The older brother of Antonio Machado, Manuel was the more famous poet during the early years of the twentieth century. After a stay in Paris he brought the full force of modernism home to Spain with his adaptations in Spanish verse of symbolist techniques, especially those of Paul Verlaine. Machado did polemical and editorial work for the modernist movement and enjoyed his greatest reputation before World War I. His use of Andalusian folk poetry and flamenco lore opened the way for younger poets (such as Federico García Lorca and Rafael Alberti) to develop the themes more profoundly.

Manuel Machado y Ruiz was born on 29 August 1874 in Seville, where his parents, Antonio Machado Alvarez and the former Ana Ruiz Hernández, had met in a crowd that had rushed to the banks of the Guadalquivir River to see dolphins swimming so far upstream. His father was...