VALERA Y ALCALA GALIANO, vA-la'rA UPkalti' JuAx (1824—). A Spanish novelist, poet and scholar, born at Cabra, in the Province of Cordova. He was educated at Malaga and at the University of Granada, where he took his degree in and then entered upon a diplomatic career (1847). When the Duke de Rivas was sent as Spanish Ambassador to Naples, Valera accompanied him. He was then as a member of the Spanish legations at Lisbon (1850), Rio Janeiro (1851-53), Dres den and Saint Petersburg (1857-53). After his re turn to Madrid (185S) he became one of the editors of the liberal journal El Contemporfineo (1859). He was a leading member of the Union Liberal, and was made Ninister to Frankfort (1865) by General O'Donnell. After the Revolu tion of 1868 he was appointed Director of Public Instruction. During the reign of Alfonso XII. lie was Ambassador to Lisbon (1881-83), Wash ington (1885), and Brussels (1836), and in 1893-95 to Vienna. Throughout all his diplo matic and political activity he produced works which rank among the highest that his country's literature contains.
Valera really began the movement in fiction that was the glory of the last three decades of the nineteenth century in Spain with his Pe pita Jimene.:, first published as a serial in 1874 and since translated into many modern languages. Pepita was written after Valera had steeped his mind in the Spanish mysticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His next novel, Las ilusioncs del doctor Puustino (1875), the story of a modern Faust, did not catch the popu lar favor so quickly as Pepita. His third novel, El coincndador _Mendoza (1877). is free from philosophizing. After a shorter story, I'asarse de listro, appeared the Doll(' Luz (1879).
Having abandoned polities, Valera wrote El hechiecro, Juanita. lu lurgu, La buena fame, Genic) y figura, be curios colores, and JIo•sa mw•, all attractive novels. The short tales of Va lera are hardly less known and appreciated than his more extended works. Among them are the 011entos, dialogos y fantasias, the delightful little El pcijaro verde, the Parsondcs, the Asc/cpigenia, the Goya, and the Bcrincjino pre historic°. In the poetry of Valera his erudition is more visible than any other trait. By trans lating or paraphrasing in verse the poems of for eign authors• Valera has made his countrymen acquainted with portions of the poetic literature of Germany and the English-speaking regions; thus he has rendered into Spanish verse parts of Goethe's Faust, of IThland's ballads, and of _Sloo•e's Paradise and the Prri ; poems of James Russell Lowell, Whittier, and W. \V. Story. Ile also translated Schack's Poesir mod Kunst der Amber (1SS1). As a critic lie displays great powers of observation, and gives evidence of wide reading.
Among his critical and other works are Ten tatiras uraniriticas (1879) : Discrtaciones y firth cios litcrarios (1SS2) ; Arte de eseribir north's (1887) ; Est/a/jos criticos (2d ed. 1884) : Nuccos est adios criticos (1SSS) ; Cartes amcrieanas (1SS9); Dc Rios argentinos (1901); Eros argentinos (1901) ; and Florilegio de pocsias castellanas del siglo XIX'. (1901-02). Consult Brunetiere, La casuistigue duns le roman de Juan fulcra, in his series iiistoirc et lith'raturc, vol. i. (Paris, 1884).