PYRENEAN ISTHMUS AND PERIPHERIA

PYRENEAN ISTHMUS AND PERIPHERIA

FAMOUS PYRENEANS





































JEANNE D'ALBRET, QUEEN OF NAVARRE / JEHANNE DE NAVARRE (1528-1572)

Jeanne was the daughter of Henry d'Albret and Marguerite de Navarre, king and queen of Navarre, a small but important buffer state between France and Spain, whose rulers owed fealty to the French crown. Her education was supervised by humanist reformers appointed by her mother. When she was 12, her uncle, King Francis I of France, had her married to a political ally, the Duke of Cleves --- over Jeanne's strongly expressed objections. Four years later the marriage was annulled; her husband had ceased to be profitable to Francis.

In 1547, Francis I died; in the next year his successor had the now 20-year-old Jeanne married to Antoine de Bourbon, "first prince of the blood," and so heir to the French throne if no legitimate sons were available to succeed the Valois king. This was as much a political marriage as the first, but Jeanne seems to have approved of the choice. Five children were born by 1559, although only two survived infancy.

The couple lived quietly until 1555, when Jeanne's father died and they became rulers of Navarre and Bearn, with control over much of Gascony and Guyenne. The southwest of France had become a refuge for French Calvinists --- called "Huguenots" --- and fertile ground for preachers from Geneva. Jeanne had already supported religious reformers, as her mother had before her, and she began to become more active in Bearn. Antoine's interest in reform is less certain; he seems to have chosen whatever side promised more political benefit.

In 1560, Jeanne publicly announced her adherence to Calvinist belief; because of her rank she became one of the leaders of the Huguenot party. At the same time, a 10-year-old Charles IX had just been crowned king of France, and the nobles --- Protestant and Catholic --- were vying to see who would control him. Although Catherine de Medici, Charles' mother, tried to balance the opposing sides, the first of a series of civil wars began while Jeanne and Antoine were at the French court in 1562. Antoine declared for the Catholics and sent Jeanne home, but he kept their 9-year-old son Henry at court --- ostensibly for his education, in effect as a hostage.

Within a year, Antoine had died of battle wounds, and Jeanne was now sole ruler of her lands in the southwest, with Henry "first prince of the blood." Jeanne immediately made Calvinism the state religion of Bearn and began to put Navarre and her other territories under Calvinist civil and military control. This brought threats from Spain and Rome, which in turn brought some conciliation from Catherine, who opposed what Jeanne was doing but opposed even more any outside intervention into French matters. In 1567, Jeanne was allowed to take Henry, now 14, away from the court and home to Bearn.

Later that year war began again. Huguenots captured the city of La Rochelle and fortified it as a permanent base. In 1568, Catholic nobles in Jeanne's lands revolted, and Bearn was threatened by both French and Spanish forces. Jeanne took her two children and went to La Rochelle, where she was involved both in military planning and in raising money for ships and arms. A year later, Catherine began peace negotiations with Jeanne, but fighting continued; in 1570 a peace was concluded and official talks began on a marriage between Henry and Catherine's youngest daughter, Marguerite de Valois.

With her lands restored, Jeanne returned to Bearn to establish an even more thoroughly Calvinist state. At the start of 1572, she went to the French court to arrange Henry's marriage. She hoped he would be a future Protestant king of France; in case that didn't come about, she wanted him to be given all of Guyenne as a dukedom, so that there would be at least one area within France to provide a Protestant refuge. By April an agreement for the marriage had been made (but with no dukedom). Jeanne accepted it because she saw it as the best hope for Henry and for the Protestant cause. She died two months before the wedding and the massacre of Huguenots that followed it.

The writings published during Jeanne's life span most of her active political career, from 1563 to 1571. Their purpose was to encourage the Protestant faithful and to exhort the undecided to join her in the cause. An exchange of letters between Jeanne and a Catholic cardinal were printed in Bearn in 1563. Four letters that she wrote to the royal family on her 1568 trip from Bearn to La Rochelle and one written later to Elizabeth I of England were published as Lettres de tres haute tres vertueuse & tres chrestienne Princess Jane Royne de Navarre. In 1570 was published Ample declaration sur la jonction de ses armes des Reformes en 1568, Jeanne's justification for having left Bearn to join the army at La Rochelle. Finally, in 1571 the Ordonnance Ecclesiastiques de la Reine de Navarre was printed, for the use of other Protestant rulers.

It wouldn't be accurate to call Jeanne's other letters private; as a ruler, she knew that they would be read by many and eventually archived. But the letters do show a more human side than the polemical printed works. They reveal a strong-willed woman who was aware of her own deficiencies, especially the difficulty she had in controlling impatience with those who disagreed with her.

There is no complete English translation of her writing, but there is enough available to let us know something of one of the few reigning queens of the period.











MICHAEL SERVETUS

Michael Servetus Michael Servetus (1509 or 1511-October 27, 1553), a Pyrenean martyred in the Reformation for his criticism of the doctrine of the trinity and his opposition to infant baptism, has often been considered an early unitarian. Sharply critical though he was of the orthodox formulation of the trinity, Servetus is better described as a highly unorthodox trinitarian. Still, aspects of his theology—for example, his rejection of the doctrine of original sin—did influence those who later founded unitarian churches in Poland and Transylvania. Public criticism of those responsible for his execution, the Reform Protestants in Geneva and their pastor, John Calvin, moreover, inspired unitarians and other groups on the radical left-wing of the Reformation to develop and institutionalize their own heretical views. Widespread aversion to Servetus' death has been taken as signaling the birth in Europe of religious tolerance, a principle now more important to modern Unitarian Universalists than antitrinitarianism. Servetus is also celebrated as a pioneering physician. He was the first to publish a description of the blood's circulation through the lungs.

Miguel Serveto grew up in Villanueva, Aragon, sixty miles north of Zaragossa. At age 14 he entered the service of Juan Quintana, a scholarly Franciscan monk. Even in his youth Servetus was struck by the fact that the doctrine of the trinity was a serious obtstacle to evangelization of the Moors and Jews. While studying law at the University of Toulouse in the Pyrenean Isthmus, he read the Bible, which the invention of the printing press had made newly and dangerously available. He was surprised to find the trinity nowhere explicitly mentioned, much less defined, in the sacred text.

After two years at the University, Servetus was recalled, in late 1529, to the service of Quintana, who had been appointed confessor to Emperor Charles V. He was to accompany Quintana as he traveled with the imperial party to the coronation of the Emperor in Bologna, Italy. In Italy Servetus was horrified by riches of the church, the adoration accorded the Pope, and the worldliness of the priesthood. Some time in 1530 Servetus dropped out of the emperor's entourage and made his way to the Swiss city of Basel to join the Protestants. He stayed for months in the household of Oecolampadius, the local pastor and Reform leader.

De Trinitatis Erroribus Having worn out his welcome there with constant theological dispute, Servetus moved to more tolerant Strasburg. There, in 1531, he published De Trinitatis Erroribus (On the Errors of the Trinity). If Servetus hoped his book would persuade the new Protestant establishment to re-think orthodox trinitarian doctrine, as traditionally interpreted from the fourth century Council of Nicaea through the late mediaeval Scholastics, and replace it with his own formulation, he was quickly disappointed. Though Protestants admired some aspects of Servetus' thought, they deplored many others. Moreover, they were especially defensive concerning their trinitarian orthodoxy, having no desire to call upon themselves still more Roman Catholic denunciation. The Lutheran reformer Melanchthon, commenting on De Trinitatis Erroribus, lamented, "As for the Trinity you know I have always feared this would break out some day. Good God, what tragedies this question will excite among those who come after us!"

Servetus tried the effect of a more conciliatory volume, Dialogorum de Trinitate (Dialogues on the Trinity), published the following year. But in it he neither conceded anything important to his system, nor even softened the vituperation of his rhetoric. His second volume was neither intended nor received as a recantation. His books were confiscated, and he was warned out of several Protestant towns. Meanwhile, in 1532, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Spain began proceedings to summon him, or to apprehend him if he would not appear before the tribunal. His brother, Juan, a priest, was sent to persuade him to return to Spain for questioning. He was terrified. He later wrote of this period, "I was sought up and down to be snatched to my death." He fled to Paris and surfaced there with a new name, Michel de Villeneuve.

As "Villeneuve" Servetus studied mathematics and medicine at colleges in Paris, then a center of religious ferment. Nicholas Cop, Rector of the University, was forced to flee the city after an inaugural address deemed too Protestant. A young student of Servetus' acquaintance, John Calvin, who may have written the address, had also to leave town and to go into hiding. Sometime during the next year Calvin risked his life to return to Paris that he might meet Servetus and respond to his theological challenges. Servetus, perhaps afraid of being seen with a fugitive, did not show up. Driven to witness for his religious cause, he yet felt unready to be its effective champion. "On this account I delayed," he recalled, "and also because of imminent persecution, so that with Jonah I longed rather to flee to the sea or to one of the New Isles."

Servetus began to support himself in France by working as an editor, first for the firm of Trechsel in Lyons and later also for Jean Frellon. For Trechsel, Servetus prepared, and also wrote the introductory notes for, two editions of Ptolemy's Geography, 1535 and 1541. With this work to his credit, he set himself up as an expert on geography and supplemented his income by giving lectures on the subject. He next prepared an edition of the Santes Pagnini's Bible, completed in seven volumes in 1545. His introduction and notes anticipate modern biblical criticism and show a marked advance in sophistication beyond that of his earlier theological writing.

Inspired by some of the medical works published by Trechsel, Servetus decided to return to the study of medicine. From 1536-38 he was a medical student at the University of Paris. He followed Andreas Vesalius as assistant to Hans Gunther in dissection. Gunther wrote that "Michael Villonovanus" had a knowledge of Galen "second to none." Servetus soon came to differ from Galen in the matter of pulmonary circulation. Galen had supposed aeration of the blood took place in the heart and assigned the lungs a fairly minor function. Servetus, by examining the wall of the heart and noting the size of the pulmonary artery, concluded that transformation of the blood, accomplished by the release of waste gases and the infusion of air, occurred in the lungs. It is not clear whether Servetus or a contemporary, unknown to Servetus, first made this discovery. Servetus was the first to publish. Although he only expressed the new knowledge as a lengthy metaphorical aside in his theological writing, he was the first person to record a modern understanding of pulmonary respiration.

In 1538 Servetus, as Villeneuve, got into trouble with the faculty of medicine, the Parlement of Paris, and the Inquisition for mixing astrology with medicine. Although he was acquitted by the Inquisition, the Parlement ruled that his published self-defense was to be confiscated and he was to desist from the practice of astrology. Servetus left Paris shortly thereafter, perhaps without a degree, to practice medicine in the area of Lyons. Around 1540 he became the personal physician of Pierre Palmier, Archbishop of Vienne.

The devil was an important factor in Servetian theology. Servetus was a dualist. He thought God and the devil were engaged in a great cosmic battle. The fate of humanity was just a small skirmish in salvation history. He charged orthodox trinitarians with creating their doctrine of the trinity, not to describe God, but to puff themselves up as central to God's concern. Because they defined God to suit their own purposes, he called them atheists.

Servetus' demonology included the notion that the devil had created the papacy as an effective countermeasure to Christ's coming to earth. Through the popes the devil had taken over the church. Infant baptism was a diabolic rite, instituted by Satan, who in ancient days had presided over pagan infant sacrifices. He calculated that the Archangel Michael would soon come to bring deliverance and the end of the world, probably in 1585.

Dualism, millenarianism, and modal trinitarianism are not elements of the Servetian legacy which Unitarian Universalists today celebrate. Nor were they affirmed by those of Servetus' contemporaries most in sympathy with his thought, the Italians—later known as Socinians—who developed and spread an early form of Unitarianism in Poland. They took heart from some aspects of Servetus' doctrine and ignored or rejected the rest. Nevertheless, although Michael Servetus has now no real disciples and never had any, his pioneering life and the tragedy of his death did inaugurate, in a sense, the history of modern liberal religion.


There are statues of Servetus in rue Mouton Duvernet, Paris, France; Annemasse, Haute Savoie, France; Rue Beausejour, Geneva, Switzerland; Madrid, Spain; Zaragossa, and Villanueva de Sigena, in the Pyrenean Isthmus. Among other memorials are the Servetus window in First Parish Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Brooklyn New York and the painted medallion of Servetus (staring at another of Calvin) at Brookfield Unitarian Church, Gorton, Manchester, United Kingdom.
Article by Peter Hughes












MAURICE RAVEL

(1875-1937).

Pyrenean composer, was born in Ziburu in 1875; of paternal Swiss and maternal Basque descent. Ravel combined skill in orchestration with meticulous technical command of harmonic resources, writing in an attractive musical idiom that was entirely his own, in spite of contemporary comparisons with Debussy, a composer his senior by some 20 years. He died in 1937.


Stage Works
Operas
Ravel wrote two operas. The first, L’heure espagnole (‘The Spanish Clock’), is described as a comédie musicale; the second, with a libretto by Colette, is the imaginative L’Enfant et les sortilèges (‘The Child and the Enchantments’), in which the naughty child is punished when furniture and animals assume personalities of their own.
Ballets
Ravel wrote his ballet Daphnis et Chloé in response to a commission from the Russian impresario Diaghilev. The work, described as a symphonie choréographique, is based on the Hellenistic pastoral novel of Longus. Ma Mère l’oye (‘Mother Goose’), originally for piano duet, was orchestrated and used for a ballet, as were the Valses nobles et sentimentales and the choreographic poem La Valse. Ravel’s last ballet score was the famous Boléro, a work he himself described as an orchestrated crescendo.
Orchestral Music
In addition to the scores for ballet and arrangements of piano works for the same purpose, Ravel wrote an evocative Rapsodie espagnole (‘Spanish Rhapsody’). Other orchestrations of original piano compositions include a version of the very well-known Pavane pour une infante défunte (‘Pavane for a Dead Infanta’), the Menuet antique, Alborada del gracioso from Miroirs, and pieces from Le Tombeau de Couperin. Ravel wrote two piano concertos: the first, completed in 1930, was for the left hand only, commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein who had lost his right arm in the war; the second, for two hands, was completed in 1931.
Vocal Music
Songs by Ravel include the remarkable Shéhérazade (settings of a text by Tristan Klingsor for mezzo-soprano and orchestra) and the Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (‘Don Quixote to Dulcinea’) songs, originally written for a film about Don Quixote in which the famous Russian bass Chaliapin was to star. Songs with piano include settings of the Jules Renard Histoires naturelles, portraying its instinctive sympathy with the birds and the cricket. Ravel’s five unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome are represented by five cantatas, submitted according to the rules of the competition, as he chose to interpret them.
Chamber Music
Ravel’s chamber music includes the evocative nostalgia of the Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet, a Violin Sonata with a jazz-style blues movement, a Piano Trio, and a String Quartet. Tzigane, written for the Hungarian violinist Jelly d’Arányi, is a remarkable excursion into extravagant gypsy style.
Piano Music
Ravel himself was a good pianist. His music for the piano includes compositions in his own nostalgic archaic style, such as the Pavane and the Menuet antique, as well as the more complex textures of pieces such as Jeux d’eau (‘Fountains’), Miroirs and Gaspard de la nuit, with its sinister connotations. The Sonatina is in Ravel’s neoclassical style and Le Tombeau de Couperin is in the form of a Baroque dance suite.












BLANCHE I OF NABARRE

Blanche I. Born 6 July 1387 in Pamplona and died on 1 April 1441, at 53 years old in Santa Maria la Real de Nieva, Castile. Was Queen of Nabarre from 1425 to 1441. She became queen regnant upon the death of her father King Charles III of Nabarre. She was married twice, but only had surviving issue from her second husband, King John II of Aragon, as her only son by Martin I of Sicily died in early infancy.


File:Armas Navarra-Evreux-Aragón-Trastamara.svg


COAT OF ARMS OF BLANCHE I




QUEEN REGNANT OF NABARRE


Reign: 8 September 1425 to 1 April 1441. (15 years, 205 days).

Coronation: 15 to 18 May 1429 in Pamplona.

Predecessor: Charles III.

Successor: Charles IV.



QUEEN CONSORT OF SICILY


Reign: 26 December 1402 to 25 July 1409. (6 years and 211 days).

