Spanish poet.

Son of a noble family with strong military roots, he studied with Alberto Lista, of whom he
became an avant garde disciple. From a very young age he felt attracted by literature and political
activity, both hobbies that would define his future career.

In 1823, following the execution of the liberal general Rafael del Riego, he founded, together with
Patricio de la Escosura, a secret society for freedom whose young members called themselves the
Numantinos. The political repression that followed the liberal triennium motivated his imprisonment in
a convent in Guadalajara, where he undertook the writing of Don Pelayo, an epic poem of neoclassical
style (which remained unfinished) about the Asturian leader Don Pelayo, mythical initiator of the
Reconquest.

After regaining his freedom, he returned to Madrid, but political events in the country prompted him to
go abroad. He left for Gibraltar, and from there he went to Lisbon, from where he was expelled, so he
had to take refuge in London, then the meeting point of the Spanish liberals, in whose meetings he
participated. In London he met Teresa Mancha, with whom he had an uneventful relationship.

Informed of the revolutionary events taking place in July 1830 in Paris, he went to the French capital
and, shortly afterwards, formed part of the frustrated liberal expedition of Colonel Chapalangarra who
tried to enter Spain. During his absence from London, his former lover, Teresa, had married a merchant,
so the two decided to elope together. After another brief stay in Paris, in 1833 they returned to Spain,
where Espronceda joined the Royal Guard. Her political concerns, however, earned her an exile in
Cuellar in 1834, and later the transfer to Badajoz. He also had to hide after the arrival in power of the
Count of Toreno, against whose government he rebelled.

During his brief periods in Madrid, José de Espronceda participated actively in the literary life of the
capital and, in spite of his frequent imprisonments and banishment, he was able to write his first works.
Contact with European romantic poetry (Lord Byron, Walter Scott) influenced him powerfully and
oriented his own poetic production towards an exalted romanticism, full of rhythm, colour and fantasy.
In 1834 he published Sancho Saldaña, a historical novel, and around the same time he wrote several
comedies and the historical drama Blanca de Borbón, published posthumously.

Public recognition, however, came to him thanks to his lyrical production, published from then on in
several newspapers and magazines. The appearance of his ambitious poem entitled El estudiante de
Salamanca in the newspaper El Español (1836) was his first great success; revisiting the literary myth of
don Juan, the hero is dyed in this version of romantic characters and confronts society and God from a
position of open rebellion. El diablo mundo, the second of his great poems, constitutes an epic and
moral vision of the Spain of his time, which transcends the epic of the whole of humanity.
At the same time, he increased his political activity, especially after the publication of the booklet El
ministerio Mendizábal (1836), in which he included ideas by Saint-Simon. At that time, the relationship
with Teresa was already untenable and she abandoned him, which plunged him into a severe
depression. Later he had relations with Carmen de Osorio and Bernarda de Beruete.

In September 1840, the liberal victory and the subsequent regency of Espartero allowed him to make
the leap to the front row of the Spanish political arena: elected deputy to Cortes for Almería, then he
was appointed secretary of the Spanish Legation in The Hague. Upon his death, which occurred suddenly
in 1842, he was considered the best Spanish poet of the time, as well as a politician with a promising
career. That is why his burial, in which scenes of deep popular pain were given, was one of the most
multitudinous acts of the time.