This relief with the face of the writer, on a façade in a building in Sevilla, Calle Argote 13
"Armando Palacio Valdés was born in Entralgo, Laviana (Asturias), in 1853, although after six months he moved with his family to Avilés, where his family lived and where his father, a lawyer from Oviedo, worked as a lawyer in the dredging works of the estuary
These two settings, the rural and mountainous interior, and the maritime one of Avilés, will nurture their childhood experiences, because, although the family lives in the coastal town, they frequently move to Entralgo, where they had various possessions. Later, when the novelist begins to interweave his literary works with his life experiences, the sea and the mountains will serve as a human and landscape counterpoint to some of his stories.
In 1865 he moved to Oviedo to study high school, staying during the five courses at his paternal grandfather's house. In the corridors of the Institute he meets and befriends Leopoldo Alas "Clarín", Tomás Tuero and Pío Rubín, with whom he attends and participates in the revolutionary fervor of September 1868 and with whom he begins to be interested in literature, especially through theater. that Leopoldo Alas wrote and, in the company of other friends, they performed in the living room of the house of one of them.
In October 1870 he moved to Madrid to study law, perhaps ignoring his father's recommendations that he intended to keep him in charge of his estate. Already in his old age, and in an autobiographical background text, he remembers this episode with nostalgia: «I think my father was right. Ultimately, it would have been better for me to stay by his side, help him in his business, make it prosper, and let life go by gently in the town. »
From that moment on, his life has been linked to Madrid, where he coincides again with Alas, Tuero and Rubín, with whom he shares a pension and studies, and where, first almost in jest - they all founded an ephemeral newspaper called Rabagás - and later totally Seriously - he lives with relish the life of the gatherings and theaters, the Athenaeum and the newsrooms -, apart from the Law degree, he is introduced, almost sideways, in life and in the literary profession. His first vocation had been that of a professor, and he even did his first steps at the University of Oviedo substituting Aramburu for a term and at the Mercantile School of the San Isidro Institute in Madrid, where, as an interim, he taught Political Economy, one of his intellectual passions.
Although perhaps what finally guided his career and subsequent dedication was his integration into the Ateneo de Madrid. There he reinforced his training with tireless reading - he was nicknamed "the terror of librarians", since it is said that he read up to eight hours a day -, with the participation in the gathering of "La Cacharrería", of which he was the founder, and with contact with the intellectuals of the time. In those classrooms and corridors of the Madrid Athenaeum, he befriended Eduardo Medina, co-owner of the European Magazine, who commissioned him to write some philosophical texts that were appearing in the magazine, of which later, after a brief stint as an international commentator for El Cronista-newspaper also owned by Medina-, ended up being director and giving it real impetus for three long years.
In the European Magazine, the young Palacio Valdés published reviews of the cultural news of the time, translations of some very significant texts of philosophical and religious content -among them The future of religion , by Harttmann, and Pessimism in the nineteenth century , by EM Caro- and above all, a series of humorous and critical semblances that, after passing through the pages of the magazine, would end up making up his first three books: Los oradores del Ateneo (1878), Los novelistas españoles (1879) and Nuevo Voyage to Parnassus (1879).
But this critical stance, in which at times he displayed a certain degree of cruelty and, above all, a great deal of irony - he shared a position with Clarín, with whom he half-published Literature in 1881 -, did not satisfy a Palacio Valdés, of a quite friendly, and in 1881 he tried his luck at the novel with El Señorito Octavio .
From this first novel, which was an immediate success, as two editions were published in less than a year, Palacio Valdés ended up devoting himself entirely to narrative, with occasional incursions into literary essays, memoirs or historical essay.
Despite his stay in Madrid, which he would not abandon as a residence until his death, Palacio Valdés returns again and again to Asturias, where he has his family, his friends and where he ends up finding love. After a brief courtship that had begun in the fishing village of Candás, where he spent a vacation with Leopoldo Alas, on October 4, 1883, the same day he turned 30, he married Luisa Maximina Prendes Busto, a young woman from Gijón. that he would die after a year and a half of marriage, leaving him a son and a permanent memory that he would later transfer to one of his most emblematic novels, Maximina (1887).
