Some
great characters in the history of Spain
Abd
ar-Rahman III (891–961), Umayyad emir
(912–29) and first caliph (929–61) of Córdoba. When he succeeded to the throne,
the Spanish emirate was reduced to Córdoba and its environs and beset with
tribal warfare. Abd ar-Rahman recovered the lost provinces, consolidated the
central government, and created internal peace and prosperity. He built up a
strong army and navy and waged war successfully against the Fatimids in N
Africa and the Christian kings of León. He made Córdoba one of the greatest
cities in the West. 
Goya was
born to a modest family in 1746 in the village of Fuendetodos in Aragon.
He studied painting from age 14 under José Lúzan y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study
with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in
1775; the couple's life together was characterised by an almost constant series
of pregnancies and miscarriages. He became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and the early portion of his career is
marked by portraits commissioned by the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and
the Rococo style tapestry cartoons designed
for the royal palace.
Goya was a
guarded man and although letters and writings survive, we know comparatively
little about his thoughts. He suffered a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793
which left him completely deaf. After 1793 his work became progressively darker
and pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings
appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels, and
contrast with his social climbing. He was appointed Director of the
Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made
an unfavorable treaty with France. In 1799 Goya became Primer Pintor de
Càmara, the then highest rank for a Spanish court painter. In the late
1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly
indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1801 he painted Charles IV of Spain
and His Family,
the tone and intent of which is still debated; likely Goya saw Charles IV as a weak, ineffectual king.
In 1807 Napoleon lead the French army into Spain.
He
remained in Madrid during the disastrous Peninsular War, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he
did not vocalise his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his "Disasters of War" series of prints (although
published 35 years after his death) and his 1814 paintings The Second of May
1808 and The Third of May
1808. Other
works from his mid period include the "Caprichos"
and Los Disparates etching series, and a wide
variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches,fantastical creatures and religious and political corruption, all of which
suggest that he feared for both his country's fate and his own mental and
physical health. His output culminates with the so-called "Black Paintings" of 1819-1823, applied on oil on the plaster
walls of his house the
"Quinta del Sordo" (house of the deaf man) where,
disillusioned by domestic political and social developments he lived in near
isolation. Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city
of Bordeaux,
accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may or may not have been his lover. There he
completed his "La Tauromaquia" series and a number of canvases. Following a
stroke which left him paralysed on his right side, and suffering failing
eyesight and poor access to painting materials, he died and was buried on April
16th 1828 aged 82. His body was later re-interred in Spain.
Marco Valerio Marcial (40-104 ac): Writer and Spanish
poet, born about the year 40 in the town of Bilbilis, modern Calatayud (city of
the Spanish province called Tarraconensis), and dead to the 104, perhaps in the
same Bilbilis. The cognomen Martialis or martial would derive, apparently, they
were born on March 1. After educated in Hispania, marched to Rome in 64, famous
year because it was the fire of Rome by Nero; It remained there, relationship
with other intellectuals of Hispanic, such as Seneca and Lucan, until these and
others fell into disgrace after the Pison conspiracy of the year 65. In the
Urbs, he remained nearly thirty-five years, because we know that he left it in
99. After living as a poet for hire in search of a rich patron for years (which
justifies the praise directed to various patricians and even the same
Domitian), his fame grew, and with it, received honors, tax exemptions and the
right to have slaves, the ius trium ius liberorum (but never married) and even
an appointment as military Tribune. He took home in Rome and a villa in
Nomento.
Related to
all court, since the Emperor until the last of his acolytes, also maintained
close contact with many writers (particularly, with Pliny the younger, Silius
Italicus, Juvenal and his countryman, Quintiliancalagurritano), although it is
known that its relations with Estació were really bad. All this universe is
reflected in 1,561 epigrams he composed between 86 and 98; at the end of his
life, according to the testimony of Plinio the younger, he sang the Palinode,
regretted some of his poems and decided to return to his homeland to take
charge of a villa donated by a such Marcella; After a long trip to Hispania,
which paid for the same Pliny, it died about the year 104.
