Ramón Piñeiro López
Ramón Piñeiro López (Láncara, 1915 - Santiago de Compostela, 1990) was a Spanish writer and politician who was active in Galicia. He was honored with the 2009 Galician Literature Day.[1]
Piñeiro studied literature and philosophy at the Universities of Santiago de Compostela and Madrid, but he never completed his studies. He was active in the underground independent movement of Galicia. In 1946 he traveled to Paris to meet the republican government in exile. He was arrested and spent the next three years in prison.[1]
López was one of Galicia's historical figures in the 20th century, with a key role in the continuity of the Galicianism movement throughout the Spanish Civil War (for which reason he was imprisoned between 1946 and 1949).
As an intellectual he was one of the founders and first directors of the publishing house Galaxia and the magazine Grial.
On the political field, besides helping to form the Mocidades Galeguistas (Galicianist Youths), he was a member of the Galicianist Party. During the time of democratic Spain he was also an independent deputy of the Parliament of Galicia, being listed with the Socialist Party (PSdeG-PSOE).
His main goal was to try to strip Galicianism of its political component and to center it on its cultural component (a trend which would be labeled piñeirismo, after his name). In this regard, he appealed to the concept of saudade, (a concept to which he devoted several studies throughout his life), the landscape and humor as the foundation of the Galician identity and cultural essence of Galicia.
Piñeiro conceived saudade as a feeling not aimed at anything specific, and unrelated to thought or will, which had been characterized by various Galician writers in the form of life or death instinct, as a feeling to overcome, etc. In his conception, contextualized by philosophical existentialism, saudade is a feeling of ontological loneliness, that is, a feeling derived from the singling out of the being.
His written work is divided between work with philosophical nature (with particular attention to the issue of saudade, that he deals with from a Heideggerian existentialist perspective) and work with a linguistic and literary orientation (focused on the problems of the standardization process of the Galician language). He was also a pioneer in the translation of works in other languages to Galician, among which was Heidegger's "On the Essence of Truth" (1956).[2]
Biography
He studied the top high school in Lugo, where he joined the youth of the Galicianist Party, through which he participated in the provincial committee that worked on the referendum deciding on the Galician Statute of Autonomy of 1936.
After the Spanish Civil War (in which he had to join the rebellious side to avoid reprisals), he studied Philosophy and Letters in Santiago de Compostela.
References
- 1 2 "Ramón Piñeiro López" (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 June 2015.
- ↑ Bernárdez, Carlos L. y otros, Literatura gallega. Século XX, Edición A Nosa Terra, Vigo, 2001, pgs. 210-211.
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