The death of Blas de Otero left an empty space in contemporary Spanish poetry. Though in the vanguard of the so-called social poetry of the 1950s, he does not fully fit under any name tag or in any school. Having followed the avalanche of the three movements of Spanish poetry in the post-civil-war era--religious, desarraigada (rooted out), and social--Otero chose a much more personal path.

Blas de Otero Muñoz was born on 15 March 1916 in Bilbao. His infancy was spent in Bilbao and Madrid. In high school he studied with the Jesuits and later, after attending the Universities of Valladolid and Madrid, earned his licentiate degrees in law, philosophy, and letters. After fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, Otero taught briefly in Bilbao, then lived for a while in Barcelona, taking time to take a cruise across the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean...