Ricardo Carvalho Calero

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now. A how-to guide is available. (May 2007)

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

A writer, nationalist, theoretician of reintegracionism and university teacher, he was 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, Spain, in the heart of an accommodated family, and participated in 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 law and, subsequently, philosophy and letters, he prepared part of the rough draft of the Statute of Autonomy proposal introduced by the Assembly of Local authorities in 1932, and collaborated 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'état of 1936, Carvalho Calero became a volunteer combatant on behalf of the Republic; he was imprisoned, having been accused of "separatism".

He published the first history of Galician literature, being the first professor of Galician at the University of Santiago de Compostela, where his professional run culminated. Compromised in the theoretical preparation and in the practical expansion of the reintegrationist proposal through the AGAL, which was established in 1981, he was excluded and censored by the cultural oficialismo of the new autonomic institution that was given up by the Spanish State to Galiza.

It was he that explained that the censorship silenced it because "I professe,on the subject of language, the Castelao ideas", regarding his firm defence 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 died in Compostela in 1990.