Blas de Otero, from religion to anti-Franco poet

Blas de Otero Muñoz was a social poet who fought his whole life against the Franco regime, but his curiosity was also proven on his date of birth, since Ruben Dario was born a month before his death in Nicaragua. Juan Ramón Jiménez was about to start a diary of the newlywed poet.Fate did not want to have a poetic emptiness.

If we talk about relatives, we can see that in the war of 1914, many Spanish bourgeois had the opportunity to do business without problems, especially in the metal industry. This is how the poet's father increased his fortune in this year, despite the fact that in 1929 he suffered the consequences of an economic recession that ended with the dream of a “happy twenties”.

On the pages of the Foundation of Poets, they mentioned that it took 10 years to become a wealthy boy. At the age of 7 he entered the school of Doña María de Maeztu, where he learned his first letters with warm teaching, but soon he was torn from that refuge to start high school in a strict Jesuit college (“I do not blame memory for being depressed”, he will write later).

As a matter of war, my father decided to move to Madrid in 1927 with the whole family in order to reclaim his fortune. There, Blas de Otero discovers “freedom in the streets of Madrid, the love of his childhood and, following an old family tradition, he will take bullfighting classes at the Las Ventas bullfighting school.”

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However, his future was determined by the death of his father in the middle of adolescence and two years later. “I tried to study literature, but my brother, who died at the age of 16, had already started the law, and the family encouraged me to take a seat.”

After returning to Bilbao, he devoted himself to studying law, and a few years later he obtained a law degree. However, he had to hide economic problems from his circle of friends. Although the Civil War surprises him, it is because he joins the Basque battalion fighting against the Franco army.

In the early 1950s, he tried to publish a book entitled “I ask for peace and the word”, but faced a ban on censorship, referring to the basis that the author had to replace some words with others when he was able to publish this poem in light. To the harmless dictatorship: “God, become 'sun', 'phalanx' becomes 'R Angels'.”

He talked about religious, existential and social stages in his poetic works, so he is widely known for his poetry and the subject he wrote about.

Blas de Otero Muñoz died in Mahadahonda on June 29, 1979, and doctors determine that it was pulmonary embolism that killed him.

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