Balaguer i Cirera, Víctor

Víctor Balaguer i Cirera (December 11, 1824 - January 14, 1901) was a Catalan poet, playwright, writer, and politician. He was born in Barcelona and showed artistic talent in his youth, writing his first play, 'Pepin the Hunchback,' when he was only 14 years old. Balaguer's father died when he was young and his mother disapproved of his artistic pursuits, eventually disinheriting him, but Balaguer was able to support himself as a writer while also studying law at the University of Barcelona. Through the 1840s and 1850s, he was a regular columnists in several liberal newspapers in Barcelona (often writing under a pseudonym) while also writing plays and poems. He also was more directly involved in politics as the head of the Liberal Party in Barcelona from 1843 to 1868, even though he lived in Madrid for most of this period. In Madrid, Balaguer mingled with Spain's most elite political and literary circles. He also increasingly flirted with Catalan nationalism, writing poems in Catalan and a five-volume history of the region (in Spanish). In 1867, Balaguer moved to Provence in France but returned to Spain the following year due to the Glorious Revolution and the onset of the Sexenio Democrático. Balaguer served in the provisional government as a representative for Manresa in Catalonia in the Cortes and briefly as Minister of Public Works and Minister of Overseas Territories. After the Bourbon Restoration, he resigned but eventually returned to government as the vice-resident of the Congress of Deputies and later a senator. He continued to write plays, political works, and histories well into the1890s.