Primitivo Rodríguez Sanjurjo (1880-1947)

Abstract

This article contains a biographical approach to Primitivo Rodríguez Sanjurjo (1880-1947), a representative of the intellectual vanguard born in Ourense and the introducer of orientalism and esotericism in this city during the second decade of the twentieth century, when he participated along with Otero Pedrayo and Vicente Risco in several cultural initiatives in the pre-galicianist times of these authors. Most important among these initiatives was the magazine La Centuria. He was professor of Spanish literature at three universities in the United States between 1920 and 1926. He published in international journals (Síntesis, Mercurio, Mundial Magazine) and maintained relationship with Rubén Darío, Jorge Luís Borges, Roso de Luna and many other hispanics intellectuals of the time. He is the author of a much praised book of poetry, Las Mesetas Ideales (1910), and of a strange mythological prose, Escenas de Gigantomaquia (1923). In his doctoral dissertation he defended the idea of a radical transformation of the provincial division of Spain in favor of a geometrical one. He lived his last years working as Professor of Geography at the High School of Lugo. In 2011 his family made the donation of documents related to the author, among which figure some unpublished works, to the Real Academia Galega.