Gaspar Núñez de Arce

Who was Gaspar Núñez de Arce?

Gaspar Núñez de Arce was a Spanish poet, dramatist and statesman.

He was born at Valladolid, where he was educated for the priesthood. He had no vocation for the ecclesiastical state, plunged into literature, and produced a play entitled Amor y Orgullo which was acted at Toledo in 1849. To the displeasure of his father, an official in the post office, the youth refused to enter the seminary, and escaped to Madrid, where he obtained employment on the staff of El Observador, a Liberal newspaper. He afterwards founded El Bachiller Honduras, a journal in which he advocated a policy of Liberal concentration, and he attracted sufficient notice to justify his appointment as governor of Logrono, and his nomination as deputy for Valladolid in 1865.

He was imprisoned at Cáceres for his violent attacks on the reactionary ministry of Narvaez, acted as secretary to the revolutionary Junta of Catalonia when Isabella II was dethroned, and wrote the "Manifesto to the Nation" published by the provisional government on 26 October 1868. During the next few years he practically withdrew from political life till the restoration, when he attached himself to Sagasta's party.