Vicente Risco

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Vicente Martínez Risco Agüero (Born in Ourense, 1884 died in 1963) was a Galician intellectual of the 20th Century. He was a founder member of Xeración Nós.

He is among the most important figures in the history of galician literature. He was born into a well-to-do family, with a high cultural level. He is well-regarded for his writings on the Galician nationalism, as well as a contributor to the Galician New Narrative. He is also the father of Spanish novelist and critic Antonio Risco.

1 First years
2 Meeting the Galicianism
3 Second Republic
4 Franco's dictatorship
5 Ideology
6 Literature
7 External links

[edit] First years

He was a son of a public official, and suffered from bad health as a child. He was a good friend of Ramón Otero Pedrayo. In 1899 he obtained his high school certificate. He studied Law in the University of Santiago, and in 1906 he became a public official as his father was.

In these years he participated in social gatherings directed by Marcelo Macías, with other intellectuals, such as Xulio Alonso Cuevillas or Arturo Vázquez Núñez, who had significant influence in the literary vocation of Vicente Risco. He read decadent English and French authors, putting him in contact with ocultism and orientalism. He also studied buddhism and became a theosophyst author.

In 1910 he began work for a local newspaper, El Miño, where he wrote philosophical articles under the pseudonyms of Rujú Sahib and Polichinela. He became a follower of Rabindranath Tagore, announcing this in the intellectual social gatherings of Ourense.

In February of 1912 Risco he met with Castelao and praised one of his speeches in El Miño, but Risco was still far from the Galicianist movement.

In 1913 he went to Madrid to study Pedagogy. There he was pupil of José Ortega y Gasset, he spoke with Ramón Gómez de la Serna and Luis de Hoyos Sáinz and became attracted to Catolicism.

In 1916 he finished his studies and he returned to Ourense as a professor of History. In 1917 he founded, along with Arturo Noguerol Román, the literary magazine La Centuria, an antecedent of the future nationalist magazine Nós.

[edit] Meeting the Galicianism

Beginning in 1917, Vicente Risco entered in the Irmandades da Fala under the influence of Antón Losada Diéguez, and in December 18 of 1917 he gave his first speech in the Galician language, in an act to support Francesc Cambó. In the campaign for the Parliamentary Elections of 1918, he took part in many speeches in the district of Celanova, to no acclaim. In July of 1918, Riscostarted to write articles for A Nosa Terra. He tried to improve the status of Galician literature, writing articles about Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Apollinare or Omar Khayyam.

In little time Risco was converted into the main theoretician and leader of Galician nationalism, and in November of 1918 he had an important role in the I Nationalist Assembly.

In 1920 he published the book Theory of the Galician Nationalism, considered the foundational text of Galician nationalism. Risco took ideas from Murguía and combined them with philosophical irrationalism, geographic determinism, neotraditionalism and ethnography; and he defined the nation as a natural entity based on land, race, language, social organization, and national sentiment. He valued Galicia's geographical and cultural connection to Celtic history and the Atlantic region, as opposed to Spain's Mediterranean heritage.

In 1920 he started the magazine Nós, where he wrote more than 100 articles until its cancellation on July of 1936. He also directed the ethnographic section of the Seminario de Estudos Galegos. In 1922 he married María Carme Fernández Gómez. In 1923 his first son, Antón Risco, was born.

Risco supported at first the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, because he saw in it the opportunity to destroy the caciquist system and accept the role of provincial deputy in Ourense thinking of the possibility of the establishment of a Commonwealth of Galicia, similar to the Commonwealth of Catalonia.
After his rupture with the Irmandade da Fala da Coruña and A Nosa Terra he wrote for Rexurdimento, the newspaper of the Irmandade Nazonalista Galega (Galician Nationalist Brotherhood), although he returned to A Nosa Terra after a short time.

In April of 1930 he travelled to Berlin to give a course in ethnography in the University of Berlin, where he lived four months. After that he became more conservative and Catholic. He wrote a book, Mittleuropa, in which he described his European trip.

[edit] Second Republic

In the VI Nationalist Assembly Risco supported the idea of the transformation of the Irmandades da Fala into a political party. He founded with Ramón Otero Pedraio the Partido Nazonalista Republicán de Ourense to take part in the elections of 1931. He lost the election for the position of deputy, and then began to lose influence in the Galicianist movement in favour of Otero Pedraio and Castelao.

In October 25, 1931, he led a group of Galicianists that published a Catholic manifest against what they considered the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Republican government.

In 1933 he published Nós, os inadaptados, in which he explains his spiritual and ciclical conception of history.

In the Third Assembly of the PG (October of 1935), he accepted temporary collaboration with the left-wing parties to avoid the dissolution of the PG. In January of 1935 he published an article in the "Heraldo de Galicia", where he called for the reconquest of Galicia by God. In confrontation with the leaders of his party he didn't go to the IV Assembly of the PG in Monforte de Lemos. It was during that assembly the accords with left-wing parties were ratified. In the extraordinary Assembly of Santiago in February of 1936 the PG formed a coalition with the Popular Front. Risco united with the group of right-wing galicanists, and he left the PG to direct Dereita Galeguista.

In June 13, 1936, when started the campaign to the establishment of the Statute of Autonomy of Galicia, he supported the affirmative vote. When the Civil War began, he did nothing to help his galicianist friends that were murdered or imprisoned. After 1937 he directed Misión founded with Otero Pedraio. After 1938 he started to write articles for La Región where he supported Franco's band. It was due to that action that his old Galicianist friends called him traitor. This is symbolized in the phrase of Castelao in his book Sempre en Galiza: "...said Risco, when Risco was somebody".

[edit] Franco's dictatorship

In 1940 he published the ethnographic work The end of the world in the galician popular tradition and in 1944 he published the book History of the Jews after the destruction of the Temple. He lived for a time in Pamplona and he wrote articles for El Pueblo Navarro. In 1945 he lived in Madrid, where he wrote articles for El Español, Pueblo and La Estafeta Literaria, and he published in 1947 Satanás. Biografía del Diablo. He returned to Ourense in 1948.

With the help of Galicianist friends Otero Pedrayo and Francisco Fernández del Riego, he started again to write in Galician in his ethnographic studio to the History of Galiza directed by Otero Pedrayo, in the translation of Camilo José Cela's book The family of Pascual Duarte, realized in 1951.

Nevertheless, Castilian would be the language employed in the rest of his literary production after the Civil War. The best book of this stage was La puerta de paja, runner-up to the prestigious Premio Nadal in 1953. He wrote also La tiara de Saitaphernes, Gamalandafa and La verídica historia del niño de dos cabezas de Promonta, which were not published during his lifetime.

He died on April 30, 1963, in Ourense, a few days after Franco's government gave him the Medal of Afonso X.

[edit] Ideology

The politic ideology of Vicente Risco is based on a critique of the modern world, considered decadent. He exalted irrationalism, mysticism and popular religion, and for the same reason he rejected realist literature. He also despised the mediterran civilation in favor of celticism.