Rosalía de Castro

Who was Rosalía de Castro?

María Rosalía Rita de Castro, was a Galician romanticist writer and poet.

Writing in the Galician language, after the Séculos Escuros, she became an important figure of the Galician romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento, along with Manuel Curros Enríquez and Eduardo Pondal. Her poetry is marked by saudade, an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy.

She married Manuel Murguía, member of the Galician Academy, historian, journalist and editor of Rosalía's books. The couple had seven children: Alexandra, Aura, twins Gala and Ovidio, Amara, Adriano and Valentina. The only two that married were Aura in 1897 and Gala in 1922; neither they nor their siblings left any children, and thus there are no living descendants of Rosalía de Castro and her husband. Their son Ovidio was a good painter, but his early death cut his career short.

The date she published her first collection of poetry in Galician, Cantares gallegos, 17 May 1863, is commemorated every year as the Día das Letras Galegas, an official holiday of the Autonomous Community of Galicia, and has been dedicated to an important writer in the Galician language since 1963.