Abril (April, 1935), by Luis Rosales, represents some of the innovative tendencies in poetry before the Spanish Civil War. Books published in 1936 by Luis Felipe Vivanco, Juan Panero, and Germán Bleiberg confirmed a conscientious effort by these poets, along with Rosales, to separate themselves from the previous avant-garde movements and to establish a new creative interest in originality and renewal. Rosales's 1992 death, the result of a stroke, brought renewed attention to the importance of his work and the impact he had on modern Spanish poetry.

Born in Granada on 31 May 1910, Luis Rosales completed his primary and secondary studies there. Encouraged by his friend and teacher Joaquín Amigo, a Spanish intellectual later shot in the civil war, Rosales started training for two professions: literature and law. Amigo took him to the University of Madrid to study philosophy and letters in the new filología rom...