She was the second eldest daughter and heir of King Charles III of Nabarre and infanta Eleanor of Castile. She became heiress on the death of her elder sister Joan.
Blanche married firstly Martin the Younger, King of Sicily and Prince of Aragon. They were married by proxy on 21 May 1402 in Catania. Blanche travelled to meet her new husband and they were married in person on 26 December 1402. The bride was about eleven years old and the groom twenty-eight.
Martin had been in need of legitimate heirs, as he had survived his previous wife and former co-ruler, Queen Maria of Sicily, and their only son. When Martin died on 25 July 1409, he was succeeded by his own father, Martin I of Aragon.
Blanche remained a widow for a decade. On 6 November 1419, Blance married her second husband John, duke of Peñafiel by proxy in Olite, and the second son of Ferdinand I of Aragon and Eleanor of Alburquerque. Ferdinand had succeeded his maternal uncle Martin I in 1412.
John travelled to meet her. On 10 June 1420, they were married in person in Pamplona. Charles III died on 8 September 1425 and Blanche succeeded him as Queen regnant of Nabarre. John became King of Nabarre in her right as John II.
Blanche died in Santa María la Real de Nieva in 1441. After her death, John kept the government of Nabarre in his own hands, from the hands of their own son Charles of Viana, the rightful heir of the line of Navarrese kings. He would become King of Aragon and King of Sicily upon the death of his elder brother Alfonso V of Aragon in 1458.


Martin and Blanche only had one son:
Blanche and John II of Aragon had four children:















LUIS BUNUEL

Buñuel was born in Calanda (22 February 1900), a small town in the province of Teruel, in Aragón, in the Pyrenean isthmus, to Leonardo Buñuel and María Portolés. He would later describe his birthplace by saying that in Calanda, "the Middle Ages lasted until World War I." The oldest of seven children, Luis had two brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters: Alicia, Concepción, Margarita and María.
When Buñuel was just four and a half months old, the family moved to Zaragoza, where they were one of the wealthiest families in town. In Zaragoza, Buñuel received a strict Jesuit education at the private Colegio del Salvador. After being kicked and insulted by the study hall proctor before a final exam, Buñuel refused to return to the school. He told his mother he had been expelled, which was not true—and what's more, he had received the highest marks on his world history exam. Buñuel finished the last two years of his high school education at the local public school.
In 1917, he went to university in Madrid. While studying at the University of Madrid (now Universidad Complutense de Madrid), he became a very close friend of painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca, among other important Spaniard artists living in the Residencia de Estudiantes. Buñuel first studied agronomy then industrial engineering and finally switched to philosophy.
The founder of surrealist cinema, Luis Buñuel enjoyed a career as diverse and contradictory as his films: he was a master of both silent and sound cinema, of documentaries as well as features; his greatest work was produced in the two decades after his 60th year, a time when most directors have either retired or gone into decline; and although frequently characterized as a surrealist, many of his films were dramas and farces in the realist or neo-realist mode. Yet despite all the innovations and permutations of his work, Buñuel remained suprisingly consistent and limited in the targets of his social satire: the Catholic Church, bourgeois culture, and Fascism. As he once commented, "Religious education and surrealism have marked me for life."
Buñuel described his childhood in Calanda, a village of Aragon, as having "slipped by in an almost medieval atmosphere." Between the ages of six and fifteen he attended Jesuit school, where a strict educational program, unchanged since the 18th century, instilled in him a lifelong rebellion against religion. In 1917 Buñuel enrolled in the University of Madrid and soon became involved in the political and literary peñas, or clubs, that met in the city's cafes. His friends included several great artists and writers, including Salvador Dali, Federico García Lorca and Rafael Albertini.
Within a few years the avant-garde movement had reached the peñas and spawned its Spanish variants, creacionismo and ultraísmo. Although influenced by these, Buñuel was often critical of the Spanish avant-garde for its allegiance to traditional forms.
In 1925 Buñuel left Madrid for Paris, with no clear idea of what he would do. When he saw Fritz Lang's Destiny (1921), however, he realized where his vocation lay. He approached the renowned French director, Jean Epstein, who hired him as an assistant. Buñuel began to learn the techniques of filmmaking but was fired when he refused to work with Epstein's own mentor, Abel Gance, whose films he did not like. In a prophetic statement, Epstein warned Buñuel about his "surrealistic tendencies."
In 1928, with financial support from his mother, Buñuel collaborated with Dali on Un Chien Andalou, a "surrealist weapon" designed to shock the bourgeois as well as criticize the avant-garde. As in his earlier book of poems, Un Perro Andaluz, Buñuel rejected the avant-garde's emphasis on form, or camera "tricks," over content. Instead, his influences were commercial neo-realism, horror films and American comedies.
Buñuel's three early films established him as a master of surrealist cinema, whose goal was to treat all human experience-dreams, madness or "normal" waking states-on the same level. The critical success of L'Age D'Or (1930), secured Buñuel a contract with MGM, which he turned down after a visit to Hollywood in 1930.
His next film, Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1932) was a documentary financed with money won in a lottery and shot with a camera borrowed from Yves Allégret. Ostensibly an objective study of a remote, impoverished region in western Spain, the film constituted such a militant critique of both church and state that it was banned in Spain.
The stage had been set, however, for Buñuel's later work, in which realism - with its pre-established mass appeal - provided an accessible context for his surreal aesthetic and moral code. After Las Hurdes, Buñuel would not direct another film until 1947. Although still critical of commercial cinema, he spent the next 14 years within the industry, learning all aspects of film production. From 1933 to 1935 he dubbed dialogue for Paramount in Paris and then Warner Bros. in Spain; between 1935 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 he produced popular musical comedies in Spain; during the Civil War he served the Republican government, compiling newsreel material into a documentary about the war, Espana Leal en Armas (1937).
In 1938, while he was in Hollywood supervising two other documentaries, the Fascists assumed power at home. Unable to return to Spain, Buñuel went to work for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, reediting and dubbing documentaries for distribution in Latin America. He was forced to resign in 1942, however, because of his suspected communist background - a suspicion which he later claimed had been aroused by Dali. In order to survive, Buñuel narrated documentaries for the Army Corps of Engineers until 1944, when Warner Bros. hired him to produce Spanish versions of their films.
In 1946 Buñuel moved to Mexico, where many of Spain's intellectuals and artists had emigrated after the Civil War. He would live there for the rest of his life, becoming a citizen in 1949 and directing 20 films by 1964. This period is often described as an "apprenticeship" in which Buñuel was forced to shoot low-budget commercial films in between a handful of surreal "classics." Indeed, Buñuel's supposed indifference to style - his minimal use of non-diegetic music, close-ups or camera movement-is often judged to be largely the result of the limited resources available to him. Yet his Mexican films can more accurately be seen as a refinement of the unobstrusive aesthetic style that had been evident since Un Chien Andalou. As Buñuel himself insisted, "I never made a single scene that compromised my convictions or my personal morality."
Buñuel's third Mexican film, Los Olvidados (1950), brought him to international attention once again. Although hailed as a surrealist film, it owes much to postwar neorealism in its unsentimental depiction of Mexico's slum children. As in his other Mexican films before Nazarin (1958), dream sequences and surreal images are introduced at strategic moments into an otherwise realist narrative. (Contributing to the relative neglect of these films has been their unavailability outside Mexico, and perhaps their proletarian and "ethnic" focus.)
In 1955 Buñuel began to direct international (and more openly political) co-productions in Europe. In 1961 he was invited to Spain to film Viridiana. The completed film was a direct assault on Spanish Catholicism and Fascism and was banned by its unwitting patron; a succès de scandale, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and secured long overdue international acclaim for its director.
After Viridiana, Buñuel worked mostly in France. The growth of his new international (and consequently educated and middle-class) audience coincided with his return to a surrealist aesthetic. The Exterminating Angel (1962), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and The Phantom of Liberty (1974) depict a bourgeoisie trapped within their own conventions, if not-in the latter film's metaphorical conceit-their own homes. Belle De Jour (1967), Tristana (1970) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) explore sexual obsessions and preoccupations. And The Milky Way (1970) launches a frontal assault on the Church, in a summation of Buñuel's lifelong contempt for that institution. In 1980 Buñuel collaborated with Jean-Claude Carrière, his screenwriter since Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), on his autobiography, My Last Sigh.
He died in Mexico City (July 29, 1983.














SAINT FRANCIS OF XABIER

Francis of Xabier was born in the family castle of Xabier, (toponymic name whose origin comes from "etxeberri" meaning "new house" in Basque) in the Pyrenean isthmus on 7 April 1506 according to a family register. He was born to an aristocratic family of the Kingdom of Navarre , the youngest son of Juan de Jaso, privy counsellor to King John III of Navarre (Jean d'Albret), and Doña Maria de Azpilcueta y Aznárez, sole heiress of two noble Navarrese families. He was thus related to the great theologian and philosopher Martín de Azpilcueta. Following the Basque surname custom of the time, he was named after his toponym; he use to sign his letters as Franciscus of Xabier. Notwithstanding different interpretations on his first language, no evidence suggests that Xabier's mother tongue was other than Basque, as stated by himself and confirmed by the sociolinguistic environment of the time, while he may have got in touch with Romance early due to the social status of his family, close to the royalty.
In 1512 under Ferdinand the Catholic as King of the first political unit referred to as Spain, was forced to join Spanish troops from both the Castilian and the Aragonese commanded by Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, second Duke of Alba first invaded partially the Kingdom of Navarre. Three years later, Francis' father dies (1515) when he was only nine years old. In 1516, after a failed Navarrese-French attempt to expel the Spanish invaders off the kingdom, attempt in which Saint Francis' brothers had taken part, the Spanish Castilian kingdom Governor, Cardinal Cisneros, ordered family lands to be confiscated, the demolition of the outer wall, the gates and two towers of the family castle, the moat was filled, and the height of the keep was reduced in half,. Only the family residence inside the castle was left. For the following years with his family, till he left for studies in Paris in 1525, Saint Fancis' life in the Kingdom of Navarre, then partially occupied by Spain, was surrounded by a war that lasted over 18 years, ending with the Kingdom of Navarre partition into two territories, and the Kings of Navarre and some loyalists abandoning the south and moving to the north part of the Kingdom of Navarre (currently France).
In 1525 Francis Xabier went to study at the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris. There he met Ignatius of Loyola, who became his faithful companion, and Pierre Favre. While at the time he seemed destined for academic success in the line of his noble family, Francis turned to a life of Catholic missionary service. Together with Loyola and five others, he founded the Society of Jesus: on the 15 August 1534, in a small chapel in Montmartre, they made a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience, and also vowed to convert the Muslims in the Middle East (or, failing this, carry out the wishes of the Pope). Francis went, with the rest of the members of the newly papal-approved Jesuit order, to Venice, Italy, to be ordained to the priesthood, which took place on 24 June 1537. Towards the end of October, the seven companions reached Bologna, where they worked in the local hospital. After that, he served for a brief period in Rome as Ignatius' secretary.
Francis devoted much of his life to missions in Asia, after being appointed by King John III of Portugal to take charge as Apostolic Nuncio in Portuguese India, where the king believed that Christian values were eroding among the Portuguese. After successive appeals to the Pope asking for missionaries for the East Indies under the Padroado agreement, John III was enthusiastically advised by Diogo de Gouveia, rector of the Collège Sainte-Barbe, to draw the newly graduated youngsters that would establish the Society of Jesus.
Leaving Rome in 1540, Francis took with him a breviary, a catechism and a Latin book (De Instituione bene vivendi) written by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulic that had become popular in the counter-reformation. The breviary and the book by Marulic accompanied Francis on all of his voyages, and was used as source material for much of his preaching. According to a 1549 letters of F. Balthasar Gago in Goa, it was the only book that Francis read or studied.

He left Lisbon on 7 April 1541 along with two other Jesuits and the new Viceroy Martim Afonso de Sousa, on board the Santiago. From August until March 1542 he remained in Mozambique, having reached Goa, then capital of Portuguese India's on May 6, 1542, and also visiting Vasai. There he was invited to head Saint Paul's College, a pioneer seminary for the education of secular priests that became the first jesuit headquarters in Asia, but soon departed, having spent the following three years in India.

Conversion of the Paravas by Francis Xabier in Goa, in a 19th-century colored lithograph.
In 1542, he left for his first missionary activity among the Paravas, katesar/kadaiyar Pattamkattiyars(head of fishery coast) and mukkuvars, pearl-fishers along the east coast of southern India, North of Cape Comorin (or Sup Santaz). He built nearly 40 churches along the coast with the fund of local headmen and king, out of this St. Stephen's Church, Kombuthurai find mention in his letters dated 1544.He lived in a sea cave in Manapad, intensively catechizing paravas and other children for three months in 1544. He then focused on converting the king of Travancore to Christianity and also visited Ceylon (now named Sri Lanka). Dissatisfied with the results of his activity, he set his sights eastward in 1545 and planned a missionary journey to Makassar on the island of Celebes (today's Indonesia).
As the first Jesuit in India, Francis had difficulty procuring success for his missionary trips. Instead of trying to approach Christianity through the traditions of the local religion and creating a nativised church as latter fellow Jesuit Matteo Ricci did in China, he was eager for change. His successors, such as de Nobili, Ricci, and Beschi, attempted to convert the noblemen first as a means to influence more people, while Francis had initially interacted most with the lower classes (later though, in Japan, Francis changed tack by paying tribute to the Emperor and seeking an audience with him). However Francis' mission was primarily, as ordered by King John III, to restore Christianity among the Portuguese settlers. Many of the Portuguese sailors had had illegitimate relationships with Indian women (miscegenation); Francis struggled to restore moral relations, and catechized many illegitimate children.

After arriving in Portuguese Malacca in October of that year and waiting three months in vain for a ship to Makassar, he gave up the goal of his voyage and left Malacca on 1 January 1546, for Ambon Island where he stayed until mid-June. He then visited other Maluku Islands including Ternate and Morotai. Shortly after Easter, 1546, he returned to Ambon Island and later Malacca.

Voyages of St. Francis Xabier
Francis of Xabier work initiated permanent change in eastern Indonesia, and he was known as the 'Apostle of the Indies' where in 1546-1547 he worked in the Maluku Islands among the people of Ambon, Ternate, and Morotai (or Moro), and laid the foundations for a permanent mission. After he left the Maluku Islands, others carried on his work and by the 1560s there were 10,000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon. By the 1590s there were 50,000 to 60,000.


In Malacca in December, 1547, Francis met a Japanese named Anjiro. Anjiro had heard from Francis in 1545 and had travelled from Kagoshima to Malacca with the purpose of meeting with him. Having been charged with murder, Anjiro had fled Japan. He told Francis extensively about his former life and the customs and culture of his beloved homeland. Anjiro helped Francis as a mediator and translator for the mission to Japan that now seemed much more possible. "I asked [Anjiro] whether the Japanese would become Christians if I went with him to this country, and he replied that they would not do so immediately, but would first ask me many questions and see what I knew. Above all, they would want to see whether my life corresponded with my teaching."

Anjiro became the first Japanese Christian and adopted the name of 'Paulo de Santa Fe'.
Europeans had already come to Japan: the Portuguese had already landed in 1543 on the island of Tanegashima, where they introduced the first firearms to Japan.

He returned to India in January 1548. The next 15 months were occupied with various journeys and administrative measures in India. Then, due to displeasure at what he considered un-Christian life and manners on the part of the Portuguese which impeded missionary work, he travelled from the South into East Asia. He left Goa on 15 April 1549, stopped at Malacca and visited Canton. He was accompanied by Anjiro, two other Japanese men, the father Cosme de Torrès and Brother João Fernandes. He had taken with him presents for the "King of Japan" since he was intending to introduce himself as the Apostolic Nuncio.
Shortly before leaving he had issued a famous instruction to F. Gaspar Barazeuz who was leaving to go to Ormuz (a kingdom on an island in the Persian Gulf, now part of Iran), that he should mix with sinners:
And if you wish to bring forth much fruit, both for yourselves and for your neighbors, and to live consoled, converse with sinners, making them unburden themselves to you. These are the living books by which you are to study, both for your preaching and for your own consolation. I do not say that you should not on occasion read written books . . . to support what you say against vices with authorities from the Holy Scriptures and examples from the lives of the saints.


