VALERA Y ALCALA GALIANO, JUAN (1824-1905), Spanish novelist, entered diplomacy in 1847 and became unpaid attache to the Spanish embassy at Naples under the famous duke de Rivas. He held various other diplomatic posts until 1858 when he returned to Spain and entered the House of Deputies, taking his place with the Liberal opposition. On the flight of Isa bella II. in 1868 he was elected deputy for Montilla in the prov ince of Cordova, became under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and was one of the deputation who offered the crown to Amadeus of Savoy in the Pitti Palace at Florence. Though he always called himself a Moderate Liberal, Valera invariably voted for what are considered Radical measures in Spain, and a speech delivered by him in Feb. 1863 against the temporal power of the pope created a profound sensation. However, though a member of the revolutionary party, he steadily opposed organic constitu tional changes, and therefore he retired from public life during the period of republican government. After the Bourbon res toration he acted as minister at Lisbon (1881-83), at Washing ton (1885), at Brussels (1886) and as ambassador at Vienna (1893-95), retiring from the diplomatic service on March 5, 1896. During his last ten years he took no active part in politics.
Valera's Poesias (1858) are imitative exercises rather than original poetry. His criticism in the Estudios criticos sobre litera tura (1864), in the Disertaciones y juicios literarios (1878) and in the Nuevos estudios criticos (1888) show penetration and taste, but also an excessive amiability. He said a hundred incisive, wise, witty, subtle and suggestive things concerning the mysticism of St. Theresa, the art of novel-writing, Faust, the Inquisition, Don Quixote, Shakespeare, the psychology of love in literature; but, to do himself justice, it was an almost indispensable condi tion that he should deal with the past. In the presence of a living author Valera was disarmed.
When in his 5oth year, he published Pepita Jimenez (1874) a recital of the fall of Luis de Vargas, a seminarist who con ceived himself to be a mystic and a potential saint, and whose aspirations dissolve at the first contact with reality. It is easy
to point out blemishes: the story is not well constructed, and it has pauses during which the writer's fantasy plays at pleasure over a hundred subjects not very germane to the matter; but its characters are as real as any in fiction, the love story is told with the most refined subtlety and malicious truth, while page upon page is written in such Spanish as would do credit to the best writers of the 16th and 17th centuries. A second novel, Las ilu siones del Doctor Faustino (1875), was received with marked dis favour, and has the faults of over-refinement and of cruelty; yet in keen analysis and in humour it surpasses Pepita Jimenez. The Comendador Mendoza (1877) is more pathetic and of a pro founder significance; and if Dona Luz (1879) repeats the situa tion and the general idea already used in Pepita Jimenez it strikes a deeper and more tragic note, which came as a surprise to those familiar only with the lighter side of Valera's genius. Besides these elaborate psychological studies, Valera issued a volume of Cuentos (1887), some of these short tales and dialogues being marvels of art and of insight.
At the close of the 19th century Valera was recognized as the most eminent man of letters in Spain. He had not Pereda's force nor his energetic realism; he had not the copious invention nor the reforming purpose of Perez Gald6s; yet he was as realistic as the former and as innovating as the latter. And, for all his cosmopolitan spirit, he fortunately remained intensely and in corrigibly Spanish. His aristocratic scepticism, his strange elu siveness, his incomparable charm are his own; his humour, his flashing irony, his urbanity are eminently the gifts of his land and race. He is by no means an impersonal artist; in almost every story there is at least one character who talks and thinks and subtilizes and refines as Valera himself wrote in his most brilliant essays. This may be a fault in art ; but, if so, it is a fault which many great artists have committed. (J.F.-K.)