" (Claridade) and "To Be" (Ser).

After the fascist coup d'etat of 1936, Carvalho Calero becomes a volunteer combatant on behalf of the Republic; it is made imprisoned during years, under the accusation of "separatist".

It publishes the first History of Galician Literature, being the first professor of Galician in University of Santiago de Compostela, where his professional run culminates. Compromised in the theoretical preparation and in the practical expansion of the reintegrationist proposal through the AGAL, established in 1981, he is excluded and censored by the cultural oficialismo of the new autonomic institution that was given up by the Spanish State to Galiza since that year.

It was him that explained that the censorship silenced it because "I professe,on the subject of language, the Castelao ideas", regarding his firm defense of the Luso-Brazilian-Galician linguistic unity, such as before Castelao, Manuel Murguia, João Vicente Biqueira, the brothers Vilar Ponte, Jenaro Marinhas del Valle and Ricardo Flores, between others, have done. In general, the Galician nationalist movement leaves of XIX century and arrives to our days finding the Galician a form of a Portuguese still spoken in the cradle where it was born, about IX century.

Carvalho Calero dies in Compostela in 1990. The imposed silence on his intellectual figure maintains after his death and continues to day of today, corresponding to the reintegracionist movement to maintain the light of his intellectual legacy.