Person
Valera, Juan (1824-1905)Other forms
Cabra (Córdoba, España) 1824-10-18 - Madrid (España) 1905-04-18
He was a Spanish writer and diplomat.
Son of José Valera Viaña and Dolores Alcalá-Galiano, Marquise of the Paniega. He received his education in Malaga and Granada. He was a diplomat and in those years he had the chance to known some of the main cities and capitals of Europe and America: Saint Petersburg, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, Washington, Paris and Vienna.
He retired in 1858 and decided to settle in Madrid. He was the editor in chief of a series of newspapers, parliamentary deputy and secretary of Congress while he also dedicated himself to literature and literary critic.
He belonged to the period of Romanticism but he was never a romantic man or writer. Member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 1862, he widened his culture through the trips and the constant studying.
He was one of the most cultured Spanish of his period, with a great knowledge of the Greco-Latin culture. Juan Valera was a man of letters really admired by the writers Azorín and Eugenio D’Ors and by the modernists. Regarding his ideology, he was a moderated liberal, tolerant and elegantly skeptical concerning religion, what would explain the perspective of some of his novels. Among his most well-known works are: “Pepita Jiménez” and “Juanita La Larga”.