Emilio Martínez

Born in Madrid in 1849, Emilio Martínez was a Spanish novelist, Protestant pastor, and journalist. Library and biographical records place both his birth and death in Madrid, where he died in 1919. He is associated with the first generation of Spanish evangelicals who began working openly after the political changes of 1868 made wider Bible circulation and Protestant meetings possible in Spain.

A note printed in a later edition of Recuerdos de antaño describes him as one of the early Spaniards called to evangelical work when those new openings appeared. In the autobiographical passage reproduced there, he recalls being raised in a devout Catholic setting in Madrid and encountering Protestant meetings as a young man of nineteen. That personal background helps explain the direct, vivid tone readers found in his religious writing.

His known books include Recuerdos de antaño, Julián y la Biblia, Pepa y la Virgen, and Josefa y la Virgen. Together, these works show a writer interested in both everyday narrative and the history of Spanish Protestant faith, especially the memory of Reformation-era martyrs and the struggles of belief in modern Spain.