He was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama".

[4] At the age of twenty, he left the Madrid School with a Civil Engineering degree, which he had obtained as first in his class, and he had to move to Almeria and Granada to begin working at his first job.

He became a member of the Society of Political Economy, helped to found the magazine La Revista, and took a prominent part in propagating free trade doctrines in the press and on the platform.

His most famous play is El gran Galeoto, a drama written in the grand nineteenth century manner of melodrama.

Echegaray filled it with elaborate stage instructions that illuminate what we would now consider a hammy style of acting popular in the 19th century.

[2] His extensive work did not stop growing in his old age: in the final stage of his life he wrote 25 or 30 mathematical physics volumes.

At the age of 83 he commented: I cannot die, because if I am going to write my mathematical physics encyclopedia, I need at least 25 more years.Several streets in Spain are named after José Echegaray.