Leòn Felipe: The Poetical Pharmacist

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Leòn Felipe is today's curious character from Spanish history. This series of brief posts aim to simply introduce you to some of the lesser known individuals of contemporary Spanish history.

People who lived life with a passion and a dedication to principle, politics and culture.

Leòn Felipe was a reluctant pharmicist but avid anti-fascist poet born in Zamora, Spain.

He had earlier worked as a stand up comic in a touring theatre company, spent 3 years in prison for fraud and later worked as a literature professor in the USA.

Leòn Felipe fought in the civil war in defense of the Republic and in 1938 was exiled to Mexico where he died 30 years later.

"Brother, yours is the estate,

The house, the horse and the gun, 

Mine is the old voice of the earth. 

You have everything. 

Yet I leave you voiceless, voiceless, 

I go off with the song."

Felipe and Che Guevara's Notebooks

He remains, with Garcia Lorca, one of most well remembered poets of the generation of 27

It is said that several of Felipe's poems were found in the notebook of Che Guevara's when he was finally captured by the Bolivian Army and the CIA.

Want mOre stories on Characters From the Spanish civil war? Read about the Ambulance Man, the Spy and the Exodus below.

http://www.speakingofspain.com/1/post/2014/02/the-untold-story-from-the-civil-war-the-spy-the-blood-bank-and-the-exodus-of-a-city.html