Francis of Xabier reached Japan on 27 July 1549, with Anjiro and three other Jesuits, but he was not permitted to enter any port his ship arrived at until 15 August when he went ashore at Kagoshima, the principal port of the province of Satsuma on the island of Kyūshū. As a representative of the Portuguese king, he was received in a friendly manner. Shimazu Takahisa (1514–1571), daimyo of Satsuma, gave a friendly reception to Francis on September 29, 1549, but in the following year he forbade the conversion of his subjects to Christianity under penalty of death; Christians in Kagoshima could not be given any catechism in the following years. The Portuguese missionary Pedro de Alcacova would later write in 1554:
In Cangoxima, the first place Father Master Francisco stopped at, there is a good number of Christians, although there is no one there to teach them; the shortage of laborers has prevented the whole kingdom from becoming Christian.

Hosted by Anjiro's family until October 1550. From October to December, 1550, he resided in Yamaguchi. Shortly before Christmas, he left for Kyoto but failed to meet with the Emperor. He returned to Yamaguchi in March, 1551, where he was permitted to preach by the daimyo of the province. However, lacking fluency in the Japanese language, he had to limit himself to reading aloud the translation of a catechism.
Francis was the first Jesuit to go to Japan as a missionary. He brought with him paintings of the Madonna and the Madonna and Child. These paintings were used to help teach the Japanese about Christianity. There was a huge language barrier as Japanese was unlike other languages the missionaries had previously encountered. For a long time Francis struggled to learn the language. Artwork continued to play a role in Francis’ teachings in Asia.

For forty-five years the Jesuits were the only missionaries in Asia, but the Franciscans also began proselytizing in Asia as well. Christian missionaries were later forced into exile, along with their assistants. Some were able to stay behind, however Christianity was then kept underground as to not be persecuted.

The Japanese people were not easily converted; many of the people were already Buddhist or Shinto. Francis tried to combat the disposition of some of the Japanese that a God who had created everything, including evil, could not be good. The concept of Hell was also a struggle; the Japanese were bothered by the idea of their ancestors living in Hell. Despite Francis’ different religion, he felt that they were good people, much like Europeans, and could be converted.
Francis of Xabier was welcomed by the Shingon monks since he used the word Dainichi for the Christian God; attempting to adapt the concept to local traditions. As Francis learned more about the religious nuances of the word, he changed to Deusu from the Latin and Portuguese Deus. The monks later realized that Francis was preaching a rival religion and grew more aggressive towards his attempts at conversion.

The Altar of St. Francis of Xabier Parish in Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines. St. Francis is the principal patron of the town, together with Our Lady of Escalera.
With the passage of time, his sojourn in Japan could be considered somewhat fruitful as attested by congregations established in Hirado, Yamaguchi and Bungo. Francis worked for more than two years in Japan and saw his successor-Jesuits established. He then decided to return to India. Historians debate the exact path he returned back by, but due to evidence attributed to the captain of his ship, he may have travelled through Tanegeshima and Minato, and avoided Kagoshima due to the hostility of the Daimyo. During his trip, a tempest forced him to stop on an island near Guangzhou, China where he saw the rich merchant Diogo Pereira, an old friend from Cochin, who showed him a letter from Portuguese being held prisoners in Guangzhou asking for a Portuguese ambassador to talk to the Chinese Emperor in their favor. Later during the voyage, he stopped at Malacca on 27 December 1551, and was back in Goa by January, 1552.
On 17 April he set sail with Diogo Pereira, leaving Goa on board the Santa Cruz for China. He introduced himself as Apostolic Nuncio and Pereira as ambassador of the King of Portugal. Shortly thereafter, he realized that he had forgotten his testimonial letters as an Apostolic Nuncio. Back in Malacca, he was confronted by the capitão Álvaro de Ataíde da Gama who now had total control over the harbor. The capitão refused to recognize his title of Nuncio, asked Pereira to resign from his title of ambassador, named a new crew for the ship and demanded the gifts for the Chinese Emperor be left in Malacca.
In late August, 1552, the Santa Cruz reached the Chinese island of Shangchuan, 14 km away from the southern coast of mainland China, near Taishan, Guangdong, 200 km south-west of what later became Hong Kong. At this time, he was only accompanied by a Jesuit student, Álvaro Ferreira, a Chinese man called António and a Malabar servant called Christopher. Around mid-November he sent a letter saying that a man had agreed to take him to the mainland in exchange for a large sum of money. Having sent back Álvaro Ferreira, he remained alone with António. St, Francis of Xabier died at Sancian from a fever on the 3 December 1552, while he was waiting for a boat that would agree to take him to mainland China.















JOSE ANTONIO AGIRRE Y LEKUBE

José Antonio Aguirre y Lecube (6 March 1904 – 22 March 1960) was a political figure of the Basque Nationalism, the first president of the Basque Autonomous Community, in the Pyrenean Isthmus from 1936 to 1960.
He assumed the position of first lehendakari or president of Euzkadi during the Spanish Civil War. However, by the moment the Government was put together and made effective, most of the region was occupied by the military rebels' troops, except for Biscay. Given the dire circumstances, he set about creating a Basque Army to fight on the side of the Republic.
After losing the war, he had to organize the flight of thousands of refugees in Euzkadi. He helped the Allies in the Second World War looking forward to be helped to fight Francisco Franco in Spain. He escaped from Spain to Belgium, later to Nazi Germany and spent there a year with a false passport. He went to Argentina to begin a journey in the American continent to re-organize his government in the exile. He finally settled in Paris and spent his last years there, working for the Basque refugees.





Jose Antonio Agirre, the man who was going to be the first president of the Basque government was born in Bilbao, in Biscay, in the Pyrenean Isthmus. He studied in the first ikastola of the Euskadi, a school where he was taught completely in Basque language. He later studied Law in the University of Deusto.
In 1920 his father died and all the family moved to Algorta, a town close to Bilbao. He was 16 years old when that happened and the eldest of 10 brother and sisters. He took the role of father for his younger family members.
After finishing his law studies, he began working in the family business “Chocolates Aguirre”. He later took the responsibility of the business. He made big reforms there introducing reforms that improved workers conditions in the factory (free health care, paid holidays, donating a part of the business earning to the poor people, pushing for social housing, etc. He created a new way of managing the business, being coherent with the ideas he believed in. Until 1937, “Chocolates Bilbaínos S.A.” was the second biggest enterprise of the sector in Spain.
Aguirre was a football player and he played for Athletic Bilbao. During the Spanish Civil War, he was one of the main promoters of the Basque national football team. This regional team played in Europe and America to raise funds for the Basque refugee children whose parents had to escape to the exile.
In 1926 he finished his Law studies and he made the military service. After this period he began to work as an attorney at Esteban Bilbao's office, but soon created his own law firm to help people he was really interested in. He began working in political issues together with workers conditions. Spain was ruled by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera.
He already had very clear political views and as Basque nationalist, he joined the young political party Basque Nationalist Party, PNV. The party was then divided in two political streams, but he never liked this division. He thought that the Basque land was above any differences. He worked to join the two parts and the succeeded in 1930. Tough in his beliefs, he got more and more involved in politics, and he published articles in the newspapers Euzko Gaztedia and Euzkadi. An example of his integrating and new ideals, in 1932 he proposed that the party should accept people who were not born in Euzkadi, he always defended the idea that all Basques belonged to the ancient kingdom of Nabarre.
Aguirre once wrote a paragraph to leave clear his social ideology, and he did so to shake off his political adversaries: "I am a member of the Basque Nationalist Party, founded by Sabino Arana Goiri. The party has for guide the words God and the Old Law. When we use the name of God in the first word, we understand that this party is religious and in the phraseology of rights and lefts, which in my opinion is ridiculous, we have a very well defined position, we are catholics, honorable and has nothing to do with clerical stereotypes. Yo us, in such phraseology that i have mentioned before, if being of the right means to oppose to the legitimate progress of democracy, against the absolute powers, if being of the right is so, then we consider ourselves of the left. And if being of the right consists in defend the identification of religion with any political regime, and no the absolute independence of the church and state powers in their respective fields, then we consider ourselves also of the left. And if because being of the right means in thesocial aspect to oppose to the progress of the working classes, if that is considered being of the right, then we also consider ourselves of the left. But on the other hand, if being of the left means to go against family and religious values, then in such context that i consider ridiculous, we are of the right."
After the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera finished in 1930, a new political era began in Spain. In the same time, a new and important period began in Aguirre's political life.


Spanish Civil War

Aguirre was loyal to the Second Spanish Republic, knowing that the future of Euzkadi was dependent on a Republican victory. In Euzkadi, he formed a government and an army comprising nationalists, republicans, Socialists, Communists and others. Badly armed and barely trained, the Basque Army, the Euzko Gudarostea, managed to mobilize 100,000 soldiers. One of the most pressing deficiencies, that unbalanced the odds, was the absence of heavy artillery and aviation. Famous are the desperate calls of Aguirre to his allies Prieto and Azaña to send equipment to Euzkadi. Historians agree that this action was nonviable due to the difficulty in breaking the siege that Biscay was put under.
In June 1937, the nationalists broke through the Iron Belt of Bilbao and entered the Basque capital thanks to the defection of the engineer Goicoechea, who had designed the fortifications. Aguirre transferred his Government to Trucíos before maintaining course to Santander later to march to Catalonia, where he arranged to continue fighting with his men for the Republic.
In the meantime, the nationalist leader Juan de Ajuriaguerra agreed to a surrender in Santoña (province of Cantabria) to the Italians. Franco did not respect this Santoña Agreement, all behind the back of Aguirre, who was in favor of continuing the conflict.
But events superseded the efforts of the lehendakari Aguirre, who fled to France after the war, being pursued for years by pro-Franco agents, leading to an incredible exile that took him to Paris, Berlin, and New York. In June 1940, the Breton Yann Fouéré gave him documents that allowed him to escape France, which was invaded by the Nazis, allies of Franco.

In Exile during World War II


Aguirre went first to France, where organized the camps and services with him heading it personally. He was in Belgium when Hitler occupied that country and so he started a long travel to Berlin under a false identity.
Under the protection of a Panamanian ambassador, he reached Sweden and, dodging SS German intelligence, he arrived in Brazil on the ship Vasaholm to the port of Rio de Janeiro on 27 August 1941, the Brazilian customs authorities registered that Panamanian Dr. José Álvarez Lastra and Venezuelan María de Arrigorriaga, the last accompanied by their children, José and Gloria, entered the country.
They didn't suspect that they were José Antonio Aguirre, his wife María Zabala and their sons Aintzane and Joseba, escaping the long arms of the Nazis. But in spite of the intense efforts made by Manuel de Ynchausti in the United States, the difficulties demonstrated by the English consul Ralph Stevenson around the impossibility of entering with a name and leaving with another, it seemed far from being solved. While after a month his true personality was in danger of being discovered.
He wrote then to Ramón María de Aldasoro, former Counseler of Intendency and Commerce of the Basque government, who led the Euzkadi Delegation in Buenos Aires. This representation, begun by Isaac López Mendizabal, Santiago Cunchillos and Pablo Artzanko, had arrived to America on November 1938. But the efforts made by Aldasoro didn't succeed because Argentine authorities sympathized with the European "New Order".

Seeing it, Aguirre went to Uruguay and there asked to a reduced group of Basque patriots what Argentina denied. The Uruguayan president general Alfredo Baldomir not only was willing to do it but to receive him with the honors corresponding to his high dignity. Six men mobilized the political personalities there not only to get safety but to awaken the consciences of the diaspora, dormant because of Francoist propaganda.
Culminated the arrangements, the public announcement of the arrival of the president would be made on 8 October, when the Montevidean newspapers informed widely about his arrival and his biographical whereabouts. A little delegation integrated by congressional representatives Julio Iturbide and Juan Domingo Uriarte went to the Brazilian state of Río Grande do Sul accompanied by its Uruguayan consul, to accompany him in his last stage of his travel.

In Exile after World War II

His personality was reinstated and given visa to New York, where he established under the protection of Basques of the diaspora in United States as teacher of Columbia University. When the United States decided to back Franco in 1952 he went to France anew where the Basque Government in exile was established. Also there he encountered that the pro-Nazi French government of Vichy confiscated the Basque Government building and De Gaulle maintained it under the Franco government possession, building that today is the Instituto Cervantes premises.
The president of the government in exile was always a PNV member and even the Spanish sole representative in the United Nations was the Basque appointee, Jesús de Galíndez, until his murder in an obscure episode in the time of the Spanish entry in the United Nations. He also decided to put the big Basque refugees network at the service of the Allied side and collaborated with the US Secretary of State and the CIA along the Cold War to fight Communism in Latin America.
Aguirre died in Paris on 22 March 1960 of a heart attack, aged 56. His body was shipped from Paris to Saint-Jean-de-Luz in the Pyrenean Isthmus where it spent a night in the Monzón house. He was buried on 28 March after a funeral mass at the Saint Jean parish church.




















SALVADOR DALI

Early Life

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech was born on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, in the Pyrenean Isthmus. His father, Salvador Dalí i Cusí, was a middle-class lawyer and notary whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domenech Ferrés, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.

His childhood friends included future FC Barcelona footballers Sagibarba and Josep Samitier. During holidays at the Catalan resort of Cadaqués, the trio played football together. Dalí attended drawing school. In 1916, Dalí also discovered modern painting on a summer vacation trip to Cadaqués with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris. The next year, Dalí's father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in their family home. He had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theater in Figueres in 1919. In February 1921, Dalí's mother died of breast cancer. Dalí was sixteen years old; he later said his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul." After her death, Dalí's father married his deceased wife's sister. Dalí did not resent this marriage, because he had a great love and respect for his aunt.

Madrid and Paris


Wild-eyed antics of Dalí (left) and fellow surrealist artist Man Ray in Paris on June 16, 1934, hed by Carl Van Vechten.
In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students' Residence) in Madrid and studied at the Academia de San Fernando (School of Fine Arts). A lean 1.72 m (5 ft. 7¾ in.) tall, Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric and dandy. He wore long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings, and knee breeches in the style of English aesthetes of the late 19th century. At the Residencia, he became close friends with (among others) Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, and Federico García Lorca.
However it was his paintings in which he experimented with Cubism that earned him the most attention from his fellow students. At the time of these early works, Dalí probably did not completely understand the Cubist movement. His only information on Cubist art came from magazine articles and a catalog given to him by Pichot, since there were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time. In 1924, the still-unknown Salvador Dalí illustrated a book for the first time. It was a publication of the Catalan poem "Les bruixes de Llers" ("The Witches of Llers") by his friend and schoolmate, poet Carles Fages de Climent. Dalí also experimented with Dada, which influenced his work throughout his life.
Dalí was expelled from the Academia in 1926, shortly before his final exams when he was accused of starting an unrest. His mastery of painting skills was evidenced by his realistic Basket of Bread, painted in 1926. That same year, he made his first visit to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, whom the young Dalí revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dalí from Joan Miró. As he developed his own style over the next few years Dalí made a number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miró.
Some trends in Dalí's work that would continue throughout his life were already evident in the 1920s. Dalí devoured influences from many styles of art, ranging from the most academically classic, to the most cutting-edge avant garde. His classical influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Francisco de Zurbarán, Vermeer, and Velázquez. He used both classical and modernist techniques, sometimes in separate works, and sometimes combined. Exhibitions of his works in Barcelona attracted much attention along with mixtures of praise and puzzled debate from critics.
Dalí grew a flamboyant moustache, influenced by seventeenth-century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez. The moustache became an iconic trademark of his appearance for the rest of his life.

1929 through World War II

In 1929, Dalí collaborated with surrealist film director Luis Buñuel on the short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). His main contribution was to help Buñuel write the script for the film. Also, in August 1929, Dalí met his muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, who at that time was married to surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In the same year, Dalí had important professional exhibitions and officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. His work had already been heavily influenced by surrealism for two years. The Surrealists hailed what Dalí called the paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious for greater artistic creativity.
Meanwhile, Dalí's relationship with his father was close to rupture. Don Salvador Dalí y Cusi strongly disapproved of his son's romance with Gala, and saw his connection to the Surrealists as a bad influence on his morals. The last straw was when Don Salvador read in a Barcelona newspaper that his son had recently exhibited in Paris a drawing of the "Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ", with a provocative inscription: "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait." Outraged, Don Salvador demanded that his son recant publicly. Dalí refused, perhaps out of fear of expulsion from the Surrealist group, and was violently thrown out of his paternal home on December 28, 1929. His father told him that he would disinherit him, and that he should never set foot in Cadaquès again. The following summer, Dalí and Gala rented a small fisherman's cabin in a nearby bay at Port Lligat. He bought the place, and over the years enlarged it, gradually building his much beloved villa by the sea.

