Dicenta, Joaquín

(Dicenta y Benedicto). Born Feb. 3, 1863, in Calatayud; died Feb. 20, 1917, in Alicante. Spanish writer.

Dicenta began with a romantic drama in verse (Werther’s Suicide, 1888) but later turned to realism. In his plays The Feudal Lord (1904), Yesterday’s Crime (1904), Daniel (1907), The Wolf (1913), and others, in his novel The Barbarians (1912), and in his collections of short stories, Dicenta discusses social problems and sympathetically portrays the people. In his drama Juan José (1895; Russian translation, 1935) the worker’s struggle for his rights was depicted for the first time in Spain.