Vicente Risco

In these years he participated in social gatherings directed by Marcelo Macías, with other intellectuals, such as Xulio Alonso Cuevillas or Arturo Vázquez Núñez, who would significantly influence Vicente Risco's literary career.

In 1910 he began work for a local newspaper, El Miño, where he wrote philosophical articles under the pseudonyms Rujú Sahib and Polichinela.

Beginning in 1917, Vicente Risco entered the Irmandades da Fala under the influence of Antón Losada Diéguez, and on December 18, 1917, he gave his first speech in the Galician language, an act of support for Francesc Cambó.

He tried to improve the status of Galician literature, writing about Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Apollinaire and Omar Khayyam.

Soon Risco had become the main theoretician and leader of Galician nationalism, and in November 1918 he played an important role in the I Nationalist Assembly.

He valued Galicia's geographical and cultural connection to Celtic history and the Atlantic region, as opposed to Spain's Mediterranean heritage.

Risco initially supported the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, because he saw in it the opportunity to destroy the cacique system and accept the role of provincial deputy in Ourense thinking of the possibility of the establishment of a Commonwealth of Galicia, similar to the Commonwealth of Catalonia.

In the VI Nationalist Assembly Risco supported the idea of the transformation of the Irmandades da Fala into a political party.

With Ramón Otero Pedraio he founded the Partido Nazonalista Republicán de Ourense to take part in the elections of 1931.

In confrontation with the leaders of his party he didn't attend the IV Assembly of the PG in Monforte de Lemos.

Risco united with the group of right-wing Galicianists, and he left the PG to direct Dereita Galeguista.

In 1945 he lived in Madrid, where he wrote articles for El Español, Pueblo and La Estafeta Literaria, and he published in 1947 Satanás.

With the help of Galicianist friends Otero Pedrayo and Francisco Fernández del Riego, he again started writing in Galician: in his ethnographic studio he wrote History of Galiza directed by Otero Pedrayo, and translated Camilo José Cela's book The family of Pascual Duarte, completed in 1951.

[2] A follower of the essentialism of Manuel Murguía vis-à-vis the concept in nation, he saw the Iberian Peninsula as divisible into two parts: north and south from the Duero River.

Vicente Risco.
Risco at "Praza do Humor", A Coruña .