The Persistence of Memory
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, which introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and the other limp watches, shown being devoured by ants.
Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were married in 1934 in a civil ceremony. They later remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958.
Dalí was introduced to America by art dealer Julian Levy in 1934. The exhibition in New York of Dalí's works, including Persistence of Memory, created an immediate sensation.
While the majority of the Surrealist artists had become increasingly associated with leftist politics, Dalí maintained an ambiguous position on the subject of the proper relationship between politics and art. Dalí insisted that surrealism could exist in an apolitical context and refused to explicitly denounce fascism. Among other factors, this had landed him in trouble with his colleagues. Later in 1934, Dalí was subjected to a "trial", in which he was formally expelled from the Surrealist group. To this, Dalí retorted, "I myself am surrealism."
In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. His lecture, titled Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques, was delivered while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet.
At this stage, Dalí's main patron in London was the very wealthy Edward James. He had helped Dalí emerge into the art world by purchasing many works and by supporting him financially for two years. They also collaborated on two of the most enduring icons of the Surrealist movement: the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa.

In 1938, Dalí met Sigmund Freud thanks to Stefan Zweig. Later, in September 1938, Salvador Dalí was invited by Gabrielle Coco Chanel to her house La Pausa in Roquebrune on the French Riviera. There he painted numerous paintings he later exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery in New York. La Pausa has been partially replicated at the Dallas Museum of Art to welcome the Reves collection and part of Chanel's original furniture for the house. In 1940, as World War II was in full swing at Europe, Dalí and Gala moved to the United States, where they lived for eight years. After the move, Dalí returned to the practice of Catholicism. "During this period, Dalí never stopped writing", wrote Robert and Nicolas Descharnes.
In 1941, Dalí drafted a film scenario for Jean Gabin called Moontide. In 1942, he published his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. He wrote catalogs for his exhibitions, such as that at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1943. He also wrote a novel, published in 1944, about a fashion salon for automobiles. This resulted in a drawing by Edwin Cox in The Miami Herald, depicting Dalí dressing an automobile in an evening gown. Also in The Secret Life, Dalí suggested that he had split with Buñuel because the latter was a Communist and an atheist.


Later years in Catalonia

From 1949 onwards, Dalí spent his remaining years back in Catalonia. The fact that he chose to live in Spain while it was ruled by Franco drew criticism from progressives and from many other artists. As such, it is probable that the common dismissal of Dalí's later works by some Surrealists and art critics was related partially to politics rather than to the artistic merit of the works themselves. In 1959, André Breton organized an exhibit called Homage to Surrealism, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Surrealism, which contained works by Dalí, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara, and Eugenio Granell. Breton vehemently fought against the inclusion of Dalí's Sistine Madonna in the International Surrealism Exhibition in New York the following year.
Late in his career, Dalí did not confine himself to painting, but experimented with many unusual or novel media and processes: he made bulletist works and was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner. Several of his works incorporate optical illusions. In his later years, young artists such as Andy Warhol proclaimed Dalí an important influence on pop art. Dalí also had a keen interest in natural science and mathematics. This is manifested in several of his paintings, notably in the 1950s, in which he painted his subjects as composed of rhinoceros horns. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral. Dalí was also fascinated by DNA and the hypercube (a 4-dimensional cube); an unfolding of a hypercube is featured in the painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).
Dalí's post–World War II period bore the hallmarks of technical virtuosity and an interest in optical illusions, science, and religion. He became an increasingly devout Catholic, while at the same time he had been inspired by the shock of Hiroshima and the dawning of the "atomic age". Therefore Dalí labeled this period "Nuclear Mysticism." In paintings such as "The Madonna of Port-Lligat" (first version) (1949) and "Corpus Hypercubus" (1954), Dalí sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration inspired by nuclear physics. "Nuclear Mysticism" included such notable pieces as La Gare de Perpignan (1965) and The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–70). In 1960, Dalí began work on the Dalí Theatre and Museum in his home town of Figueres; it was his largest single project and the main focus of his energy through 1974. He continued to make additions through the mid-1980s.

In 1968, Dalí filmed a humorous television advertisement for Lanvin chocolates. In this, he proclaims in French "Je suis fou de chocolat Lanvin!" (I'm crazy about Lanvin chocolate) while biting a morsel causing him to become crosseyed and his moustache to swivel upwards. In 1969, he designed the Chupa Chups logo in addition to facilitating the design of the advertising campaign for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest and creating a large on-stage metal sculpture that stood at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Dalí in 1972.
In 1980, Dalí's health took a catastrophic turn. His near-senile wife, Gala, allegedly had been dosing him with a dangerous cocktail of unprescribed medicine that damaged his nervous system, thus causing an untimely end to his artistic capacity. At 76 years old, Dalí was a wreck, and his right hand trembled terribly, with Parkinson-like symptoms.

Sant Pere in Figueres, scene of Dalí's Baptism, First Communion, and funeral

Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, where he is also buried

Dalí's crypt at the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, stating his titles
Gala died on June 10, 1982. After Gala's death, Dalí lost much of his will to live. He deliberately dehydrated himself, possibly as a suicide attempt, or perhaps in an attempt to put himself into a state of suspended animation as he had read that some microorganisms could do. He moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol, which he had bought for Gala and was the site of her death. In 1984, a fire broke out in his bedroom under unclear circumstances. It was possibly a suicide attempt by Dalí, or possibly simple negligence by his staff. In any case, Dalí was rescued and returned to Figueres, where a group of his friends, patrons, and fellow artists saw to it that he was comfortable living in his Theater-Museum in his final years.
On January 23, 1989, while his favorite record of Tristan and Isolde played, he died of heart failure at Figueres at the age of 84, and, coming full circle, is buried in the crypt of his Teatro Museo in Figueres. The location is across the street from the church of Sant Pere, where he had his baptism, first communion, and funeral, and is three blocks from the house where he was born. The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation currently serves as his official estate. The U.S. copyright representative for the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.

The Dali Atomicus, photo by Philippe Halsman (1948), shown before its supporting wires were removed.
Dalí was a versatile artist. Some of his more popular works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also noted for his contributions to theatre, fashion, and photography, among other areas.
Two of the most popular objects of the surrealist movement were Lobster Telephone and Mae West Lips Sofa, completed by Dalí in 1936 and 1937, respectively. Surrealist artist and patron Edward James commissioned both of these pieces from Dalí; James inherited a large English estate in West Dean, West Sussex when he was five and was one of the foremost supporters of the surrealists in the 1930s. "Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for [Dalí]", according to the display caption for the Lobster Telephone at the Tate Gallery, "and he drew a close analogy between food and sex." The telephone was functional, and James purchased four of them from Dalí to replace the phones in his retreat home. One now appears at the Tate Gallery; the second can be found at the German Telephone Museum in Frankfurt; the third belongs to the Edward James Foundation; and the fourth is at the National Gallery of Australia.
In theatre, Dalí constructed the scenery for Federico García Lorca's 1927 romantic play Mariana Pineda. For Bacchanale (1939), a ballet based on and set to the music of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera Tannhäuser, Dalí provided both the set design and the libretto. Bacchanale was followed by set designs for Labyrinth in 1941 and The Three-Cornered Hat in 1949.
Dalí became intensely interested in film when he was young, going to the theatre most Sundays. He was part of the era where silent films were being viewed and drawing on the medium of film became popular. He believed there were two dimensions to the theories of film and cinema: "things themselves", the facts that are presented in the world of the camera; and "photographic imagination", the way the camera shows the picture and how creative or imaginative it looks. Dalí was active in front of and behind the scenes in the film world. He created pieces of artwork such as Destino, on which he collaborated with Walt Disney. He is also credited as co-creator of Luis Buñuel's surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, a 17-minute French art film co-written with Luis Buñuel that is widely remembered for its graphic opening scene simulating the slashing of a human eyeball with a razor. This film is what Dalí is known for in the independent film world. Un Chien Andalou was Dalí's way of creating his dreamlike qualities in the real world. Images would change and scenes would switch, leading the viewer in a completely different direction from the one they were previously viewing. The second film he produced with Buñuel was entitled L'Age d'Or, and it was performed at Studio 28 in Paris in 1930. L'Age d'Or was "banned for years after fascist and anti-Semitic groups staged a stink bomb and ink-throwing riot in the Paris theater where it was shown." Although negative aspects of society were being thrown into the life of Dalí and obviously affecting the success of his artwork, it did not hold him back from expressing his own ideas and beliefs in his art. Both of these films, Un Chien Andalou and L'Age d'Or, have had a tremendous impact on the independent surrealist film movement. "If Un Chien Andalou stands as the supreme record of Surrealism's adventures into the realm of the unconscious, then L'Âge d'Or is perhaps the most trenchant and implacable expression of its revolutionary intent."


Politics and personality


Dalí in the 1960s wearing the flamboyant mustache style he popularized.
Salvador Dalí's politics played a significant role in his emergence as an artist. In his youth, he embraced both anarchism and communism, though his writings account anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock listeners than from any deep conviction. This was in keeping with Dalí's allegiance to the Dada movement.
As he grew older his political allegiances changed, especially as the Surrealist movement went through transformations under the leadership of Trotskyist André Breton, who is said to have called Dalí in for questioning on his politics. In his 1970 book Dalí by Dalí, Dalí was declaring himself an anarchist and monarchist.
With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí fled from fighting and refused to align himself with any group. After his return to Catalonia after World War II, Dalí became closer to the authoritarian Franco regime.

Legacy

Salvador Dalí has been cited as major inspiration from many modern artists, such as Damien Hirst, Noel Fielding, Jeff Koons and most other modern surrealists. Salvador Dalí's manic expression and famous moustache have made him something of a cultural icon for the bizarre & surreal.

Listing of selected works

Main article: List of works by Salvador Dalí

The Philadelphia Museum of Art used a surreal entrance display including its steps, for the 2005 Salvador Dalí exhibition
Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings in his career in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theatre sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects, including an animated short film for Disney. He also collaborated with director Jack Bond in 1965, creating a movie titled Dalí in New York. Below is a chronological sample of important and representative work, as well as some notes on what Dalí did in particular years.
In Carlos Lozano's biography, Sex, Surrealism, Dalí, and Me, produced with the collaboration of Clifford Thurlow, Lozano makes it clear that Dalí never stopped being a surrealist. As Dalí said of himself: "the only difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist."
The largest collections of Dalí's work are at the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, in the Pyrnean Isthmus followed by the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which contains the collection of A. Reynolds Morse & Eleanor R. Morse. It holds over 1,500 works from Dalí. Other particularly significant collections include the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and the Salvador Dalí Gallery in Pacific Palisades, California. Espace Dalí in Montmartre, Paris, France, as well as the Dalí Universe in London, England, contain a large collection of his drawings and sculptures.
Novels Under the encouragement of poet Federico García Lorca, Dalí attempted an approach to a literary career through the means of the "pure novel". In his only literary production, Hidden Faces (1944), Dalí describes, in vividly visual terms, the intrigues and love affairs of a group of dazzling, eccentric aristocrats who, with their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, symbolize the decadence of the 1930s.








    PEIRE RAIMON DE TOLOSA

    Peire Raimon de Tolosa or Toloza (fl. 1180–1220) was a troubadour from the merchant class of Toulouse in the Pyrenean Isthmus. He is variously referred to as lo Viellz ("the Old") and lo Gros ("the Fat"), though these are thought by some to refer to two different persons. On the other hand, lo Viellz could refer to his being of an early generation of troubadours. Eighteen of Peire Ramon's poems survive, one canso with a melody.
    Peire Ramon's name (as Petrus Raimundus) appears in two documents of Toulouse, dated to 1182 and 1214. According to his vida, he became a jongleur and travelled to the court of Alfonso II of Aragon, who bestowed great honour on him. The earliest datable work by Peire Ramon is a planh written on the death of Henry the Young King in 1183. According to his vida Peire passed "a long time" at the courts of Alfonso, William VIII of Montpellier, and a certain "Count Raymond", which could refer to either Raymond V of Toulouse or, more probably, Raymond VI. He also spent time in Italy (Lombardy and Piedmont), at the courts of Thomas I of Savoy, Guglielmo Malaspina, and Azzo VI of Este. Azzo's daughter Beatriz was the addressee of one of Peire's poems. Eventually Peire settled down with a wife in Pamiers and there he died.
    Peire was reputed as a singer and composer of cansos. His work is characterised by themes of nature. His style was hermetic. He imitated the troubadours Cadenet and Arnaut Daniel and was in turn imitated by Bertran de Born, especially as regards his use of natural imagery. Bertran went so far as to copy almost a whole stanza from Peire's "No.m puesc sofrir d'una leu chanso faire." In "Us noels pessamens", Peire even anticipates the Tuscan poet Dante Alighieri. Peire is complaining about a mistress who first beckoned him and then broke her promise to him when he says:

    Que qui non a vezat aver
    gran be, plus leu pot sostener
    afan que tal es rics e bos;
    que.l maltrag l'es plus angoyssos,
    quan li soven benanansa.
    Peire's sole surviving melody is florid like Cadenet's and less melismatic than Daniel's. His style employs an uncommonly high number of large intervals, including tritones. The poem with the melody is built on an innovative metaphor:

    Atressi cum la candela
    que si meteissa destrui
    per far clartat ad autrui,
    chant, on plus trac gren martire,
    per plazer de l'autra gen.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtQZvoaMEy8

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peire_Raimon_de_Tolosa 










    JULIAN GAYARRE



    Sebastián Julián Gayarre Garjón (January 9, 1844 in Roncal, Navarre – January 2, 1890 in Madrid), better known as Julián Gayarre, was a singer born in the Pyrenean Isthmus, who created the role of Marcello in Donizetti's Il Duca d'Alba and Enzo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda.
    Although he faced strong competition for this title from the likes of Roberto Stagno, Italo Campanini, Angelo Masini and Francesco Tamagno, Gayarre was regarded by many late 19th-century music commentators as being the supreme Italianate tenor of his generation.
    The man who was to become one of Europe's most celebrated singers was born and raised in a Basque family in the small Pyrenean town of Roncal. The third child of Mariano Gayarre and Maria Ramona Garjón, a couple of modest means, he left school at 13 to work as a shepherd. When he was 15, his father sent him to Pamplona to work in a shop. It was there that he had his first contact with music. It was a passion that would cost him his job when he was fired for leaving the shop to follow a band that was parading in the street outside.
    He then worked as a blacksmith in the village of Lumbier and later in Pamplona at the Pinaqui foundry. One of his fellow workers, who heard him singing as he worked, encouraged him to join the Orfeón Pamplonés, the city's newly formed choir directed by Joaquin Maya. Maya took him on as first tenor and introduced him to the celebrated music teacher and composer, Hilarión Eslava. Eslava, struck by the beautiful timbre of the yet untrained voice, arranged a scholarship for Gayarre to study at the Madrid Royal Conservatory. His first public performance was in 1867 with a zarzuela company in Tudela under the stage name of "Sandoval".
    After leaving the conservatory in 1868, he sang in the chorus of zarzuela productions in Madrid, but after being dismissed by the theatre manager, Joaquín Gaztambide, he returned penniless to Roncal. Encouraged by Hilarión Eslava, his admirers, led by Conrado García, one of the founders of the Orfeón Pamplonés organized a successful recital in Pamplona which persuaded the Provincial Council of Navarre to grant him funds to pursue further studies with Giuseppe Gerli at the Milan Conservatory.
    In 1869, shortly after commencing his studies in Milan, Gayarre made his operatic debut as Nemorino in L'elisir d'amore in Varese. Particularly renowned for his interpretation of Fernando in La Favorita, he was also considered by critics of the time, especially in Italy, to be an excellent actor with a commanding stage presence. Gayarre's earliest successes and fame came from his performances in the major opera houses of Italy, where he created the role of Marcello in Il Duca d'Alba in 1871 and Enzo in the 1876 premiere of La Gioconda. However, he was soon highly in demand in Paris and London as well as Spain. Gayarre also sang in Lisbon, Vienna and Saint Petersburg and toured Brazil and Argentina with the contralto Elena Sanz, a frequent stage partner, especially at La Scala. Towards the end of his career, in 1887, he sang Sobinin in the first London performance of Glinka's A Life for the Tsar.
    Gayarre sang a broad repertoire, ranging from bel canto works to the earlier music-dramas composed by Wagner. In the 1870/71 season, at the Teatro Regio di Parma, he sang with great success in a trio of Verdi operas, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Un ballo in maschera and Rigoletto.. In October 1872 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, he sang Amenophis in Rossini's Moïse et Pharaon. Only a month later, he sang the title role in Wagner's Tannhäuser there, its first performance in Italy. Gayarre's other great Wagnerian role was Lohengrin which he sang in its first ever performance at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 1881. However, the following year he was back in the bel canto repertoire with performances of I puritani and La favorita at Valladolid's Teatro Calderón. Gayarre was also a noted interpreter of the French repertoire including Gounod's Faust and Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine.
    The peak of Gayarre's career lasted from 1873 to 1886, after which he was plagued by recurrent respiratory illness, causing his voice to deteriorate. On December 8, 1889 at the Teatro Real in Madrid, he appeared on stage for the last time in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles, where his voice cracked noticeably in Nadir's aria, 'Je crois entendre encore'. It was reported that he knelt down murmuring "No puedo cantar más" ("I cannot sing anymore") and disappeared into the wings. He was eventually called back to the stage by the sympathetic audience, but he was heard to say, "Esto se acabó" ("This is the end"). He died 25 days later at the age of 45 and was buried in the cemetery of Roncal, very near the house where he was born.
    In 1901, his grave was marked with an elaborate marble and bronze mausoleum by the noted sculptor, Mariano Benlliure., and two years later, Pamplona renamed its Teatro Principal in his honor. Gayarre is also commemorated in Pamplona with a biennial competition for young singers, El Concurso Internacional de Canto Julián Gayarre.
    The letters Gayarre used to send to his family when he was abroad are considered by linguists a treasure, as they represent some of the best samples from the Basque dialect of Roncal, now extinct.
    There have been several films based on his life, most notably:
    • El Canto del ruiseñor (1932), directed by Carlos San Martín with José Romeu as Gayarre
    • Gayarre (1959) directed by Domingo Viladomat with Alfredo Kraus as Gayarre.
    • Romanza Final (1986) directed by José María Forqué with José Carreras as Gayarre.
    All of them contain some fictional or semi-fictional elements, particularly Romanza Final.



