letters. Journalist, writer, poet, politician and full-fledged academic of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, the transfer of his remains was an act of Murcian affirmation
During the first days of June 1922, the Murcia of our grandparents paid tribute out of affection and respect to the poet José Selgas Carrasco, who was born in 1822 in the capital of the region and acquired the fame that accompanied him all his life . a journalist, writer, poet, politician and full academician of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language. Coming from a humble family and soon orphaned, he had to give up his studies at the S. Fulgencio seminary and go to Madrid where he worked as a civil servant and was protected by the Count of S. Luis and the academician Aureliano Fernández Guerra, whose hand he entered, became part of the RAE in 1874. According to Professor Juan Barceló, together with Arnao and Federico Balart, they formed the most representative trio of 19th-century Murcian literature.
On the centenary of his birth, in 1922, a commission, chaired and ratified by the deputy of the Cortes Emilio Díez de Revenga, sought to restore his human and literary memory in Murcia, recovering his remains from the sacramental of S. Lorenzo in Madrid. , where his body was buried on September 5, 1882, in the Cathedral of Murcia and the Chapel of Blessed Andrés Ibernón, opposite the tomb of Saavedra Fajardo, where it has been ever since. They organized some festivities between funeral and festivity, a bronze bust was dedicated to him, which was placed in the Ruiz Hidalgo Park (near the park dedicated in September in stone to the poet Frutos Baeza, both by José Planes ), and in his honor ‘Himno a Murcia’ was premiered with text by the journalist and director of the newspaper ‘El Liberal’ and music by the composer Emilio Ramírez.
The tribute, which is now a century old, was given by the aforementioned Díez de Revenga, in March 1921, when he asked the local poets not to miss his centenary, in 1822. The following January 1, permission had already been obtained for the exhumation and transfer of Selgas’s remains to Murcia, which took place on 3 June by rail and “in a luxurious coffin”; later moving to the church of Carmen from where he went the next day to the cathedral in a massive procession attended by representatives of the entire regional society, under a ceaseless shower of flowers that constantly fell from the balconies of the buildings along the route . The mayor of the capital, Antonio Clamares (a young lawyer who had replaced Dr José Pérez Mateos in the mayor’s office on April 1,) was invited to do so in a public announcement in the regional press, which began by saying: let us not let the nettles from oblivion supplant the guard our flowers owe to their incomparable singer”. And it is that Selgas, popularly, in life and after his death was known as the “poet of flowers”. At another point in his long and eloquent proclamation, he asked the people of Murcia: “Cover your houses as the entourage passes and throw flowers on the remains of the poet of flowers…”.
On the next 5th, the announced funeral took place in the cathedral and the ensuing burial, as has already been said; being the night of the 9th the great night that no Murcian in the capital forgot for the rest of his life, on which the ‘Himno a Murcia’ by Jara Carrillo and Emilio Ramírez was premiered, sung by the choir of the Conservatory, which transcended further then the tribute to Selgas which became an act of Murcian affirmation, with the academician of the RAE Manuel de Sandoval acting as enforcer and ending with the singing of the above-mentioned hymn, performing as soloist the young Innocence Navarro. At the end, the roof of the podium was opened from where hundreds of thousands of petals fell on the attendees in a show carefully prepared by the couple Díez de Revenga-Rodríguez Pellicer, with the invaluable help of José María Sanz and Dionisio Sierra , all they advised by the municipal gardener Mr. Gonzalvez.
Two days later, in the afternoon of June 11, the discovery of the bust of Selgas, the work, as mentioned, of José Panes, on a marble plinth, made by a stone officer with the surname Rigal, financed by the Círculo de Bellas Artes, which at the time was directed by Mariano Ruiz Funes. Those festivities, full of cultural content, were not easily forgotten by the society that experienced them, and motivated commendable comments and articles in the regional press, the enthusiasm of which only weakened over time.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
