Spanish Authors and Literature in Spain
Spanish literature runs from medieval epic poems to the novelists and poets of the twentieth century. This post follows the main periods, looks more closely at Miguel de Cervantes, Federico García Lorca and Vicente Aleixandre, and lists the writers’ houses in Madrid, Alcalá de Henares and Granada that can be visited today.
From the Cantar de mio Cid to the Golden Age
The best-known Spanish epic poem is the Cantar de mio Cid. According to the scholar Alberto Montaner, writing for the Camino del Cid consortium, it was composed at the end of the 12th century or in the first years of the 13th and was finished by 1207, when a certain Per Abbat copied it. The only manuscript that survives is a 14th-century copy kept in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. The poem has 3,730 lines in three parts, also called cantares, a division linked to its recitation by minstrels.
The story is based loosely on the last part of the life of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, from his first exile in 1081 to his death in 1099. It is a literary work, not a historical record: the marriages of the Cid’s daughters to the infantes of Carrión, for example, have no historical basis.
The 16th and 17th centuries are known as the Siglo de Oro, the Golden Age. Its most productive playwright was Lope de Vega, born in Madrid in 1562. In his Arte nuevo de hacer comedias, published in 1609, he boasted of having written 483 works. A year later he bought a house in the calle de Francos in Madrid, where he lived until his death. The street is now called calle Cervantes, and the house is a museum.
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. He was baptised on 9 October 1547; the exact date of his birth is not known, and 29 September, the feast of Saint Michael, is only a supposition. Nothing certain is known about his schooling. He never enrolled at a university, and his first published poems appeared in 1569 in a volume edited by his teacher, the humanist Juan López de Hoyos.
That year he left for Rome, where he served the young cardinal Acquaviva, and in 1571 he became a soldier. He fought at the battle of Lepanto on the galley Marquesa, where he was shot twice in the chest and a third shot cost him the use of his left hand. The nickname el manco de Lepanto comes from that wound.
On 26 September 1575, on his way back to Spain, his galley was taken by the corsair Arnaut Mamí and Cervantes was held captive in Algiers. Trinitarian friars ransomed him on 19 September 1580 for 500 ducats. He used the experience in the play Los tratos de Argel and in the captive’s tale in the first part of Don Quixote.
In December 1584 he married Catalina de Palacios in Esquivias, and in 1585 he published La Galatea. Between 1587 and 1597 he travelled through Andalusia as a commissary of supplies and tax collector, and he was imprisoned in Seville. His later works followed quickly: the Novelas ejemplares in 1613, the Viaje del Parnaso in 1614 and Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses in 1615.
Cervantes died in Madrid on Friday 22 April 1616. The parish register gives 23 April, the day of his burial, and that is the date on which Spain celebrates the Day of the Book each year. He was buried in the convent of the Trinitarias in Madrid. His last novel, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, which he finished four days before he died, was published after his death, in January 1617.
Don Quixote
El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha was printed in Madrid by Juan de la Cuesta. The first copies left the press in the last days of December 1604 and the book was published in 1605. It was an immediate success: by March two pirate editions had appeared in Lisbon and a second Madrid edition was in preparation. The second part came out in the last days of November 1615, ten years after the first.
The novel follows a country gentleman from La Mancha who has read so many books of chivalry that he sets out as a knight errant, with the farmer Sancho Panza as his squire. Cervantes rarely speaks in his own name. He hands the story to imaginary narrators, among them the Moorish historian Cide Hamete Benengeli. The second part also answers a rival: an author hiding behind the name Avellaneda had published a rival sequel, and Cervantes makes one of that book’s characters meet the real Don Quixote.
The full Spanish text, a biography by Jean Canavaggio and a chronology are free to read at the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes.
Lorca, Aleixandre and the Generation of ’27
The group of poets now known as the Generation of ’27 included Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Vicente Aleixandre, Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén, Dámaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego and Luis Cernuda.
