Jacinto Benavente y Martínez (12 August 1866 – 14 July 1954) was one of the foremost Spanish dramatists of the 20th century.

He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama".

[1] Born in Madrid, the son of a celebrated pediatrician, he returned drama to reality by way of social criticism: declamatory verse giving way to prose, melodrama to comedy, formula to experience, impulsive action to dialogue and the play of minds.

A liberal monarchist and a critic of socialism, he was a reluctant supporter of Francoist Spain as the only viable alternative to what he considered the disastrous republican experiment of 1931–1936.

This happened when the Nationalist newspapers Estampa, El Correo de Andalucia, and Ideal circulated a fake news story that Lorca had been killed as a reprisal for the Republican murder of Benavente.