Mariano José de Larra

Born in Madrid on March 24, 1809, he spent part of his childhood in France after his family left Spain during the Peninsular War. That early displacement shaped a writer who looked at Spanish society with both intimacy and distance, and it helped give his prose its unusually modern, critical edge.

He became one of Spain's best-known Romantic writers and journalists, publishing satirical and costumbrista articles under several pseudonyms, including Fígaro. His work attacked social habits, literary fashions, and political incompetence, and he is widely remembered less as a novelist or playwright than as a brilliant newspaper voice who brought urgency and style to public debate.

His life was short and troubled: he died in Madrid on February 13, 1837, at just 27. Even so, his essays left a lasting mark on Spanish literature, and he is still read as a fierce, clear-eyed observer of his time.