Antonio Alcalá Galiano

Antonio Alcalá Galiano y Fernández de Villavicencio (22 July 1789, Cádiz – 11 April 1865, Madrid) was a Spanish politician and writer who served as Minister of the Navy (1836) and Minister of Public Works (1865). He was elected a Deputy for Cádiz in 1822 and served sporadically through ten successive legislatures, until his death.

Biography

He was born to an influential military family. His father, the explorer Dionisio Alcalá Galiano, was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar and his uncle, Don Juan María de Villavicencio, was Captain general of the Armada and a Regent of the Kingdom during the interregnum in the reign of Ferdinand VII.

After his secondary studies at the "Real Colegio de la Purísima Concepción de Cabra" (now known as "IES Aguilar y Eslava"), he travelled through the Mediterranean with his father and spent some time in Naples. In 1806, he enrolled as a cadet in the "Guardias Marinas Españolas" and the following year was named Master at the port of Seville. He was married in 1808, but separated from his wife seven years later; because, it is believed, of her infidelity due to his ugliness. After that, he briefly gained a reputation as a libertine and drunkard.

He abandoned his military career in 1812 and became a "Doceañista" (a supporter of the Spanish Constitution of 1812). Two years later, together with José Joaquín de Mora, he came out against the German reactionary Romanticism advocated by Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber but, after his stay in London, came to support the new aesthetic and wrote a prologue to El moro expósito (The Moor Exposed), by his friend Ángel de Saavedra; the manifesto of Spanish Romanticism.