José Martínez Ruiz

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José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruíz (June 8, 1873 - March 2, 1967) was a Spanish poet and writer.

He used the pseudonym of Azorín for his literary works. Ruiz attended the University of Valencia to study law in the 1880s. He lived in Madrid and worked as a journalist. He was a political radical during the 1890s. During that period Azorín became an admirer of the liberal Antonio Maura who founded a party to fight the culture of "caciques" which he saw as the antidemocratic cancer of Hispanic politicians - a cancer that keeps on going to our days in the whole of Hispano-American political groups, spreading nepotism and corruption. When Antonio Maura was Prime Minister of king Alfonso XIII, he was spending summer in the estate of Can Mossenya [an historic part of the Royal Chartreuse of Jesus of Nazareth where Chopin and George Sand had also been the previous century] and Azorín came to meet him. The International Foundation Can Mossenya - Friends of Jorge Luis Borges has name a entrace to its historic estate "Gate of Friendship - Azorín and Maura" after this encounter which left a brief book where Azorín notes his impressions of this travel to meet Maura.

However, by the time of Franco ruling over Spain, Azorín though established in Paris, had become extremely conservative and had no problems with Franco's fascist dictatorship.

Using mostly short sentences, in both his fiction and his essays he emphasized the small but enduring elements and events in history and in one's life. In his view time consists of a series of repetitions; this notion of time has been described as "timeless".

He received such awards/honours (translated to English) as the "Press Delegation" (1943), "The Grand Cross of Isabel, the Catholic" (1946) and "The Grand Cross of Alfonso X, the Wise" (1956), amongst others.

He died on March 2, 1967, at the age of 93 from natural causes; he was the longest lived of the writers of the Generation of 98.