Nina Schmidt ~ Vancouver German and Spanish Lessons

Category: Biographies

  • Spanish Biography – Antoni Gaudí

    Spanish Biography – Antoni Gaudí

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    Antoni Gaudí was a famous Spanish architect born in 1852. He was from the Catalonia region and the majority of his works are located in Barcelona. Gaudí was very proud of his Catalan heritage. He was an artist on a large scale who used his passions of nature and religion to create his works. The buildings he helped to create are extremely unique in their style and known throughout the world. Even his last name has become synonymous with an over-the-top decorative style.

    As a child, Gaudí was often ill and spent a lot of time alone in nature. He became a vegetarian at a young age and was a devout Catholic. Gaudí began his work as an architect in the 1870s and soon established himself. By 1883 he was well-established enough to receive the important commission of building the Basilica that came to be known as The Sacred Family or La Sagrada Familia. This project became his life’s work although he continued to work on other projects including churches and other prominent buildings throughout Barcelona. Gaudí developed his own unique style within the modernism movement often incorporating postconsumer products into his designs.

    After suffering from ill health and almost dying from tuberculosis in 1910, Gaudí renewed his efforts to finally finish his project on La Sagrada Familia. By then, the church had become known as being a safe haven for the poor. Unfortunately, Gaudí passed away before the church could be completed. Today La Sagrada Familia is a UNESCO heritage site and receives millions of visitors annually from throughout the world.

    Gaudí never married, devoting his life completely to his career and his faith. He died in 1926 after being struck by a tram. After a large funeral, his body was laid to rest in his beloved church of the Sacred Family.

     

     

  • Biography: Pablo Neruda

    Biography: Pablo Neruda

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    Pablo Neruda was the pen name of Chilean poet Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Pablo Neruda was born in Chile in 1904 in a small town called Parral some 350 km south of the capital Santiago. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father remarried and moved the family.

    Neruda composed his first poems at age 10. Although his father was not supportive, he received encouragement from others and published his first work at the age of 13. It was an essay entitled Entusiasmo y perseverancia under his own name. It was not until the mid-1920s that Neruda began to use his pen name which was inspired by the Czech poet Jan Neruda.

    At the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago to pursue further studies but found himself focusing more on poems that his French studies. At 18, Neruda published his collection titled Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. This collection is still popular today. Unfortunately, his success on the international level did not guarantee him money and he lived a life of poverty for many years. To enable himself to survive he took on government jobs in far-off posts such as Burma and India.

    In his government post, Neruda moved to Spain just in time to experience the Spanish Civil War. These experiences converted Neruda into an ardent communist for the rest of his life. The majority of his works in the 1930s and 40s reflect his passion for this cause. Pablo Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971 two years before his death from prostate cancer.

    Click here to find a link to some of Neruda’s love poems in both Spanish and English.

  • Biography: Diego Rivera

    Biography: Diego Rivera

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    Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was a famous Mexican artist. He specialized in the painting of murals in both Mexico and in the United States. From a young age, Rivera liked to draw and by the age of 10 he was enrolled in an Academy of Art in Mexico City. By 1907 he was studying in Madrid, Spain.

    During the 1910s Rivera was in Paris witnessing the emergence of a new art form called Cubism. Painters such as Pablo Picasso influenced his early work. Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 and began a period of drawing large murals along with other notable artists such as José Orozco. Some of his murals depict scenes from Mexico’s 1910 revolution. They include simple figures combined with bold colors. Rivera also included Mayan and Aztec influences in his art. A number of his murals portray life in Mexico in the pre-Columbian era. Other works are more abstract and show urban landscapes, portraits and nature.

    In 1929, Rivera married fellow artist and former student Frida Kahlo. Together they lived and worked in a house called “La casa azul” owing to its blue color. They were well known on the Mexican art scene and had many influential friends both in Mexico and abroad. Although their marriage was not always happy, Rivero was devastated when Frida Kahlo passed away. Rivera’s legacy is still felt today and many of his works can be found in Mexican and American museums today.

     

     

  • Biography – Rigoberta Menchú (in Spanish)

    Biography – Rigoberta Menchú (in Spanish)

    I have had many requests from students to publish something in their target language. So this month my blog is a biography written in Spanish about the social activist Rigoberto Menchú. This extraordinary woman came from a poor background as an indigenous person in Guatemala. She suffered greatly at the hands of the military during the Guatemalan Civil War. She went on to learn the Spanish language, write a best-selling book, win a Nobel Peace Prize and tour the world giving speeches on behalf of the United Nations.   The words in bold are included in a glossary below the reading to help with understanding.

