Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano

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Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano

Juan Valera
Born October 18, 1824
Cabra, Spain
Died April 18, 1905
Flag of Spain Madrid, Spain
Occupation Politician, diplomat

Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano (October 18, 1824 – April 18, 1905), was a Spanish realist author, writer and political figure. He was born at Cabra, in the province of Córdoba. He was educated at Málaga and at the University of Granada, where he took his degree in law, and then entered upon a diplomatic career (1847). Over the next five decades, Valera filled a number of positions in a variety of various places. He accompanied the Spanish Ambassador to Naples. Afterward, he was a member of the Spanish legations at Lisbon (1850), Rio de Janeiro (1851-53), Dresden and St. Petersburg (1854-57). After his return to Madrid, he became one of the editors of the liberal journal El Contemporáneo (1859), and was appointed Minister to Frankfurt (1865). After the revolution of 1868 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of State and (1871) Director of Public Instruction. During the reign of Alphonso XII he was Minister to Lisbon (1881-83), Washington (1883-86), and Brussels (1886-88), and in 1893-95 Ambassador to Vienna. He was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1900.

Throughout his diplomatic and political activity he produced works which rank among the highest that his country's literature contains. For purity of diction and beauty of style Valera has never been surpassed in Spain. Pepita Jiménez, which appeared as a serial in 1874, is probably his best known work; it has since been translated into many languages. It depicts the gradual realization by a young seminarian of the empty vanity of his vocation, culminating in a shattering denoument. Other novels are Las ilusions del doctor Faustino (1875), El comendador Mendoza (1877), Pasarse de listo, and Doña Luz (1879). All of the foregoing novels were written around the time when he abandoned his political activities.

[edit] Literature

Monument to Valera in Madrid (L. Coullaut, 1928).
Monument to Valera in Madrid (L. Coullaut, 1928).
  • Juan Valera, Obras Completas (Madrid, 1905 et seq., 43 volumes to 1916)
  • Ferdinand Brunetière, La casuistique dans le roman de Juan Valera, in his series Histoire et littérature, volume i (Paris, 1884)
  • Emilia Pardo Bazán, "Retratos y apuntes literaros," in Obras completas, volume xxxii (Madrid, 1891 et seq.)
  • Conde de Casa Valencia, Necrologia de ... D. J. V. (Madrid, 1905)
  • Conde de las Navas, Don Juan Valera (Madrid, 1905)
  • J. D. Fitz-Gerald, "Juan Valera," in The Bookman, volume xxi (New York, 1905)
  • F. Vézinet, Les maitres du roman aspagnol contemporain (Paris, 1907)

[edit] External links

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