Ramiro de Maeztu

Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney (May 4, 1875 - October 29, 1936) was a Spanish political theorist, journalist, literary critic and member of the Generation of '98. Maeztu was born to a Basque father and an English mother in Vitoria, the capital of Alava province, on May 4, 1874. An early advocate of socialism, he became disillusioned by the Great War while serving as the London correspondent for several Spanish newspapers, traveling in France and Germany. After returning to Spain, Maeztu rejected many of his radical friends and argued that human reason alone was not enough to solve social problems, and argued for the importance of strong authority and tradition rooted in the Roman Catholic Church. These ideas were embodied in his 1916 book, "English, Authority, Liberty, and Function in Light of the War", later published in Spanish as "La crisis del humanismo".

Along with Pedro Sainz Rodríguez and others, Maeztu founded the right-wing, monarchist Acción Española movement in 1931. [Boyd, Carolyn P. "Historia Patria: Politics, History, and National Identity in Spain, 1875-1975". Pages 225-226. Princeton University Press, 1997.] Maeztu became one of the most prominent defenders of the regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and called for Spain to "recover its 16th-century sense of Roman Catholic mission." ["Encyclopedia Britannica": Ramiro de Maeztu. [http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9049952/Ramiro-de-Maeztu] ] In 1926 his insightful literary essays were published in "Don Quijote, Don Juan y La Celestina", and in 1928 he served as Spanish ambassador to Argentina. In 1934, his final published book was written, "La defensa de la hispanidad" ("In Defense of Spanishness"). On October 29, 1936, Maeztu was shot by Republican soldiers in the early days of the Spanish Civil War while in Madrid.

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Bibliography

*"Hacia otra España" (1899)
*"Don Quijote, Don Juan y La Celestina" (1926)
*"Authority, Liberty, and Function in Light of the War" (1916, later published in Spanish in 1919 as "La crisis del humanismo") [http://books.google.com/books?id=dZsmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA11#PPA3,M1]
*"La defensa de la hispanidad" (1934)