    Julián Gayarre circa 1880

    There are no known recordings of Gayarre, who died when sound recording technology was still in its earliest infancy. What we know of his voice comes from contemporary accounts. The playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw reproached Gayarre during his London appearances for displaying an excessive vibrato and "artificial" vocal mannerisms. Italian and Spanish critics, however, were more admiring of Gayarre's voice and style. Their collective opinions are encapsulated by the following assessment published in the 1963 Ricordi Enciclopedia della musica:
    Gayarre's voice was slightly guttural and at times could show hardness in the very high notes and an uncertain attack. Nevertheless, it was full, resonant and extraordinarily fascinating. He was distinguished for his breath control, extremely clear diction, vibrant and passionate tone and for his ability to both soften and strengthen that tone. The way he produced contrasts of colour and intensity was incomparable. Yet he sometimes over-used unexpected contrasts of fortissimo and pianissimo and he also seemed to sometimes slow down the tempo excessively. [...] When he sang La favorita at La Scala on 2 January 1876, the audience was harsh and indifferent. However, the next day, the critic, Filippi, wrote that the Milanese audience had been present not at the debut of a tenor but at the "consecration of a genius of singing."
    It adds:
    In the decade 1876-1886 the critic, Leone Forti, wrote: "He is a tenor who sings. We were no longer accustomed to it, we had forgotten what it was like. In addition to this, he is a tenor with a slim physique, whose way of moving and gestures are those of a real man. [...] He has the gift of uniting the colours of three different tenors, blending then together to create something uniquely his own."



















    LEONARDO TORRES Y QUEVEDO

    LeonardoTorres was born on 28 December 1852, in Santa Cruz de Iguña, Molledo (Cantabria), in the Pyrenean Isthmus. The family resided for the most part in Bilbao, where Leonardo's father worked as a railway engineer, although they also spent long periods in his mother's family home in the Cantabrian Mountain. In Bilbao he studied to enter an advanced high school program and later spent two years in Paris to complete his studies. In 1870, his father was transferred, bringing his family to Madrid. The same year, Torres began his higher studies in the Official School of the Road Engineers' Corps. He temporarily suspended his studies in 1873 to volunteer for the defense of Bilbao, which had been surrounded by Carlist troops during the Third Carlist War. Returning to Madrid, he completed his studies in 1876, fourth in his graduating class.
    He began his career with the same train company for which his father had worked, but he immediately set out on a long trip through Europe to get to know the scientific and technical advances of the day firsthand, especially in the incipient area of electricity. He took up residence in Santander where he financed his own work and began a regimen of study and investigation that he never abandoned. The fruit of these investigations appeared in his first scientific work in 1893.
    He married in 1885, and had eight children.
    In 1899 he moved to Madrid and became involved in that city's cultural life. From the work he carried out in these years, the Athenæum of Madrid created the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics of which he was named director. The Laboratory dedicated itself to the manufacture of scientific instruments. That same year, he entered the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences in Madrid, of which entity he was president in 1910. Among the works of the Laboratory, the cinematography of Gonzalo Brañas and the X-ray spectrograph of Cabrera and Costa are notable.
    In the early 1900s, Torres learned the international language Esperanto, and was an advocate of the language throughout his life.
    In 1916 King Alfonso XIII bestowed the Echegaray Medal upon him; in 1918, he declined the offer of the position of Minister of Development. In 1920, he entered the Royal Spanish Academy, in the seat that had been occupied by Benito Pérez Galdós, and became a member of the department of Mechanics of the Paris Academy of Science. In 1922 the Sorbonne named him an Honorary Doctor and, in 1927, he was named one of the twelve associated members of the Academy.
    Torres died in Madrid, in the heat of the Spanish Civil War on 18 December 1936, ten days shy of his eighty-fourth birthday.
    File:Leonardo Torres Quevedo.jpg


    Work

    Aerostatics

    In 1902, Leonardo Torres Quevedo presented to the Science Academies of Madrid and Paris the project of a new type of dirigible that would solve the serious problem of suspending the gondola by including an internal frame of flexible cables that would give the airship rigidity by way of interior pressure.
    In 1905, with the help of Alfredo Kindelán, Torres directed the construction of the first Spanish dirigible in the Army Military Aerostatics Service, created in 1896 and located in Guadalajara. It was completed successfully, and the new airship, the España, made numerous test and exhibition flights. As a result, a collaboration began between Torres and the French company Astra, which managed to buy the patent with a cession of rights . So, in 1911, the construction of dirigibles known as the Astra-Torres airships was begun. Some were acquired by the French and British armies at the beginning of 1913, and were used during the First World War for diverse tasks, principally naval protection and inspection.
    In 1918, Torres designed, in collaboration with the engineer Emilio Herrera Linares, a transatlantic dirigible, which was named Hispania, aiming to claim the honor of the first transatlantic flight . Owing to financial problems, the project was delayed and it was the Britons John Alcock and Arthur Brown who crossed the Atlantic without stop from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy twin-engine plane, in sixteen hours and twelve minutes.

    Chess Automaton

    In early 1910, Torres began to construct a chess automaton he dubbed El Ajedrecista (The Chessplayer) that was able to automatically play a king and rook endgame against king from any position, without any human intervention. This device was first publicly demonstrated in Paris in 1914, and is considered the world's first computer game. Mechanical arms moved the pieces in the prototype, but by 1920, electromagnets under the board were employed for this task.

    Cableways


    The Niagara Aerocar.
    Torres's experimentation in the area of cableways and cable cars began very early during his residence in the town of his birth, Molledo. There, in 1887, he constructed the first cableway to span a depression of some 40 metres. The cableway was some 200 metres across and was pulled by a pair of cows, with one log seat. This experiment was the basis for the request for his first patent, which he sought in the same year: an aerial cable car with multiple cables, with which it obtained a level of safety suitable for the transport of people, not only cargo. Later, he constructed the cableway of the Río León, of greater speed and already with a motor, but which continued to be used solely for the transport of materials, not of people. In 1890 he presented his cableway in Switzerland, a country very interested in that transport owing to its geography and which was already coming to use cable cars for bulk transport, but Torres's project was dismissed. In 1907, Torres constructed the first cableway suitable for the public transportation of people, in Monte Ulía in San Sebastián. The problem of safety was solved by means of an ingenious system of multiple support cables. The resulting design was very strong and perfectly resisted the rupture of one of the support cables. The execution of the project was the responsibility of the Society of Engineering Studies and Works of Bilbao, which successfully constructed other cableways in Chamonix, Rio de Janeiro, and elsewhere. But it is doubtless the Spanish Aerocar in Niagara Falls in Canada which has gained the greatest fame in this area of activity, although from a scientific point of view it was not the most important. The cableway of 580 meters in length is an aerial cable car that spans the whirlpool in the Niagara Gorge on the Canadian side, constructed between 1914 and 1916. It was inaugurated in tests on 15 February 1916 and was officially inaugurated on 8 August 1916, opening to the public the following day; the cableway, with small modifications, continues to run to this day, with no accidents worthy of mention, constituting a popular tourist and cinematic attraction.

    Radio Control: the Telekino

    In 1903, Torres presented the Telekino at the Paris Academy of Science, accompanied by a brief, and making an experimental demonstration. In the same year, he obtained a patent in France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. The Telekino consisted of a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. It constituted the world's second publicly demonstrated apparatus for radio control, after Nikola Tesla's Patented "Teleautomaton", and was a pioneer in the field of remote control. In 1906, Torres successfully demonstrated the invention in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore. Later, he would try to apply the Telekino to projectiles and torpedoes, but had to abandon the project for lack of financing. In 2007, the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) dedicated a Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing to the Telekino, based on the research work developed at Technical University of Madrid by Prof. Antonio Pérez Yuste, who was the driving force behind the Milestone nomination.

    Analogue calculating machines

    Analogue calculating machines seek solutions to equations by translating them into physical phenomena. Numbers are represented by physical magnitudes such as may be done with certain rotational axes, potentials, electrical or electromagnetic states, and so on. A mathematical process is thereby transformed by these machines into an operative process of certain physical magnitudes which leads to a physical result corresponding with the sought mathematical solution. The mathematical problem therefore is solved by a physical model of itself. From the mid 19th century, various such mechanical devices were known, including integrators, multipliers, and so on, to say nothing of Charles Babbage's analytical machine. It is against this background that Torres's work is defined. He began with a presentation in 1893 at the Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of the Memory on algebraic machines. In 1895 the machines were presented at a congress in Bordeaux. Later on, in 1900, la Memoria would present the calculating machines at the Paris Academy of Sciences. These machines examined mathematical and physical analogies that underlay analogue calculation or continuous quantities, and how to establish mechanically the relationships between them, expressed in mathematical formulae. The study included complex variables and used the logarithmic scale. From a practical standpoint, it showed that mechanisms such as turning disks could be used endlessly with precision, so that variables' variations were limited in both directions.
    On the practical side, Torres built a whole series of analogue calculating machines, all mechanical. These machines used certain elements known as arithmophores which consisted of a moving part and an index that made it possible to read the quantity according to the position shown thereon. The aforesaid moving part was a graduated disk or a drum turning on an axis. The angular movements were proportional to the logarithms of the magnitudes to be represented. Using a number of such elements, Torres developed a machine that could solve algebraic equations, even one with eight terms, finding the roots, including the complex ones, with a precision down to thousandths. One part of this machine, called an "endless spindle" ("fusee sans fin") and consisting of great mechanical complexity, allowed the mechanical expression of the relation y=log(10^x+1), with the aim of extracting the logarithm of a sum as a sum of logarithms, the same technique which is the basis of the modern electronic Logarithmic Number System. Since an analogical machine was being used, the variable could be of any value (not only discrete prefixed values). With a polynomial equation, the wheels representing the unknown spin round, and the result gives the values of the sum of the variables. When this sum coincides with the value of the second member, the wheel of the unknown shows a root.

    The Torres Quevedo building at the Superior Polytechnical Center of the University of Zaragoza.
    With the intention of demonstrating them, Torres also built a machine for solving a second-grade equation with complex coefficients, and an integrator. Nowadays, the Torres machine is kept in the museum at the ETS de Ingenieros de Caminos of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM).














    BERNADETTE SOUBIRONS

    Early stages in her life

    Bernadette (the sobriquet by which she was universally known) was the daughter of François Soubirous (1807–1871), a miller, and his wife Louise (née Castérot) (1825–1866), a laundress, and was the eldest of five children who survived infancy. Louise actually gave birth to nine children—Bernadette, Jean (born and died 1845), Toinette (1846–1892), Jean-Marie (1848–1851), Jean-Marie (1851–1919), Justin (1855–1865), Pierre (1859–1931), Jean (born and died 1864), and a baby girl named Louise who died soon after her birth 1866). Bernadette was born on 7 January 1844, and baptized at the local parish church, St. Pierre's, on 9 January, her parents' wedding anniversary. Bernadette's godmother was Bernarde Casterot, her mother's sister, a moderately well-off widow who owned a tavern. Hard times had fallen on the Pyrenean isthmus and the family lived in extreme poverty. According to one source neighbours reported that the family lived in unusual harmony, apparently relying on their love and support for one another and their religious devotion. Bernadette contracted cholera as a toddler and suffered severe asthma for the rest of her life.

    Visions

    By the time of the events at the grotto, her family's financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a one-room basement, called le cachot, "the dungeon," where they were housed for free by her mother's cousin, Andre Sajoux. On 11 February 1858, Bernadette, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood and bones with her sister Marie and a friend at the grotto of Massabielle outside Lourdes, and had her first vision. As she recounted later, while the other girls crossed the little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, Bernadette stayed behind, looking for a place to cross where she wouldn't get her stockings wet. She finally sat down in the grotto to take her shoes off in order to cross the water, and was lowering her first stocking when she heard the sound of rushing wind, but nothing moved. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move; from the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, and a white figure." This was the first of 18 visions of what she referred to as aquero (pronounced [aˈk(e)ɾɔ]), Gascon Occitan for "that". In later testimony, she called it "a small young lady" (uo petito damizelo). Her sister and her friend stated that they had seen nothing.
    On 14 February, after Sunday mass, Bernadette, with her sister Marie and some other girls, returned to the grotto. Bernadette knelt down immediately, saying she saw aquero again and falling into a trance. When one of the girls threw holy water at the niche, and another threw a rock from above that shattered on the ground, the apparition disappeared. Bernadette fell into a state of shock, and the girl who had thrown the rock actually thought she had killed her. On her next visit, 18 February, she said that "the vision" asked her to return to the grotto every day for a fortnight.
    This period of almost daily visions came to be known as la Quinzaine sacrée, "holy fortnight." Initially, her parents, and especially her mother, were embarrassed and tried to forbid her to go; the local police commissioner called her into his office and threatened to arrest her, as did the district attorney, but since there was no evidence of fraud there was little they could do. The girl herself remained stubbornly calm and consistent during her interrogations, never changing her story or her attitude, and never claiming knowledge beyond what she said the vision told her. The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision, although the townspeople who believed she was telling the truth assumed she saw the Virgin Mary. Bernadette never claimed it to be Mary, consistently using the word aquero. She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle, and with a yellow rose on each foot — compatible with "a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church".
    Bernadette's story caused a sensation with the townspeople, who were divided in their opinions on whether or not Bernadette was telling the truth. Some believed her to have a mental illness, and demanded she be put in an asylum. She soon had a large number of people following her on her daily journey, some out of curiosity and others who firmly believed that they were witnessing a miracle.

