In this square there is a bronze relief with a 3D photo of Rubén Darío, between the words "Prince of Castilian verse". The homage was made on June 26, 1963 by the Nicaraguan embassy, the City Council of Cáceres and Radio Popular, as it says on the side.
Rubén Darío
"Ruben Dario. (Metapa, Republic of Nicaragua, January 18, 1867 - León, Republic of Nicaragua, February 6, 1916). Poet, journalist and diplomat, he is considered the highest representative of literary modernism in the Spanish language.
His full name is Félix Rubén García Sarmiento. His paternal family was known as the Daríos, and for this reason he adopts the surname Darío.
He attends elementary studies in León (Nicaragua). Of humanistic training, he is a precocious reader and writer. In his youthful poems, published in a local newspaper, he is very independent and progressive, defending freedom, justice and democracy. At the age of 14 he began his journalistic activity in several Nicaraguan newspapers.
At the age of 15 he travels to El Salvador and is welcomed under the protection of the President of the Republic Rafael Zaldívar at the request of the Guatemalan poet Joaquín Méndez Bonet, secretary of the president. At this time he met the Salvadoran poet Francisco Gavidia, a great connoisseur of French poetry, under whose auspices he tried for the first time to adapt French Alexandrian verse to Castilian metrics, a distinctive feature of both the work of Rubén Darío and all modernist poetry.
Back in Nicaragua, in 1883, he settled in Managua where he collaborated with different newspapers, and in 1886, at the age of 19, he decided to move to Chile, where he spent three years working as a journalist and collaborating in newspapers and magazines such as "La Época" and "La Libertad Electoral" (from Santiago) and "El Heraldo" (from Valparaíso). Here he meets Pedro Balmaceda Toro, writer and son of the president of the Chilean government, who introduces him to the country's main literary, political and social circles, and helps him publish his first book of poems "Abrojos" (1887) encouraging him to participate in several literary competitions. In Chile he expands his literary knowledge with readings that greatly influence his poetic trajectory, such as the Spanish romantics and the French poets of the 19th century.
In 1888 he published in Valparaíso the collection of poems "Blue", considered the starting point of Modernism. This fame allows him to obtain the position of correspondent of the newspaper "La Nación" of Buenos Aires.
Between 1889 and 1893 he lived in various Central American countries working as a journalist while continuing to write poems. In 1892 he went to Europe, and in Madrid, as a member of the diplomatic delegation of Nicaragua in the commemorative acts of the Discovery of America, he met numerous personalities of Spanish letters and politics and in Paris he came into contact with the bohemian environments of the town.
Between 1893 and 1896 he resides in Buenos Aires, and there he publishes two crucial books in his work: "The Rare Ones" and "Prosas Profane and Other Poems", which marked the definitive consecration of literary Modernism in Spanish.
The Argentine newspaper "La Nación" sent him as a correspondent to Spain in 1896, and his chronicles would end up being compiled in a book, which appeared in 1901, entitled "España Contemporánea. Chronicles and literary portraits».
In Spain, the author awakens the admiration of a group of young poets who defend Modernism such as Juan Ramón Jiménez , Ramón María del Valle-Inclán and Jacinto Benavente. In 1902, in Paris, he met a young Spanish poet, Antonio Machado , who declared himself an admirer of his work.
In 1903 he was appointed Nicaraguan consul in Paris. In 1905 he moved to Spain as a member of a commission appointed by the Nicaraguan government, in order to resolve a territorial dispute with Honduras, and that year he published the third of the capital books of his poetic work: «Cantos de vida y esperanza, the swans and other poems”, edited by Juan Ramón Jiménez .
In 1906 he participated, as secretary of the Nicaraguan delegation, in the Third Pan-American Conference that took place in Rio de Janeiro. Shortly after he was appointed resident minister in Madrid of the Nicaraguan government of José Santos Zelaya until February 1909. Between 1910 and 1913 he passed through several Latin American countries and in these years wrote his autobiography, which was published in the magazine "Caras y caretas" with the title «The life of Rubén Darío written by himself», and the work «History of my books», essential for the knowledge of his literary evolution.
In 1914 he settled in Barcelona, ??where he published his last major poetic work, "Canto a la Argentina y otros poetas". When the First World War broke out, he traveled to America and, after a brief stay in Guatemala, returned definitively to León (Nicaragua), where he died."
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