    Rigoberta Menchú nació el 9 de enero de 1959 en Uspantán, Guatemala. Su familia era grande y sus familiares eran campesinos. Ella es una persona indígena del grupo Quiché-Maya. Su padre fue activista en la defensa de las tierras y los derechos indígenas mientras su madre fue comadrona para las comunidades en zonas rurales. Rigoberta conoce desde muy pequeña la discriminación, la pobreza y la injusticia.

    Casi toda su familia fue asesinada por el ejército durante la guerra civil de Guatemala que tuvo lugar entre 1962 y 1996. Ella huyó a Méjico en 1981 y empezó una carrera como defensora de los derechos humanos. En 1992 ganó el Premio Nobel de la Paz. Ella era la ganadora más joven y la primera persona indígena en ganarla.

    En 1984 publicó el libro Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú. El libro fue basado en las experiencias de su vida y relata las atrocidades cometidas contra la gente indígena durante la guerra civil de Guatemala, especialmente bajo los órdenes del general Efraín Montt. Unas personas tomaron la novela por una autobiografía algo que causó una controversia.

    Regresó a Guatemala en 1988 y en 2007 y otra vez en 2011 Menchú era candidata en las elecciones presidenciales. Hoy en día trabaja como embajadora de buena voluntad para la UNESCO.

    campesinos = poor country people, indígena = indigenous, la tierra = land, los derechos = rights,una comadrona = midwife, pobreza = poverty, casi = almost, el ejército =military, huyó (huir) =she fled (to flee), embajadora = embassador, buena voluntad =good will


     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Biographies: Eva Perón

    Biographies: Eva Perón

    Postage stamp Argentina 1952 Eva Peron, Evita

    Eva Perón was born María Eva Duarte in 1919 in a small village in Argentina. Her early life was difficult because her mother was the mistress of her already married father. During her life, he failed to recognize her as his legitimate daughter. From a young age, Eva was interested in dancing, acting and modeling and at 16 she moved on her own to the capital city of Buenos Aires. It was her dream to be a cinema star. She was a very attractive young woman and was soon turning heads in the capital city. She received work immediately and began traveling in the upper social circles of the city shortly thereafter.

    In 1943, Eva met an ambitious politician by the name of Juan Perón at a party. They had a two-year courtship and married in 1945. Eva was a guiding force behind his election campaign to become president in 1946. Given her poor childhood, she had a strong connection to the working classes. She was also a very charismatic speaker. The two of them were very popular and due to her diminutive size she became known as Evita or ‘little Eva’ by the people. During her time as first lady she helped women in Argentina obtain the right to vote in 1947. She also created many social foundations to combat poverty, help orphaned children, the elderly and single mothers as this cause was close to her heart.

    It should be mentioned that Eva had her detractors as well.  Some decried her to be a hypocrite as while she was doing all of this charity work she was well known for her excesses. Having grown up poor, she very much enjoyed the privileges that came along with her newfound status. She wore very expensive clothes and was known for having an enormous jewelry collection.

    During Perón’s second campaign for presidency in 1951, Eva became very ill with ovarian cancer. By a cruel twist of fate, the president’s first wife had also died of this cancer. In a desperate attempt to save her life, the president flew in specialists and Evita was one of the first people in South America to receive the then new treatment of chemotherapy.  Unfortunately, the tumor had been discovered too late and she died the following year.

    Throughout the final months of her life she campaigned tirelessly by her husband’s side, knowing that her image would help her husband win  reelection. Upon her death, there was an outpouring of emotion from the Argentinian public. In order to immortalize her image, Perón hired a doctor who began to embalm her body in her final days so that by the time the cancer had claimed her she would be completely preserved and would not suffer any decomposition.

    After her death, Perón was thrown out of government and had to flee the country leaving behind her body. A lot of controversy surrounds what happened to the body over the next few months and years. For a time it was stored in various places in Argentina and eventually made its way to Italy before finally being returned to Buenos Aires many years later. Today her final resting place is the Duarte family crypt in La Recoleta, a well-known cemetery in Buenos Aires. Many tourists and locals visit her to every day especially on the days commemorating her birth and death.

    The well-known song, “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” was immortalized by Madonna’s performance in the 1996 film Evita. To see the performance click here. The film is a musical which outlines Eva’s life with Perón.