After the death of his wife, Palacio Valdés abandoned the so-called literary life, the world of gatherings, salons and theaters, and dedicated himself fully to his narrative work. In little more than two decades, in the space between 1881 and 1903, he published the bulk of his fictional work, among which a good number of very significant works should be noted in the literary panorama of the time and in the trajectory of his career. author: Marta and María (1883), Riverita (1886), The Fourth Estate (1883), Sister Saint Sulpice (1889), The Foam (1891), The Faith (1892), The Teacher (1893), The Majos of Cadiz (1896),The Joy of Captain Ribot (1899) or The Lost Village (1903). With the publication of this novel, in which its author seems to give a jog to his evolution and rethinks, with an approach to the modernist horizon, some of his stylistic procedures and, above all, with the appearance three years later of Tristán o pessimism, in which he reaffirms the ideological and stylistic perspectives of The Lost Village, Palacio Valdés, who has passed the 50-year mark and has remarried after a period of eight years of extramarital cohabitation, decides to abandon the narrative, in which, however, he would return to minor works, such as Santa Rogelia (1926) or Pastoral Symphony(1931), alternating them with books of different depth and intention, such as his children's and youth autobiography, A novelist's novel (1921), or his book of memories and literary reflections, Literary Testament (1929), in which he summarizes his points of view on literary art, which he had previously displayed in some articles and prologues to his own novels. From this last period are also the three books that make up the "Doctor Angelico" cycle -a miscellany and two novels- in which the author, through fiction, seems to give us some autobiographical keys in which pessimism dominates along with a nostalgia that is generally accentuated with the humor that has always characterized its author.
In any case, this set of books, especially his novels, which in some cases reached very remarkable sales figures and were translated into all languages, elevated their author in the literary panorama of the time and, especially from beginning of the 20th century , they earned him tributes and recognitions of all kinds. After Galdós's death, he was unanimously considered Patriarch of Spanish Letters, an honorary title that, although it added nothing to his career and recognition, nevertheless served to underline his fame and popularity, which in many cases was certainly considerable.
After being elected Academician of the Language in 1906, occupying the chair that that same year had become vacant with the death of José M.ª de Pereda, his most popular era began. That same year the university students of Oviedo paid tribute to him at the Campoamor theater in which figures such as Unamuno, Fermín Canella or a then very young Ramón Pérez de Ayala participated. Since then, numerous tributes have been paid to him in different places: Marmolejo, Valencia, Madrid... and, of course, his home town, Laviana, which inaugurates an avenue called Palacio Valdés, and Avilés, which is labeled with one of its most emblematic streets was named after it and a theater called Teatro Palacio Valdés was inaugurated in 1920, at which time it was decorated with the Order of Alfonso X. The Asturian capital, Oviedo, names him an adoptive son, as does Seville, grateful for having chosen it as the setting for one of his most popular novels, La Hermana San Sulpicio , of which up to three film versions have been made, the first two of them, a silent one from 1927 and a sound one from 1934, with Imperio Argentina as the protagonist. The cinema, despite the initial reluctance of Palacio Valdés himself, helped to popularize his works, which have been covered up to thirteen times.
This fame and recognition that he came to know in our country had its correlate abroad as well -it was said at the time that he was better known outside our borders than in Spain and that Palacio Valdés himself wrote for that purpose-, especially in the United States and in France, where from 1908 he spent part of the year, especially the summers, in a chalet -called "Marta y María" in memory of one of his first novels- in the town of Capbreton, in the Landes, and where He shared gatherings and friendships with significant writers of the time, such as Paul Margueritte. On the occasion of the First World War, he was sent by the newspaper El impartialas a correspondent to Paris, from where he sent a series of chronicles of a meaningful Allied character that would later be collected in the book The Unjust War (1917).
He was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, in 1927 and 1928, although in the first of these years, despite the media and institutional campaign that was deployed in his favor, his candidacy arrived after the deadline and was not considered by the Swedish Academy. , which the following year did take it into account, although it finally awarded the prize to the Norwegian Sigrid Unset.
But not all were lights in these final years of his life. While he was being honored in different areas and places, as we have seen, his personal life suffered various setbacks. In January 1920 his daughter-in-law would die. Two years later, his only son, leaving his two daughters in the care of the novelist. The novelist himself had to overcome a serious illness that made him fear for his life for months and an accident that kept him disabled and forced him to use a cane for years. All this, accompanied by the illness of his wife, which causes many setbacks. However, he overcomes all these personal adversities and enters the 30s with a certain optimism, which is reflected in his last works, above all, in Pastoral Symphony, until, in Madrid surrounded by the civil war, victim of the privations inherent to the conditions of the fence and of his own age, 84 years old, he died on January 29, 1938. His remains were deposited in the cemetery of La Almudena , from Madrid, until in 1945, fulfilling the novelist's wish, they were transferred to the La Carriona cemetery, in Avilés, where they rest under a beautiful funerary monument by the sculptor Jacinto Higueras."
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The relief puts: "Armando Palacio Valdés 1853-1938
1924 LXXV aniversario del nombramiento como hijo adoptivo de Sevilla 1999"
En: Armando Palacio Valdés 1853-1938
1924 LXXV anniversary of the appointment as adopted son of Seville 1999