Home Features History Letters from Spain New Arrivals Profiles Recipes Sightseeing Vocabulary Weather

August 12

Saints Days : Macario, Julián, Hilaria, Aniceto and Quiriaco

1227 - The Virgin de la Cabeza appears in Andújar
1492 - Christopher Columbus arrives in the Canary Islands on his first voyage to the New World
1812 - French troops leave Madrid when the allied forces of the Duke of Wellington defeats them in the battle of Los Arapiles

Jacinto Benavente - www.biografiasyvidas.com

1888 - In Barcelona the trade union Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) is created and holds its first congress
1898 - An Armistice ends the Spanish–American War.
1909 - The Spanish Federation of Football Clubs is created
1936 - Barcelona, in the framework of the Spanish Civil War are shot Generales Goded Franco and Fernández Burriel for their involvement in the military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic
2007 - An earthquake 5.1 on the Richter scale is felt across much of Spain
2020 - Europe fights a new Covid-19 surge with Germany, France and Spain posting their largest daily infecton totals for three months
2022 - Spain says gas link to wider EU could be ready within months, pipeline from Iberian peninsular to France proposed in effort to wean Europe off Russian gas

Births
1566 - Isabella Clara Eugenia Sovereign of the Netherlands (1598-1621) wife of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria born in Palacio de Valsaín, Segovia (d. 1633)
1866 - Jacinto Benavente y Martínez was one of the foremost Spanish dramatists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922 'for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama
Born in Madrid, the son of a celebrated paediatrician, he returned drama to reality by way of social criticism; declamatory verse giving way to prose, melodrama to comedy, formula to experience, impulsive action in dialogue and the play of minds. Benavente showed a preoccupation with aesthetics and later with ethics
A liberal monarchist and a critic of socialism, he was a reluctant supporter of Francoist Spain as the only viable alternative to what he considered the disastrous republican experiment of 1931-1936.  In 1936 Benavente's name became associated with the assassination of poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca. This happened when the Nationalist newspapers Estampa, El Correo de Andalucía and Ideal from Granada circulated a fake news story that Lorca had been killed as a reprisal for the Republican murder of Benavente. Benavente died in Aldea Encabo de Escalona (Toledo) at the age of 87. He never married. According to many sources, he was homosexual   (d. 1954)

1871 - Serafín Álvarez Quintero, dramatist (d. 1938)
1892 - Mariano Arrate, footballer (d. 1963)
1924 - Xabier Gereño, writer (d. 2011)
1943 - Fernando López Carrasco, politician.
1960 - Alberto Jiménez-Becerril Barrio, politician assassinated by ETA in 1998.
1964 - Txiki Begiristain, (Aitor 'Txiki' Begiristain Mujika) is a former professional footballer who played mainly as a left-winger but also as a forward, currently the director of football at Manchester City. He was best known for his spells at Real Sociedad and Barcelona, winning eight major titles with the latter, including four La Liga championships and the 1992 European Cup
Begiristain represented the Spain national team in one World Cup and one European Championship. He worked as a director of football after retiring, including with Barcelona and also at Manchester City
1966 - Carlos Álvarez, singer.
1970 - Mariola Fuentes, actress.
1973 - Joseba Beloki,  professional bicycle racer, born in Lazkao
Francisco de Vitoria - https://dbe.rah.es/
Deaths
1546 - Francisco de Vitoria, was a Roman Catholic philosopher, theologian and jurist of Renaissance Spain, He is the founder of the tradition in philosophy known as the School of Salamanca, noted especially for his concept of just war and international law. He has in the past been described by scholars as the 'father of international law', along with Alberico Gentili and Hugo Grotius,  though some contemporary academics have suggested that such a description is anachronistic, since the concept of postmodern international law did not truly develop until much later. American jurist Arthur Nussbaum noted Victoria's influence on international law as it pertained to the right to trade overseas. Later this was interpreted as 'freedom of commerce' (b. 1492)
1829 - Gabriel Císcar, mathematician, sailer and politician (b. 1769)
1918 - Mercedes de Velilla, poet.
1936 - Victoria Díez Bustos de Molina, educator (b. 1903)
1944 - Miguel Asin Palacios, Spanish scholar of Islamic studies and the Arabic language, and a Roman Catholic priest. He is primarily known for suggesting Muslim sources for ideas and motifs present in Dante's Divine Comedy, which he discusses in his book La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia (d. 1944)
1998 - Jesús Loroño, cyclist (b. 1926)
2001 - Antonio José Galán, bullfighter.
2009 - José Asenjo Sedano, writer (b. 1930)
2016 - Juan Pedro de Miguel, handball player (b. 1958)