The poet Miguel Hernández, one of Spain’s greatest poets of the 20th century. Picture: Wikimedia via Creative Commons

Miguel’s home in the centre of Orihuela, now a museum

Murales de San Isidro, on the outskirts of Orihuela, a remarkable street-art homage to Miguel Hernández in his home town

Many quote Miguel’s poetry, alongside images inspired by his work. As a living example of the power of poetry, these murals take some beating. Why else would artists from all over Spain come to this obscure country town to remember a dead poet, more than seventy years on?

Part of the answer, I think, is in the sheer intensity of the poems he wrote during and after the Civil War.

Miguel’s first poetry had been published in Orihuela, but in 1934, he moved to Madrid,  where he achieved a certain fame as the ‘shepherd poet’ — a rather condescending nickname which he didn’t like much. There he rubbed shoulders with literary giants like Pablo Neruda. who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature nearly 40 years later.

The war poet

By the time the Civil War broke out in July 1936, Miguel was a rising star in an unrivalled generation of Spanish poets. Like most creative artists of the time, he was a Republican and he threw himself into the struggle against the military rebellion of General Franco, enlisting in the Fifth Regiment. He was even sent to Russia during the conflict as a cultural emissary.

Some of his war poetry is among his finest work, including El Tren de los Heridos (Train of the Wounded):

El tren lluvioso de la sangre suelta,
el fragil tren de lo que se desangran
el silencioso, el doloroso, el pálido,
el tren callado de los sufrimentos

The train wet with flowing blood,
the fragile train of those who bleed,
the silent, the painful, the pale,
the train hushed with suffering

In 1937 he married Josefina Manresa, from his home town of Orihuela, and their first son Miguel was born the following year. Tragically, the little boy died aged just ten months, and is forever remembered in Miguel’s poem ‘A mi Hijo.’ (To my son)

Ausente, ausente, ausente como la golondrina,
ave estival que esquiva vivir al pie del hielo

Gone, gone, gone like the swallow,
bird of summer that escapes to life with the frost at its heels

By March 1939, with the Civil War lost, there’s some evidence that Miguel headed for Alicante, the last port left in Republican hands, to try to get a ship into exile (see my post here about the last days of the Republic in Alicante).

He didn’t make it and headed for Portugal instead. He managed to cross the border, but was arrested and handed back. Let’s not forget that this was the Portugal of Salazar, himself a pretty nasty right-wing dictator in his own right.

In prison, initially in Madrid, Miguel wrote some of his best-known work. Josefina told him in a letter that she and their second son, Manuel Miguel, had only bread and onion to eat. Miguel wrote Nanas de la Cebolla , (Lullabies of the Onion) in response. It became one of his classic poems.

En la cuna del hambre
mi niño estaba
Con sangre de cebolla
Se amamantaba

In the cradle of hunger
lay my son
With the blood of the onion
he was suckled

Astonishingly, Miguel was actually released from prison, thanks to some arm twisting by friends, including Neruda, who was Chilean consul in Madrid. But he made the mistake of returning to his home town of Orihuela, where he was arrested once again. He would never be released.

Condemned initially to death, his sentence was commuted to 30 years. Maybe Franco’s Nationalists, having first shot Lorca and then forced Machado into an early grave, didn’t want to execute yet another poet.

In prison, he contracted the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, but still he continued to write. Some of his poems survived on toilet paper, others in letters to his wife, all later collected as Cancionero y romancero de ausencia (Song and Ballad of Absence).

Llegó con Tres Heridas

One of the best known is Llegó con Tres Heridas, just three short stanzas, simple and powerful.

Llegó con tres heridas
La del amor
La de la muerte
La de la vida

Con tres heridas viene
La de la vida
La del amor
La de la muerte                                                                                                              

Con tres heridas, yo
La de la vida
La de la muerte
La del amor

He came with three wounds
One of love
One of death
One of life                                                                                                                 

With three wounds he comes,
One of life
One of love
One of death                                                                                                                

With three wounds, I
One of life
One of death
One of love                                                                                          

The poem reached a much wider audience after it, and other works by Miguel Hernández, were set to music by Catalan singer Joan Manuel Serrat. 

Quite a brave thing to do, considering Franco was still alive at the time (1972) and the old tyrant was not at all sympathetic to either Serrat himself or dead Republican poets. Serrat had been kicked out of the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest by the Spanish government because he wanted to sing in Catalan.

For me though, the best version is by Joan Baez. Listen here. Simple, yet beautiful, just like the original verses – I defy anyone not to be moved by it. The poem is on Miguel’s grave.

The final poem

By now Miguel had been moved to prison in Alicante, not far from Orihuela. But the tuberculosis was by then incurable and he died on March 28, 1942. He was 31 years old. On the wall of the prison hospital, next to his cot, he had written:

Adios hermanos, camaradas, amigos,
Despedidme al sol y los trigos

Goodbye, brothers, comrades, friends,
Say farewell for me to the sun and the wheatfields

His body lies in Alicante cemetery, alongside his wife Josefina and second son, surrounded by verses from some of his most famous poems.

In the last decade or so, there’s been a huge resurgence in interest in Miguel Hernández and his poetry. If you’re one of the many thousands who arrive on the Costa Blanca via Alicante airport, glance up at the terminal building as you land – you’ll notice that the airport is now named after Miguel Hernández (as of 2020). Elche University is also named after him.

If you’d like to know more about his poetry, especially if Spanish is not your first language, I’d suggest a bilingual Spanish-English book of his poems. Try ‘I Have Lots of Heart’, translated by Don Share.

For me, reading Miguel’s poems in the language in which they were written brings out the emotion and power of his words in a way that a translation just can’t match. But an English version is very helpful!

© Guy Pelham

If you’d like to know more about the Civil War in Alicante, try these posts:

• The Stanbrook story: the unlikely British heroes of Alicante’s darkest hour
• Landmarks of the Civil War in Alicante, 80 years on
• Repression and exile: landmarks of the Civil War in Alicante
• Gateway to exile; the last secret headquarters of Spain’s Civil War leaders