    Bernadette Soubirous (in 1866)
    The other contents of Bernadette's reported visions were simple, and focused on the need for prayer and penance — on 24 February, she reported that aquero had said Penitenço ... Penitenço ... Penitenço ("penance"). That day, Bernadette kissed the muddy ground of the grotto; the next day, she went further, and during her trance chewed and ate grass she plucked from the ground, rubbed mud over her face, and actually swallowed some mud, to the disgust of the many onlookers and the embarrassment of those who believed in her visions. She explained that the vision had told her "to drink of the water of the spring, to wash in it and to eat the herb that grew there," as an act of penance. To everyone's surprise, the next day the grotto was no longer muddy but clear water flowed.
    At the thirteenth of the alleged apparitions, on 2 March, Bernadette told her family that the lady had said "Please go to the priests and tell them that a chapel is to be built here. Let processions come hither." Accompanied by two of her aunts, Bernadette duly went to parish priest Father Dominique Peyramale with the request. A brilliant but often roughspoken man with little belief in claims of visions and miracles, Peyramale told Bernadette that the lady must identify herself. Bernadette said that on her next visitation she repeated the priest's words to the lady, but that the lady bowed a little, smiled, and said nothing. Then Father Peyramale told Bernadette to prove that the lady was real (that is, objectively) by asking her to perform a miracle. He requested that she make the rose bush beneath the niche where she appeared to Bernadette bud and flower on the last week of February.
    As Bernadette later reported to her family and to church and civil investigators, at the ninth visitation the lady told Bernadette to drink from the spring that flowed under the rock, and eat the plants that grew freely there. Although there was no known spring, and the ground was muddy, Bernadette saw the lady pointing with her finger to the spot, and said later she assumed the lady meant that the spring was underground. She did as she was told by first digging a muddy patch with her bare hands and then attempting to drink the brackish drops. She tried three times, failing each time. On the fourth try, the droplets were clearer and she drank them. She then ate some of the plants. When finally she turned to the crowd, her face was smeared with mud and no spring had been revealed. Understandably, this caused much skepticism among onlookers who shouted, "She's a fraud!" or "She's insane!" while embarrassed relatives wiped the adolescent's face clean with a handkerchief. In the next few days, however, a spring apparently began to flow from the muddy patch first dug by Bernadette. Some devout people followed her example by drinking and washing in the water, which was soon reported to have healing properties.

    Statue of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, in the Pyrenean isthmus.

    In the 150 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, 67 cures have been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as "inexplicable", but only after what the Church claims are "extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations" that failed to find any other explanation. The Lourdes Commission that examined Bernadette after the visions also ran an intensive analysis on the water and found that, while it had a high mineral content, it contained nothing out of the ordinary that would account for the cures attributed to it. Bernadette herself said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick.
    Her 16th claimed vision, which she stated went on for over an hour, was on 25 March. During this vision, the second of two "miracles of the candle" is reported to have occurred. Bernadette was holding a lighted candle; during the vision it burned down, and the flame was said to be in direct contact with her skin for over fifteen minutes, but she apparently showed no sign of experiencing any pain or injury. This was said to be witnessed by many people present, including the town physician, Dr. Pierre Romaine Dozous, who timed and later documented it. According to his report, there was no sign that her skin was in any way affected, so he monitored Bernadette closely but did not intervene. After her "vision" ended, the doctor said that he examined her hand but found no evidence of any burning, and that she was completely unaware of what had been happening. The doctor then said that he briefly applied a lighted candle to her hand, and she reacted immediately. It is unclear if observers other than Dozous were sufficiently close to witness if the candle was continuously in contact with Bernadette’s skin.
    According to Bernadette's account, during that same visitation that she claimed, she again asked the woman her name but the lady just smiled back. She repeated the question three more times and finally heard the lady say, in Gascon Occitan, "I am the Immaculate Conception" (Qué soï era immaculado councepcioũ, a phonetic transcription of Que soi era immaculada concepcion).

    Results of her visions

    Among the reported visions of Jesus and Mary, the impact of her visions can be viewed as being proportionally of a high level of significance.
    Her request to the local priest to build a chapel at the site of her visions eventually gave rise to a number of chapels and churches at Lourdes. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is now one of the major Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world. One of the churches built at the site, the Basilica of St. Pius X, can itself accommodate 25,000 people and was dedicated by the future Pope John XXII.
     

    St. Bernadette
    Close to 5 million pilgrims visit Lourdes (population of about 15,000) every year, with individuals and groups  coming from all over the world.  In 2008, the 150th anniversary of the 1858 apparitions to Bernadette, it was expected that 8 million pilgrims would visit Lourdes during the year. Lourdes is now a major center where Catholic pilgrims from around the globe reaffirm their beliefs as they visit the sanctuary.

    Later years

    Disliking the attention she was attracting, Bernadette went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, where she finally learned to read and write. She then joined the Sisters at their motherhouse at Nevers at the age of 22. She spent the rest of her brief life there, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. She later contracted tuberculosis of the bone in the right knee. She had followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine while she still lived at Lourdes, but was not present for the consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception there in 1876. She eventually died of her long-term illness at the age of 35 on 16 April 1879, and her body is laid to rest in the Saint Gildard Convent.

    Sainthood

    Bernadette Soubirous was declared venerable by Pope Pius X.
    She was declared "Blessed" on June 2, 1925, by Pope Pius XI.
    She was officially canonized a Saint by Pope Pius XI on December 8, 1933.
    The year 2009 was declared "The Year of Bernadette".

    Exhumations


    Relic of St. Bernadette and stone from the Grotto of Lourdes
    Bishop Gauthey of Nevers and the Church exhumed the body of Bernadette Soubirous on 22 September 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors, and a sister of the community. They claimed that although the crucifix in her hand and the rosary had both oxidized, her body appeared "incorrupt" — preserved from decomposition. This was cited as one of the miracles to support her canonization. They washed and reclothed her body before burial in a new double casket. The Church exhumed the corpse a second time on 3 April 1919. A doctor who examined the body noted, "The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts. ... The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body."
    In 1925, the church exhumed the body for a third time. They took relics, which were sent to Rome.

     
    Wax coverings on the body of Sainte Bernadette represent how her hands and face looked at the time of her death.

    Three years later in 1928, Doctor Comte published a report on the exhumation of Blessed Bernadette in the second issue of the Bulletin de I'Association medicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes.















    ARTURO JAIME CAMPION


    Writer and politician, born in Pamplona / Iruña  in the Pyrenean Isthmus, on May 7, 1854, years later put into practice the laws of the Courts of Madrid, 1837, 1839 and 1841 that removed the Kingdom of Navarre to become province. This weighed heavily on Campion's life until his death in 1937.

    At 19 years of age had already studied at the University of Oñate, Gipuzkoa, to continue later in Madrid, earning a degree in law at age 22 in 1876.
    At 24, he published his first book Considerations on the issue Carlists in Navarre and Navarre (1876) and became friends with the scientist Antoine d'Abbadie , the writer Captain Duvoisin , linguist Prince Bonaparte , the historian Jean Jaurgain , the philosopher and poet Miguel de Unamuno and other prominent figures of the time. It also appears as an advocate and founder of the "Association of Navarra Euskara" and the initiative is launched from the columns of "La Paz" in Madrid and immediately picked Iturralde y Suit as collaborator.


    At 26 published ballad Orreaga , dropped several dialects and sub-dialects for purposes of comparative linguistics (1880).  

    At 27 he began his first series of Basque stories later was to include in books under the title "Euskariana. Fantasy and Reality" (1881).

    At 29, the Essay on the phonetic laws of language Euskara (1883).

    At 30, he wrote a large Bascongada Grammar of the four literary dialects of the language Euskara (1884) with 893 p. and a complicated series of inserts of the conjugations of verbs in all treatments.  

    At 31, did the portrait Victor Hugo (1885).

    At 35, he published the novel Don Garcia Almoravid , the subject of strong historic and dramatic (1889).

    At 36, the first book in the very important series "Euskariana".   

    At 38, a new Euskariana , under the heading of "Fantasy and Reality" with his first novel-like productions.

    At 39, entered the political arena with his book The Battle girl Mr. Nocedal (1893), this year being named Member of Parliament without being militant to any political party.
     
    At 40, new Euskariana , then he revealed as an investigator who fully entered into the archives of the kingdom.

     At 45, his second great novel, drama, Blacks and Whites (1898), which showed the influence of Unamuno's  "Complete Works", Vol. VI. At 47, Euskara personality in history, law and literature (1901).

    At 50, he acted as president of   " Euskaltzaleen Biltzarra "in Irun (1904).
    At 51, wrote his third Euskariana based on historical subjects of the country doing research  in anthropological-psychological study of the Basque race (1905).
    At 53,   Political and literary discourses (1907).

    At 54, Conference on Basque nationalism in Gernika, printed in 1908.

    At 55, the great novel printed in two volumes La Bella Easo (1909).

    At 56,  published Euskaldun Origins of the People (1910).

    At 60, helped in the "Geography of the Basque Country and Navarre" with a major study, Nabarra in his historical life , in which, he changed the course of the historiography of Navarre (1914).

    At 63, new Euskariana series "Fantasy and Reality", which are the most valuable literary productions of the author (1918). Named this year's Honorary Chairman of the Society of Basque Studies Congress created in Oñate sponsored by four Basque provinces.

    At 64, published an original work of The languages ​​and particularly of the baska as a tool of historical research (1919).

    At 66, disclosed in Bilbao magazine "Hermes" the trial Is ugly or beautiful the Basque race? , commenting on the paintings of Basque painters of the time (1920).

    At 68, new Euskariana , studies and historical research (1923).

    At 72, the first volume of the Origins of euskaldun people .
     
    At 74, is published in the aforementioned book in its historical life Nabarra (1927).

    At 77, the second volume of Origins of the People Euskaldun (1931).

    At 80, Eleventh Euskariana with first-hand historical research (1934).

    At 82, twelfth Euskariana and third volume of Origins of the People Euskaldun , which was to remain unfinished (1936).


    He died in 1937, left unpublished a Euskariana on "Language Arts euskaras", another on "History", and finally one called No Euskariana on art criticism and history. It is also known for a novel in progress, The Nun.


    Campion was Academic of the Academy of the Basque Language, Correspondent of the Royal Academy of History, Moral and Political Sciences and the Academy of the Spanish Language. He was president for life of the Basque Studies Society and the entity -Esnalea Euskal .

    Politically it is not possible to point Campion as a member of any political party but in his youth he felt federal Republican. Soon left his republicanism, with the fall of Castelar and the dissolution of Congress by General Pavia, but staid with his federalism formula that considered compatible with the state statutory law always respected until then. In his own words was left with the essential and the accidental rejects. It was no longer a Republican, nor monarchist, Carlist,  fundamentalist, not even Basque nationalist. Was never affiliated to any party. His political activity started from the love of his Campionek Euskal Herriarekiko.  He always felt Nabarran , he used to say, "I have always cheered my homeland and I intend to so until my death."

    Campion's entire work is in favor of the slogan stamped on his books, " "Euskalerriaren Alde "(Pro Euskalerria). His will never failed. Even without knowing the Basque language, he learnt it His grammar knowledge was very much improved at that time.  He had many clashes and violent disputes with the Carlists and even with the Basque nationalists, especially Goiri Arana. At 39 years old, faces in Congress with the minister Gamazo in bold and energetic debate. It was at that time, perhaps the only Christian member of Congress without a political statutory partisanship. He continued working  in the task of achieving the restoration of "foralidad" of Navarre based in philological, legal, anthropological, historical, sociological, political, literary criticism and even cultivated musical and art studies.


    He was a versatile man and very capable researcher and writer. He always wanted to know the truth and that caused him bitterness and disappointment, but never gave up. Instead, he searched the remedy with redoubled effort and lived in constant anxiety to the course of the increasingly adverse events. Arturo Jaime Campion was a Nabarran with Basque graft blood in his veins.

    He began his literary career influenced by Spanish literature, bombastic and declamatory, and gradually evolved towards short phrase and the strong line, sometimes even violent. Some of his compositions are more pieces of jewelry: Gratxina, La Flor de Larralde, Sancho Garces, Yan Pier Bidart, The Bard of Izalzu ... His literary work begins with stories and legends and continues with the historical novel as was fashionable then, but more dramatic and less descriptive, strong, and less romantic than Navarro Villoslada, his countryman.

    Historical research was his first order, thorough and objective as well as copious, as each volume of his "euskarianas" contains about 500 pages. This research  shaped the literary work then too often. His famous Gossip Column of the history of Nabarre becomes the novel Don Garcia Almoravid and the study of the "Chanson de Roland" by Bedier, in his precious jewel Itzalzu The Bard . His novels Whites and Blacks and La Bella Easo are somewhat harsh realism and naturalistic at times. For this reason he had to support more than one adverse criticism for those passages labeled as somewhat crude for its time. Nothing mattered and he went on his way unperturbed. Sample of this naturalism is, for example his novella A Night in Zugarramurd.

    Campion, enthusiastic and tireless, tenacious and very methodical historian, more literate and more generally Basque as their first publications were almost narrowly Navarre the province. "I learned Euskera following an incident in Parliament", he once said. He spoke and wrote in Euskera enough to lead by example. He began by Orreaga , legend Denbora antziñakoen ondo esanak Euskera and translation of Tolstoy's tale entitled ta Malaxka Akulina . There are also cases of letters from him in Euskera.

    In Spanish literature he never found no echo because of the statutory emphasis of all his works. Only the Countess of Pardo Bazán and the wayward Unamuno devoted rave, something rather rare in the latter.

    Legend Dembora antziñakoen translated it into French-Delbasc Fuché including it in the book "Contes espagnoles." Pedro Mari was translated into German by Mrs. Elsa Otten (two editions) and the novel Blacks and Whites also into German by Karl Voigt, although apparently was never published because of the war.
    In recent years, have been translated into Euskera La Flor de Larralde , by Domingo Aguirre, Pedro Mari , by P. Just Mari Mokoroa and several short stories by Dz. Zunzunegui, Zarautz. The Bard of Itzalzu has been staged by Ruiz Anibarro and represented in Buenos Aires, and the adaptation of Garces Sancho became the opera "Zigor" with the teacherEscudero. But Campion's own preference was for his novel La Bella Easo , because in it, he said, "is represented everything I want it to be and do not want it to be, what I love and what I hate: This book is my whole thougt. "

    In life he was known as Don Arturo, and was subject of two major tributes and others less important. His bust in bronze, the work of Orduna, presided at the Library of the Society of Basque Studies and the Institute of Julio de Urquijo, Donostia-San Sebastian.

     
    He died in Donostia, in the Pyrenean Isthmus, in August 18th. 1937. . The outbreak of civil war found him blind but fully lucid.

    That day, a statement appeared in "El Diario de Navarra" a rumor speculating about Campion's  possible participation on the rebel side of the Spanish Civil War...but Bernardo Estornes who knew him and visited him in those dark days denied it. This is the story of Estornés in his memoirs ( Memories. Memories and adventures of a century , Auñamendi, Donostia, No. 143-144 (1996), 163-165):

    IN MEMORY AND IN HONOR OF ARTHUR DON CAMPION.

    "Following the last war have been attributed to Don Arturo Campion attitudes strongly disagree with his long life of militant Basque. Among them stands out for its importance to the letter dated 14 September 1936 received the Diario de Navarra. Reads :

    Donostia, September 14, 1936.

    I have the pleasure to record that, freed the city of Red tyranny, let me say, while my most energetic protest by the unqualified come from Basque nationalism, my unwavering commitment to the National Board of Burgos. Arturo Campion.

    But it so happens that, days before the date of this letter, the day after the occupation of the city by Franco, a relative of Campion called me by phone to discuss an urgent matter. I then found myself in Zarauz and immediately went to Donostia in person to the home of Don Arturo. On the way I heard some shots. I went across the railroad tracks and headed towards the famous village "Enea Emilia" in Ategorrieta. Leaving in the window an ikurriña waving, which meant in those tragic moments, to some extent, a certain security.

    I received the widow of Vila, a soldier who had been murdered in the street with his minor child. A horrendous crime. Had surrendered the headquarters of Loyola, to be among the surrendered two nephews of Mr. Arthur if I remember correctly. Their lives were in danger and had to do something for them. Presumably a painful picture. The widow, distraught, crying, held and maintained that her husband had never been involved in anything. They accused him of having caught firing from a window or roof. The other person present there was Don Arturo, blind for several years, destroyed health, diabetes, cracked voice, and, above all, almost centennial.

    He repeated words and harsh sentencing for rebellion. I listened in awe. The lifetime Campion lucid, energetic, struggling in an uncontrollable anxiety. For Campion loved dearly his nephews to whom he dedicated, in its day, some of the most pressing literary compositions. Don Arthur was a widower for many years and had no children. So, their families were their closest relatives.

    I do not know what would have happened that September 14 de1936, but I can imagine. It was the height of the violence and they were not going to stop in small minutiae. The fight propaganda played its climax. I do not prejudge anything about that statement. Allow me, however, some comments.

    First, the rush to write this note the day after the occupation of the city.

