Ramiro de Maeztu

Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney (May 4, 1875 – October 29, 1936) was a prolific Spanish essayist, journalist and publicist. His early literary work adscribes him to the Generation of '98. Adept to Nietzschean and Social Darwinist ideas in his youth, he became close to Fabian socialism and later to distributism and social corporatism during his spell as correspondent in London from where he chronicled the Great War. During the years of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he served as Ambassador to Argentina. A staunch militarist, he became at the end of his ideological path one of the most prominent far-right theorists against the Spanish Republic, leading the reactionary voices calling for a military coup. A member of the cultural group Acción Española, he spread the concept of "Hispanidad" (Spanishness). Imprisoned by Republican authorities after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was killed by leftist militiamen during a saca in the midst of the conflict. Early life and career Ramiro de Maeztu y Whitney was born on May 4, 1875, in Vitoria, the capital of Alava province. He was the son of Manuel de Maeztu Rodriguez, a Cuban engineer and landowner born in Cienfuegos with ancestry from Navarre. While in Paris, he had met his mother, Juana Whitney, born in Nice and daughter of a British diplomat, when she was 16 years old. He was among the young Spanish intellectuals deeply affected by their country's humiliating defeat in the Spanish–American War of 1898, along with José Martínez Ruiz ("Azorín"), Pío Baroja and others forming the literary Generation of '98. His first collection of essays was published in 1898 under the name Hacia otra España ("Towards a Different Spain"). An early advocate of socialism, he became disillusioned by the Great War while he was serving as the London correspondent for several Spanish newspapers and travelled in France and Germany.