Eduardo Pondal (1835 - 1917)

Eduardo María González-Pondal Abente (February 8, 1835 – March 8, 1917) was a Galician (Spain) poet, who wrote in both Galician and Spanish. Of Hidalgo origin, Pondal was the youngest of a family of seven. From 1884 onwards he studied Latin in a school in Vilela de Nemiña which belonged to his cleric relative, Cristobal Lago. In 1848, he moved to Santiago de Compostela to study Philosophy and, afterwards, Medicine at University. As a student, he was a regular at Liceo de Santo Agostiño, a place where literary debates took place. There, he was discovered as a poet during the banquet of Conxo. It was a banquet organized by liberal students in 1856 to honor "the third state", and where students rubbed shoulders with laborers. The toasts are retrospectively considered to have an important political meaning.