    Second, the nature of it and his writing, which is unusual prose of Don Arturo.
    "I have the pleasure" to leave proof.  Yes, Arturo took great pleasure. "Liberated" the city. "Red Tyranny." "My strongest protest." "Unspeakable act". And above all, 'Accession unwavering, "the National Board of Burgos."  It just does not prove anything, that writing was indeed a hoax, nothing else.
















    LLUIS COMPANYS I JOVER

    Lluís Companys i Jover (Catalan pronunciation: [ʎuˈis kumˈpaɲs]) (June 21, 1882 – October 15, 1940) was the 123rd President of Catalonia, in the Pyrenean isthmus, from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.





    He was a lawyer and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) political party. Exiled after the war, he was captured and handed over by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, to the Spanish dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who had him executed by firing squad in 1940.


                                                                   Seal of the Generalitat of Catalonia.svg

    Companys was born in the Pyrenean isthmus, in June 21, 1882 in a town called El Tarròs, Urgell.  He was a son of farmers Josep Companys and Maria Lluïsa de Jover. He was married to Mercè Micó of whom he divorced, and to Carme Ballester. He had a son named Lluís (1911–1956).

     

    After getting his law degree from the Universitat de Barcelona, Companys participated in the political life of Catalonia from a young age. In 1906, as a result of the military burning the writings of Catalan newspapers Cu-Cut! and La Veu de Catalunya, and after the passing of the Ley de Jurisdicciones ("Law of Jurisdictions"), which made speech against Spain and its symbols a criminal offence, he participated in the creation of Solidaridad Catalana.

    Later, he became affiliated to the ephemeral Unió Federal Nacionalista Republicana, of which he was president of the youth section. He was investigated for his intense youth activities and was jailed fifteen times, being classified after the Tragic Week of Barcelona as a "dangerous individual" in police records.

    With Francesc Layret, Companys represented the left-wing labor faction of the Partit Republicà Català (Catalan Republican Party), for which he was elected councillor of Barcelona in 1916. In November 1920, he was detained together with Salvador Seguí (known as El Noi del Sucre), Martí Barrera, Josep Viadiu, and other trade unionists and was deported to the Castell de la Mola in Mahón, on Menorca. Shortly afterward, Layret was assassinated while preparing his defence.

    Despite his deportation, in the 1920 legislative elections, Companys was elected deputy of Sabadell, taking the place of Layret, who was to have taken that seat prior to his assassination. This gave him parliamentary immunity, which secured his release from prison.

    Companys was one of the founders of Unió de Rabassaires in 1922, for which he worked as a lawyer and director of the magazine La Terra during the years of the regime of Primo de Rivera.

    Detained again, he was unable to attend the Conferencia de Izquierdas (Conference of Leftists) held between March 12 and March 19, 1931, from which was born the ERC political party; however, he was elected as an executive member of that party, representing the Partit Republicà Català. Thanks to the bonds between the labor movement and the union movement, the election of Companys to this position gave the ERC great prestige amongst left-wing public opinion, whereas before, it had been considered a party of the small progressive bourgeoisie.

    On October 6, 1934, Companys led a Catalan Nationalist uprising against the center and right-wing republican government, and proclaimed the Catalan State (Estat Català), an action for which he was arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison. However, after the 1936 election and the victory of the left-wing coalition Frente Popular, he was set free by the new government.
    When the Spanish Civil War began shortly after, in July 1936, Companys sided with the Second Spanish Republic against the Nacionales rebels and was instrumental in organizing a collaboration between the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, which was sponsored by his Catalan government, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a revolutionary anti-Stalinist communist party, and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarchist syndicalist trade union.

    During the war, Companys attempted to maintain the unity of his political coalition, but after the Soviet Union consul, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, threatened that his country would cut off aid to Catalonia, he sacked Andrés Nin from his post as minister of Justice in December 1936.
    Exiled to France in 1939 after the Civil War, he was arrested and extradited by Nazi German authorities to the Spanish government in September 1940. Companys was executed, after a military trial lacking legal guarantees, at Montjuïc Castle on October 14, 1940. He is buried at the Montjuïc Cemetery, near the castle.









    HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

     

     

    Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born at the chateau de Malromé near Albi, Tarn in the Pyrenean isthmus, the firstborn child of Comte Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa and Adèle Tapié de Celeyran. He was therefore a member of an aristocratic family (descendants of the Counts of Toulouse and Lautrec and the Viscounts of Montfa, a village of Tarn.  A younger brother was also born to the family on 28 August 1867, but died the following year.

    After the death of his brother his parents separated and a nanny took care of Henri through this time. At the age of 8, Henri left to live with his mother in Paris. Here he started to draw his first sketches and caricatures in his exercise workbooks. The family quickly came to realise that Henri's talent lay with drawing and painting, and a friend of his father named Rene Princeteau visited sometimes to give informal lessons. Some of Henri's early paintings are of horses, a speciality of Princeteau, and something that he would later visit with his 'Circus Paintings'.
    In 1875 Henri returned to Albi because his mother recognised his health problems. He took thermal baths at Amélie-les-Bains and his mother consulted doctors in the hope of finding a way to improve her son's growth and development.

    The Comte and Comtesse themselves were first cousins (Henri's two grandmothers being sisters) and Henri suffered from a number of congenital health conditions attributed to this tradition of inbreeding.


                                          Jules Chéret and Lautrec with poster

    At the age of 13, Henri fractured his right thigh bone, and at 14, the left. The breaks did not heal properly. Modern physicians attribute this to an unknown genetic disorder, possibly pycnodysostosis (also sometimes known as Toulouse-Lautrec Syndrome), or a variant disorder along the lines of osteopetrosis, achondroplasia, or osteogenesis imperfecta. Rickets aggravated with praecox virilism has also been suggested. His legs ceased to grow, so that as an adult he was only 1.54 m (5 ft 1 in) tall, having developed an adult-sized torso, while retaining his child-sized legs, which were 0.70 m (27.5 in) long. He is also reported to have had hypertrophied genitals.

    Physically unable to participate in most of the activities typically enjoyed by men of his age, Toulouse-Lautrec immersed himself in his art. He became an important Post-Impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer; and recorded in his works many details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec also contributed a number of illustrations to the magazine Le Rire during the mid-1890s.
    After initially failing his college entrance exams, Henri passed upon his second attempt and completed his studies. During his stay in Nice, his progress in painting and drawing impressed Princeteau, who persuaded Henri's parents to let him return to Paris and study under the acclaimed portrait painter Léon Bonnat. Henri's mother had high ambitions and, with aims of Henri becoming a fashionable and respected painter, she used the family influence to get Henri into Bonnat's studio.

    Toulouse-Lautrec was drawn to Montmartre, an area of Paris famous for its bohemian lifestyle and for being the haunt of artists, writers, and philosophers. Studying with Bonnat placed Henri in the heart of Montmartre, an area that he would rarely leave over the next 20 years. After Bonnat took a new job, Henri moved to the studio of Fernand Cormon in 1882 and studied for a further five years, here making the group of friends he would keep for the rest of his life. It was at this period in his life he first met Émile Bernard and Van Gogh. Cormon, whose instruction was more relaxed than Bonnat's, allowed his pupils to roam Paris, looking for subjects to paint. In this period Toulouse-Lautrec had his first encounter with a prostitute, reputedly sponsored by his friends, and this led him to paint his first painting of the prostitutes of Montmartre, a woman rumoured to be called Marie-Charlotte.

    With his studies finished, in 1887 he participated in an exposition in Tolosa under the pseudonym "Tréclau", an anagram of the family name 'Lautrec'. He later exhibited in Paris with Van Gogh and Louis Anquetin. The Belgian critic Octave Maus invited him to present eleven pieces at the Vingt (the Twenties) exhibition in Brussels in February. The brother of Vincent van Gogh, Theo van Gogh bought 'Poudre de Riz' (Rice Powder) at the price of 150 francs for the Goupil & Cie gallery.

    From 1889 until 1894, Henri took part in the "Independent Artists' Salon" on a regular basis. He made several landscapes of Montmartre. It was in this era that the 'Moulin Rouge' opened. Tucked deep into Montmartre was the garden of Monsieur Pere Foret, where Toulouse-Lautrec executed a series of pleasant plein-air paintings of Carmen Gaudin, the same red-head model who appears in The Laundress (1888). When the nearby Moulin Rouge cabaret opened its doors, Toulouse-Lautrec was commissioned to produce a series of posters. His mother had left Paris and while Henri still had a regular income from his family, making posters offered him a living of his own. Other artists looked down on the work, but Henri was so aristocratic he did not care. Thereafter, the cabaret reserved a seat for him, and displayed his paintings. Among the well known works that he painted for the Moulin Rouge and other Parisian nightclubs are depictions of the singer Yvette Guilbert; the dancer Louise Weber, known as the outrageous La Goulue ("The Glutton"), who created the "French Can-Can"; and the much more subtle dancer Jane Avril.

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec came from a family of Anglophiles, and while he wasn't as fluent as he pretended to be, he spoke English well enough to travel to London. The business of making posters led Henri to London, gaining him work that led to the making of the 'Confetti' poster, and the bicycle advert 'La Chaîne Simpson'.



    It was during his time in London that he met and befriended Oscar Wilde, and when Wilde faced imprisonment in Britain, Henri was a very vocal supporter. Toulouse-Lautrec's portrait of Wilde was done the same year as Wilde's trial.

    Lautrec was often mocked for his short stature and physical appearance, and this led him to drown his sorrows in alcohol. At first this was just beer and wine, but his tastes quickly expanded. He was one of the notable Parisians who enjoyed American style cocktails. 1893 saw Lautrec's alcoholism begin to take its toll, and as those around him began to realise the seriousness of his condition there were rumours of a syphilis infection. Finally, in 1899, his mother and a group of concerned friends had him briefly institutionalised. He had even gone to the length of having a cane that he could hide alcohol in so he could have a drink on him at all times.

    An alcoholic for most of his adult life, Toulouse-Lautrec was placed in a sanatorium shortly before his death. He died from complications due to alcoholism and syphilis at the family estate in Malromé at the age of 36. He is buried in Verdelais, Gironda, a few kilometres from the Château Malromé, where he died.


    His grave in Verdelais
    Toulouse-Lautrec's last words reportedly were: "Le vieux con!" ("The old fool!", although the word "con" can be meant in both simple and vulgar terms). This was his goodbye to his father. Although another version has him saying, using the word "hallali" which is used by huntsmen for the moment the hounds kill their prey, "I knew, papa, that you wouldn't miss the death." ("Je savais, papa, que vous ne manqueriez pas l'hallali").



    After Toulouse-Lautrec's death, his mother, the Comtesse Adèle Toulouse-Lautrec, and Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, promoted his art. His mother contributed funds for a museum to be created in Albi, his birthplace, to house his works. The Toulouse-Lautrec Museum now owns the world's largest collection of works by the painter.

    Throughout his career, which spanned fewer than 20 years, Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works. His debt to the Impressionists, in particular the more figurative painters Manet and Degas, is apparent. His style was also influenced by the classical Japanese woodprints which became popular in art circles in Paris. In the works of Toulouse-Lautrec can be seen many parallels to Manet's detached barmaid at A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and the behind-the-scenes ballet dancers of Degas. He excelled at capturing people in their working environment, with the colour and the movement of the gaudy night-life present but the glamour stripped away. He was masterly at capturing crowd scenes in which the figures are highly individualized. At the time that they were painted, the individual figures in his larger paintings could be identified by silhouette alone, and the names of many of these characters have been recorded. His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, scenes of Parisian night-life, or intimate studies, has been described as both sympathetic and dispassionate.

    Images of Toulouse-Lautrec:

     https://www.google.com/search?q=toulouse+lautrec&hl=en&prmd=imvnso&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=2qqVT7vCHsKu8gOa-72YCg&sqi=2&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1440&bih=704&sei=46qVT4-vJsjF8gP2zP2iCg


    Toulouse-Lautrec's skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style which is highly linear and gives great emphasis to contour. He often applied the paint in long, thin brushstrokes which would often leave much of the board on which they are painted showing through. Many of his works may best be described as drawings in coloured paint.


















    JESUS GURIDI BIDAOLA

    Jesús Guridi Bidaola (Gasteiz, 25 September 1886 – Madrid, 7 April 1961) was a Nabarran composer, and is a key player in the Spanish and Basque music of the twentieth century. His style fits into what we might call the late romantic stamp, directly inherited from Wagner, and with a strong influence from the Basque culture. Among his best known works are the operetta “El Caserío”, the opera “Amaya”, the orchestral work “Ten Basque melodies” and his organ works, where the “Triptych of the Good Shepherd” can be highlighted.

     

    Guridi was born in Gasteiz, Pyrenean isthmus, into a family of musicians. His mother, Maria Trinidad Bidaola, was a violinist and his father, Lorenzo Guridi, was a pianist. After completing his early studies with the Piarists and the Jesuits of Zaragoza, he moved to Madrid, where he received lessons from Arina Valentin. Later, in Bilbao, he was involved in the activities of the society called "El Cuartito". He received violin lessons from Lope Alana and studied harmony with José Sáinz Besabe. On 28 January 1901 he gave his first public concert with the Philharmonic Society of Bilbao. At the age of 18 he enrolled in the Schola Cantorum in Paris, studying organ with Abel Decaux, composition with Auguste Sérieyx, and fugue and counterpoint with Vincent d'Indy. Here he met Jose Maria Usandizaga with whom he developed a deep friendship.

    He then moved to Brussels where he studied with Joseph Jongen and in Cologne with Otto Neitzel, following the recommendations of Resurrección Maria de Azcue. In June 1912 he was appointed director of the Bilbao Choral Society. In the same year his friend Usandizaga died.

    In 1922 he married Julia Ispizua. The couple had six children: Maria Jesus, Luis Fernando, Maria Isabel, Ignacio, Julia, and Javier. In 1944 he began working at the Madrid Conservatory, where, years later, he became director. He died suddenly on 7 April 1961 at the age of 74 years in his home on Sagasta Street in Madrid.

    Strongly influenced by Richard Wagner and other late-Romantic musicians, he found inspiration in the roots of Basque folklore in his first scores, and which later give body and soul to his compositions. Guridi produced copiously in a huge range of genres. From chamber music (string quartets), vocal and choral compositions, orchestral works, religious pieces for the organ, operas (Mirentxu and Amaya) and operettas (El caserio, La meiga, etc.). Among his works are: El Caserio (1926), Diez melodias Vascas (1940), Así cantan los chicos (1909), Amaya (1920), Mirentxu (1910), Una aventura de Don Quixote (1916), La meiga (1929 ) Seis canciones castellanas (1939), Pyrenean Symphony (1945), and Homenaje a Walt Disney, for piano and orchestra (1956).


    Despite his intense activity as a choir director, as a teacher and, above all, as an organist, Guridi was largely devoted to the composition. The variety of genres he cultivated is very wide, ranging from symphonic music to film incidental music, operas and operettas, chamber music, choral music, songs and music for children.

    Guridi’s music writing is characterized by the clarity of its formal organization, by the strength and richness of its harmony and the inspiration of the melodies. He was one of the main creators of the musical patriotism of Nabarra, his country.

    These are some of his most important works:

    His best known opera is Amaya (libretto by Joseph M. Arroita Jáuregui), released at the Coliseo Albia in Bilbao in 1920, and also Mirentxu (libretto by Alfred Etxabe), released in Bilbao in 1910.

     

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U3-yFKO6_M

     

    Probably his best known zarzuela and work is El Caserío (The farmhouse, libretto by Guillermo Fernández Shaw and Federico Romero), premiered in Madrid in 1926.

    It is also worth mentioning La Meiga (by the same authors), La Cautiva (The Captive, by LF Seville and A. Carreño), released in 1931, Mandolinata (A. C. de la Vega, 1934) and Mari-Eli, Basque operetta (E. Carlos and Arniches Garay, 1936) as well as the lyrical La bengala (The flare, by L. Weaver and J. Hollow, 1939), Peñamariana (Romero and Fernandez Shaw, 1944), and Acuarelas vascas (Basque Watercolours, 1948).

