biography
pronunciation:
[minyahnoh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1779–1845)
|
| biography:
| Satirist and historian, born in Becerril de Campos, Palencia, NWC Spain. A prebendary of Sevilla Cathedral, he lived for a time in France (1814–16), then returned to Spain and devoted himself to writing. He contributed most of his satirical cuadros de costumbres to the magazine El Censor, including Cartas del madrileño and Cartas de don Justo Balanza. His most notorious satire, attacking the Spanish absolutist regime, is to be found in Lamentos políticos de un pobrecito holgazán (1820), reprinted in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles (BAE), which sold 60 000 copies in a year, and Vida, virtudes y milagros del pobre holgazán (1821). The popularity of his cuadros de costumbres encouraged more important writers (such as Estébanez Calderón and Mesonero Romanos) to specialize in the genre, with greater literary success. He chronicled the years 1820–3 in Histoire de la revolution d'Espagne (1825), and the Real Academia de la Historia commissioned from him a Diccionario geográfico y estadístico de España y Portugal (11 vols, 1826–8). |
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