José Bergamín

An opponent of the regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera, Bergamín participated in a political gathering in Salamanca together with Unamuno in support of republican ideals.

With the victory of Francisco Franco over the Republican forces, Bergamín went into exile, taking with him a copy of Federico García Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York.

He was forced to go into exile again in 1963 after his apartment was burned down by his enemies, and also because he had signed a manifesto with more than 100 other intellectuals addressed to Manuel Fraga Iribarne that denounced the regime’s use of torture and repression against the miners of Asturias.

He returned for good in 1970, settling in Madrid and becoming a political opponent of what he perceived were the shady deals behind the Spanish transition to democracy (La Transición), and was expelled as a writer from various newspapers.

At the end of his life, he lived in the Basque Country, where he served as a collaborator in the newspaper Egin and the periodical Punto y Hora de Euskal Herria, where he became a firm political supporter of the Abertzale Left.