    On orchestral music, his most famous work is Ten Basque melodies (1940). He also composed Basque Legend in 1915, the symphonic poem An Adventure of Don Quixote (1916) and En un barco fenicio (In a Phoenician ship), in 1927. In 1945 he composed his Pyrenees Symphony and, in 1956, Tribute to Walt Disney Fantasy for piano and orchestra.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCsoot6zvAc

     

     

    Vocal music is also present in Guridi’s work. Six Castilian Songs, composed in 1939, can be highlighted. Other Guridi’s choral works are: So the children sing (1915), for chorus and orchestra, Euskal folkloreko XXII Abesti (Basque popular songs, 1932), Basque Songs (1956), Boga boga (Popular Basque, 1913), Anton Aizkorri (1913), Ator, ator mutil (Christmas Eve Song, 1920), Mass in honor of the Archangel Gabriel, for chorus and organ (1955), Mass in honor of San Ignacio de Loyola, (3 voices and organ, 1922), Requiem Mass for chorus and organ (1918), Te Deum, for chorus and organ (1937), Ave Maria (1907), Hail, for gold and organ (1916), Tantum ergo, for choir and organ (1915) and Basque Folk Songs, for chorus of mixed voices (1913–1923).

    They are also noteworthy creations of incidental music for film and his work for solo piano, which include Old Dances (1939), 8 Notes For Piano (1954), Ten Basque melodies, Lamento e imprecación de Agar (1958), Piano Pieces (1905), Three short pieces (1910) and Vasconia (1924). He also cultivated chamber music, and he wrote two string quartets, Quartet in G major (1934) and Quartet in A minor (1949).

     

    http://www.classicalarchives.com/web_player.html

     

     

    The organ was probably Guridi’s favourite instrument, in his role as a performer and as a teacher. In fact, he was a master on improvisation and he remained active as an organist until the end of his days.

    Guridi was appointed professor of organ and harmony at the Institute of Music of Bizkaia in 1922, and in 1944 he won by opposition the organ national chair of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, which in 1956 would become director. He served for years as organist of the Church of San Manuel and San Benito, Madrid.

    In 1909, when he was still very young, he won the Gold Medal in the Valencia Regional Exhibition, with his Fantasy for great organ, a piece composed between 1906 and 1907 and premiered by Guridi himself. Also in 1909 he composed an Interlude and in 1917 he wrote another Fantasy, that was published under the title Prelude and Fantasy.

    In 1922 he composed Cuadros vascos (Basque scenes), for chorus and orchestra, and adapted, for solo organ, the Espatadantza (traditional Basque dance) contained in this work. He also adapted for organ Four Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio in 1953.

    In 1948 he composed Variations on a Basque theme, which consists of nine variations on the popular song Itsasoa laino dago (There is fog on the sea), contained in Resurrección Mª de Azkue’s Songbook.

    In 1951, Guridi grouped twenty short and not difficult of execution pieces for organ teaching approach under the title Spanish School of Organ (1. Introducción - 2. Capriccio - 3. Cantinela - 4. Himno - 5. Improvisación - 6. Canción vasca - 7. Salida - 8. Interludio - 9. Plegaria - 10. Preludio - 11. Pastorela - 12. Villancico - 13. Glosa (Puer natus est) - 14. Éxtasis - 15. Fuga - 16. Adagio - 17. Ave Maria - 18. Ofertorio I - 19. Ofertorio II - 20. Tocata).
    In 1953 he wrote the beautiful Triptych of the Good Shepherd ("The Flock ", "The Lost Sheep" and "The Good Shepherd"), surely his masterpiece in this field, which won the first prize in the composition competition organized by Organería Española because of the inauguration of the new organ of the Good Shepherd Cathedral in San Sebastián. Guridi himself premiered his "Triptych" on 20 January 1954 in this temple. The other composers awarded in the competition were Tomás Garbizu, Luis Urteaga and José María Nemesio Otaño. In 2007, the concert offered by these composers, 19 and 20 January 1954, was reproduced, and the concert ended with the work of Guridi.





    Jesus Guridi School of Music in Gasteiz, Pyrenean isthmus.

    Shortly before his death in 1960, he composed a Final for organ, composition of great character in the line of the French master Charles Marie Widor.





















    MANUEL PRECIADO REBOLLEDO





    Manuel 'Manolo' Preciado Rebolledo (28 August 1957 – 6 June 2012) was a Pyrenean football defender and coach.


    Move: Manolo Preciado had left Sporting Gijon this summer





    His 15-year career was mainly associated with Racing de Santander, and he also represented five other teams, mostly in the lower leagues. As a manager Preciado also coached with his main club, but worked mostly with Sporting de Gijón, promoting to La Liga in 2008.

    Born in El Astillero, Cantabria, Preciado appeared in 59 La Liga matches for local Racing de Santander, split between three of his five-season spell with the club. His best-ever in the top flight was 32 games in 1978–79, which ended in relegation.

    Preciado took up coaching in the mid-90s, precisely with his last club. He led Gimnástica to the Third División championship (group 1). Being then recalled to Racing with its B-squad, another promotion to Second División B befell, now in 2002.

    Preciado was called for first team coaching duties in 2002–03's top flight, helping the side retain its status in his 18 games in charge. After second division spells with Levante UD – with promotion – and Real Murcia, he returned to Santander; although the club finished just one point above the relegation zone, it managed a 2–1 win at Real Madrid, on 21 December 2005.

    In the 2006 summer, Preciado switched to Sporting de Gijón. In his second season, he managed to lead the Asturias outfit to the top division after ten years, then maintain its league status, with the lowest budget of all 20 teams, after a 2–1 home win against Recreativo de Huelva, in the last round, on 31 May 2009.

    Preciado again led Sporting into safety in the 2009–10 season (15th place).
    Preciado was fired on 31 January 2012 after nearly six years in charge, following a 1–5 away loss against Real Sociedad, and with Sporting ranking 19th in the league.

    After three years in Second División (two of them with Linares CF), Preciado resumed his career in the lower leagues, eventually retiring in 1992 with lowly Gimnástica de Torrelavega, also in the Pyrenean Isthmus, at nearly 35.


    His sunny personality and willingness to express a salty opinion earned him an affection which transcended the often tribal divisions which mark the sport in the isthmus. News of his passing came the day after he had agreed to take over as coach of the second division side Villarreal, and it united the Pyrenean  football family in grief.

    As a player, Preciado was a reliable defender who never quite reached the stellar heights of the game in 15 years as a professional. He began his league career with Racing Santander, and made more than 100 appearances for the club in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After leaving Santander in 1982 he played for a succession of lower league clubs including Linares, Mallorca and Alaves.

    He was always destined to make a bigger impact as a coach, where his astute knowledge of the game and his skills as a communicator and a motivator proved invaluable. As a manager he made a speciality of fighting fires at troubled clubs and earning unlikely promotions for unfancied sides against the odds. After serving a lengthy apprenticeship as a coach at Racing Santander, Levante and Murcia, Preciado landed the role which really made his reputation in 2006.
    He took over as coach of Sporting Gijon, a modest second division club who had enjoyed little success in their 101-year history, and in only his second season he took them into the top division. It was a stage made for Preciado's outgoing style, and his charisma and highly quotable public pronouncements made him a huge public favourite. His leadership helped Gijon grab a slice of the attention.

    Preciado was not afraid to engage in verbal sparring bouts with more illustrious coaches from the bigger clubs. More than that, he thrived on it, and his vivid outbursts added a welcome daub of colour to the Pyrenean football scene.

    Preciado was sacked by Sporting Gijon in January after a string of disappointing results which eventually ended in relegation. He had defied footballing gravity to keep them among the élite for so long, but 2011-12 turned out to be a season too far.

    For once, the protestations that club and manager were parting on amicable terms wasn't a gross distortion of the truth; Preciado had become a cherished adopted son of Gijon. A club statement said at his death: "With deepest regret, Sporting Gijon wish to express their sorrow at this sad loss, for someone who formed an integral part of this club's history, and send their deepest condolences to his family in this time of grief. His name will be written in the annals of the club's history in golden letters."

    Preciado's life away from football was scarred by tragedy. He lost his wife to cancer in 2002, while in 2004 his15-year-old son died in a road accident. Last year his father was also killed in a car crash. He bore these catastrophes with stoic bravery. "Life has dealt me several blows," he said. "It could have made me vulnerable and driven me to suicide, but I decided to look to the sky and believe." He died after suffering a heart attack.

    Manuel Preciado Rebolledo, footballer and coach: born El Astillero, Cantabria 28 August 1957; married (wife deceased 2002; one son deceased); died Valencia 7 June 2012.

    He was a famous Pyrenean person, indeed.



















     PAU CLARIS I CASADEMUNT


     Pau Claris i Casademunt (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈpaw ˈkɫaɾis]; January 1, 1586 – February 27, 1641) was a Catalan lawyer, clergyman and 94th President of Catalonia at the beginning of the Catalan Revolt. On January 16, 1641, he proclaimed the Catalan Republic under the protection of France.


    File:Pau claris i casademunt.jpg 


    Claris was born in Barcelona , in the Pyrenean Isthmus. His paternal family was from Berga, and both his grandfather, Francesc, and his father, Joan, were prominent jurists in Barcelona. His mother was Peronella Casademunt. Pau was the youngest of four brothers, and his older brother, Francesc (most likely named for his grandfather), was a lawyer and had a strong influence on his brother's path toward politics. Pau Claris' family belonged to the Barcelonese bourgeois and had significant economic and administrative power.
    While it is possible that his education may have been more extensive, it is only clear that Claris received a doctorate in civil law and canon law from the University of Barcelona, and studied the course during the period between 1604 and 1612.

    On August 28, 1612, Pau Claris was appointed to work in La Seu d'Urgell, the seat of the Bishop of Catalonia. On September 25 of the same year, he was appointed canon, and was assigned to the Diocese of Urgell.


    In 1626, Claris was elected as a representative of the church at the Parliament of Catalonia (Corts catalanes), which opened on March 28 amid a troublesome political situation after the new king of Spain, Philip IV, would not ratify the Catalan constitutions, due to tax reasons and the question if royal officers had to follow the Catalan law. The Catalan church had been exhausted by the royal taxes and was against the practice of nominating bishops from Castile to Catalan dioceses. The refusal to pay a tax of 3,300,000 ducats, caused the immediate departure of the king to Madrid.

    It was not until 1632 that the Parliament resumed, although with the same members as in 1626. On this occasion, the rebellion against the Spanish crown was evident, led by a brilliant generation of lawyers, such as Catalan Joan Pere Fontanella, who was the legal adviser of the Generalitat and the Consell de Cent, and played a role in the crisis in relations between Catalonia and the Crown, which ended with the secession of 1640.

    In 1632, Claris was appointed by his arm to treat the subject of an election and on July 15, the estate appointed eighteen people-the Divuitena-that would form the role of the Executive Board.

    The most remarkable political episode of this period of Claris' life were the riots of Vic. As a result of a papal concession that granted the king of Spain a tenth of the revenues of the Church in Spain that served as a subsidy to the Crown, popular unrest virulently erupted in the diocese of Vic under the guidance of the archdeacon, Melcior Palau i Boscà, and the impassioned support of two canons of Urgell, Jaume Ferran and Pau Claris.

    The kidnapping of ecclesiastical property in Vic by the Royal Court caused revolutionary demonstrations, with defamatory libel and threats of subversion in the field during the spring and summer of 1634. Despite pressure from the bishop of Girona, the Council of Aragon only dared to imprison a dissident deacon, Pau Capfort. Finally, the conflict delayed the payment of the tenth until the end of November.

    In 1630 and 1636, Claris attended the Councils of Tarragona. In the year 1636, in spite of the neutralizing efforts of the archbishop of Tarragona, the Spaniard Antonio Pérez, he achieved approval of a provision whereby all sermons in the Principality were in Catalan.


    On July 22 in 1638, Pau Claris was elected ecclesiastical deputy of the Diputació del General. The other members chosen with Claris were: Jaume Ferran (also canon of Urgell), Rafael Ancient and Rafael Cerdà as auditors of the Ecclesiastical Arm, Military and Royal, respectively, and Francesc of Tamarit and Josep Miquel Quintana as deputies of the Military and Royal Arms.

    As a church member, Claris went on to preside over meetings of the Government. According to Elliott, the Viceroy in Santa Coloma tried in vain to bribe Claris and Tamarit, people uncomfortable about their role in the service of the king.

    Claris found a Generalitat with very grave economic problems, resulting from years of mismanagement, and conflict that opened with the Spanish Crown accusing the generality of smuggling, due to a breach of the edicts of 1635 and 1638, which prohibited any kind of trade with France because of the Thirty Years' War. The intervention of the sheriff Montrodón, commissioned by the Viceroy of Santa Coloma, to the warehouses of Mataró and Salses, triggered the conflict, in which the lawyer Joan Pere Fontanella again played a prominent role in favor of the theses of the Members of the Government. Although the city of Barcelona was initially reluctant, it sided with the Members in 1639, especially because of the decision of the Crown to establish a general recovery from Catalonia for the years 1639 and 1640, of 50,000 pounds annually.

    Behind this new effort was the eagerness of Philip IV, and the Count-Duke of Olivares to add all the lands of the Spanish Crown to the effort to contribute financially to the expenses incurred in the Thirty Years War, that already had devastated Castella. Catalonia had never felt this conflict of expansionist roots to be its own, as the Catalans never had expected anything. Olivares, to counterbalance this situation, wanted to move the conflict (or at least, it already seemed it) and so on July 19, 1639, the French besieged and took the Fort de Salses in the Roussillon. This initiated a very severe struggle between the Count-Duke and the Generality to increase its efforts in the war. Finally, the deputies agreed to send Francesc de Tamarit to the front of a new draft of soldiers to recover the castle of Salses, which was achieved on the day of Epiphany in 1640. However, the cost in human lives and in money for the country had been so great that the situation became explosive.

    In spite of the actual date that contacts with France began, it would end with the formation of a Catalan-French alliance that confronted the Spanish Crown and gave rise to the so-called Catalan Revolt or War of the Reapers. Although it remains a controversial issue among historians, it seems that they could have already started in the month of May 1640. Pau Claris had summoned the general court on September 10 of 1640, but simultaneously and without consulting to the cities, would have begun the contacts with the French.

    On September 7 of 1640, the representatives of the Generality of Catalonia, Francesc de Tamarit, Ramon de Guimerà, and Francesc de Vilaplana, nephew of Claris, signed the first Pact of Céret with Bernard Du Plessis-Besançon,[2] delegated by Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu on behalf of Louis XIII of France, for which Catalonia had received military support aimed at facing the Castilian offensive commanded by the Count-Duke of Olivares, who had already decided to intervene in Catalonia. It is believed that in front of the Castilian military pressure, Claris was seen to be progressively driven to accept a counter-course to French pressure, in which Catalonia would separate itself from the Spanish Monarchy and would take the form of a Free Republic under the protection of the French king.

    The personal assumption of power by Claris' staff from September 1640, appeared to be total. The Junta General de Braços was summoned and set up as the ruling institution of the new situation, the commitments with France and the secession were made official, and public debt was issued for funding the military expenses.

    On October 20 of 1640, Du Plessis-Besançon went to Barcelona, and some days afterwards, he signed the first pact of Confraternity and military aid from France to Catalonia, by which France was engaged to defend the Principality.

    On November 24, the Spanish army under Pedro Fajardo, the Marquis of Los Vélez, invaded Catalonia from the south. On December 23, Pau Claris raised the alarm and declared war against Philip IV of Spain. The victorious advance of the Castilian troops for Tortosa, Cambrils, Tarragona, and Martorell forced the Board of Arms and Consell de Cent to yield to the French pressures, and on January 16 and January 17, the board accepted the proposal to constitute Catalonia into a republic under the protection of France.

    But again the pressure of the Castilians who approached Barcelona, and the French pretensions brought Claris to have to liquidate the republican project and proclaim Louis XIII the Count of Barcelona on January 23 in 1641, three days before the Battle of Montjuïc that noisily defeated the Castilian forces and stopped the attack in Barcelona on January 26 of 1641.


    On February 20, 1641, Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt, a substitute of Du Plessis, came to Barcelona with powers of Captain General of all the armies fighting in Catalonia. That same day, Claris fell gravely ill, and the following day received the last rites.

    Pau Claris died the night of February 27 in 1641. In spite of the fact that he acted less than a year that presented problems of health, the theory of a possible poisoning circulated since the first moment (the letter from Roger de Bossost to Cardinal Richelieu) and modern investigations support this possibility.

    Claris was placed in the family crypt of the chapel of Christ Church of Sant Joan de Jerusalem in Barcelona. Unfortunately, in 1888, in the context of reforms for the Universal Exhibition of Barcelona, the church was demolished.















































































































































































































































      		                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   


                                                          



       

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