Aurora de Albornoz

As a youth, she lived in Luarca with her parents, sister, and extended family, throughout the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939— an event that inspired her later poetry.

Her father’s uncle, Álvaro de Albornoz y Liminiana, was the minister of the Department of Justice of the Republican government of Spain until the Civil War.

In 1959, her uncle, Severo Ochoa de Albornoz (who had fled Spain on a Republican passport) while living and working in the United States, was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine with Arthur Kornberg for deciphering RNA.

His father, Federico Enjuto Ferrán, was the Republican magistrate of justice who was involved in the trial of General José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, the fascist party in Spain.

From 1955 to 1957, de Albornoz returned to Europe to continue her studies in Paris with José Bergamín, a celebrated Spanish poet and critic living in exile.

[1] Around 1968, de Albornoz returned to Madrid where she taught at the Universidad Autónoma (Department of Humanities) and at the University of New York in Spain.

As already stated, her interest naturally extended into the work of exiled Spanish poets such as José Bergamín in Paris, Rafael Alberti in Argentina, and León Felipe and Juan Rejano in Mexico.

Throughout Spain—and in America, as well—de Albornoz taught many courses, participated in many congresses, colloquiums, and writers’ meetings; she collaborated toward cultural activities that dealt with scholarship and writing—such as the founding of journals, magazines, newspapers, radio programs, awards, and literary groups.