Federico García Lorca
Lorca was born on 5 June 1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, a village in the plain of Granada. He moved to Madrid to study at the Residencia de Estudiantes, where between 1919 and 1926 he became a friend of Luis Buñuel, Rafael Alberti and Salvador Dalí. Canciones (1927) was a critical success and Primer romancero gitano, published in July 1928, a popular one. Poema del cante jondo, written in 1921, was published a decade later.
In 1929 he sailed to New York, arriving on 26 June, and lived at Columbia University; the stay produced Poeta en Nueva York. Back in Spain he directed, together with Eduardo Ugarte, the university theatre company La Barraca, which from the summer of 1932 performed Spanish classical plays in villages across the country. His best-known plays date from these years: Bodas de sangre, Yerma and La casa de Bernarda Alba.
Lorca arrived at the family house in Granada, the Huerta de San Vicente, on 14 July 1936, days before the military uprising. He was arrested on 16 August 1936 and shot on the road between Víznar and Alfacar. The exact date is not certain; his biographer Ian Gibson places it in the early hours of 18 August 1936.
Vicente Aleixandre
Aleixandre was born in Seville on 26 April 1898, spent his childhood in Málaga and lived in Madrid from 1909. He studied law and economics but devoted himself to literature. His first book of poems, Ámbito, appeared in 1928, and in 1933 he received the National Literary Prize for La destrucción o el amor. After the Civil War his poetry was banned for several years; he returned in 1944 with Sombra del paraíso. He became a member of the Spanish Academy in 1950 and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1977. He died in Madrid on 14 December 1984.
Nobel laureates and prizes today
Spanish writers who have received the Nobel Prize in Literature include:
- José Echegaray, playwright, 1904 (shared with Frédéric Mistral)
- Jacinto Benavente, playwright, 1922
- Juan Ramón Jiménez, poet, 1956
- Vicente Aleixandre, poet, 1977
- Camilo José Cela, novelist, 1989
Cela was born in Iria Flavia, in Galicia, on 11 May 1916 and died in Madrid on 17 January 2002. His best-known novels are La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942) and La colmena (1951), and his work is marked by his experience of the Civil War.
The main prize for writing in Spanish today is the Premio de Literatura en Lengua Castellana “Miguel de Cervantes”, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, which also awards the national literature prizes (Premios Nacionales).
Writers’ houses to visit
Three houses are open to visitors; admission to the first two is free. The opening times below are those published by the museums in October 2026.
- Museo Casa Natal de Cervantes, Calle Mayor 48, Alcalá de Henares. Open Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 18:00 and on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 10:00 to 19:00; last entry is 30 minutes before closing. Closed on Mondays and on 1 and 6 January, 1 May and 24, 25 and 31 December. Admission and activities are free, and groups of up to 8 people need no booking. Cercanías lines C2, C7 and C8 run from Madrid, as does bus 223 from the Avenida de América interchange. Details are on the museum’s information page.
- Casa Museo Lope de Vega, Calle Cervantes 11, Madrid. Open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, closed on Mondays. Admission is free, but the house is seen only on guided visits in groups of up to 15 people and booking in advance is required. Visits start every half hour, last about 35 minutes (the last one starts at 17:00) and are also given in English, Italian and French. The nearest metro station is Antón Martín (line 1).
- Huerta de San Vicente, Granada. The Lorca family house, whose visitor website is run by Granada city council. The winter timetable, from 1 October to 31 May, is 10:00 to 17:00.
Lorca’s birthplace in Fuente Vaqueros is also a museum, run by the Patronato Cultural Federico García Lorca of the Diputación de Granada.
For students
These writers are standard reading in Hispanic studies and in advanced Spanish classes. Alcalá de Henares is an easy day trip from Madrid by Cercanías train; see the post on Alcalá de Henares. Lorca’s Granada is covered in the post on Granada. To read the texts in the original, the directory lists Spanish language courses in Spain and universities in Spain.
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