Ganivet García, Ángel

Born Dec. 13, 1862, in Granada; died Nov. 29, 1898, in Riga. Spanish writer and philosopher.

Ganivet García sharply criticized Spanish Catholic feudal society and bourgeois democracy in his works. The reason for Spain’s decline, according to Ganivet García, was its denial of its national patriarchal traditions (Spain: An Interpretation, 1897). The novel The Conquest of the Mayan Kingdom by Spain’s Last Conquistador, Pío Cid (1897) is a satire of the political mores of bourgeois Europe. In an unfinished novel, The Deeds of the Indefatigable Creator Pío Cid (1898), Ganivet García portrayed the eccentric quixotic crank in order to show the inability of the Spanish intelligentsia to act constructively.