José Rizal

José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861, in Calamba, Laguna, in the Philippines, then under Spanish rule. He was a writer, linguist, ophthalmologist, painter and political activist, and he wrote in Spanish, Tagalog, German, French and English. His mother, Teodora, taught him the alphabet at three and told her children the works of major Spanish writers, and by five he could read and write.

As a key member of the Propaganda Movement in the 1880s, Rizal argued for political reforms in the colony. His novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891) are taken together as a national epic, and he also wrote many poems and essays. In 1892 he was arrested and banished to Dapitan, in Mindanao. In 1896 he was arrested again in Barcelona, and he was executed in Manila on December 30, 1896, after the Philippine Revolution, which his writings had inspired. His poem Mi último adiós is among his best-known works, and he is widely regarded as a national hero of the Philippines.

Reading José Rizal to learn Spanish

Rizal wrote in Spanish in the late nineteenth century, so his language is the formal, literary Spanish of his time rather than everyday speech. Expect some older vocabulary and the compressed phrasing of poetry, which can slow you down at first. On Paralelo, the original and the English translation are aligned phrase by phrase, so you can check each line as you go. Start with Mi Último Adiós, the only Rizal text here. It takes about 3 minutes to read, which makes it an easy first step. Read it twice: once for meaning, then again for the sound and rhythm of the Spanish.