León Felipe (born León Felipe Camino Galicia) is best remembered as one of the most vociferous of the poets in exile who railed against the Francisco Franco regime and the violent overthrow of the republican government in the Spanish Civil War. From his residence in Mexico City he clamored incessantly against the injustices perpetrated by the Falangist government; furthermore, through his role of intelectual republicano, he came to serve as the spiritual leader of many Spanish poets of the left in the postwar period.

He was born in Tabara, in the province of Zamora (region of León), in the northwest quadrant of Spain, on 11 April 1884; two years later he and his family moved to another Leonese town, Sequeros, near Salamanca. In 1893 the family took up residence in Santander on the north-central coast of Old Castile, where Felipe attended a Catholic grammar school...