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| Spain 500 Pesetas |
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| Spain 500 Pesetas banknote |
Spain currency 500 Pesetas banknote of 1979, issued by the Bank of Spain - El Banco de España.
Spanish banknotes, Spanish bank notes, Spanish paper money, Spain banknotes, Spain bank notes, Spain paper money.Obverse: Portrait of the Spanish poet and novelist Rosalía de Castro, engraved by Pablo Sampedro Molero. Camellia flower from "La Flor" as a registration device. Coat of arms of the King of Spain at upper right.
Signatures: Don José Ramón Álvarez Rendueles (Governor - El Gobernador, Mar. 1978 - Jul. 1984).
Reverse: Rosalía de Castro House-Museum in Padrón, Spain, and some lines with the handwriting of the author's book "Follas Novas" (1880): "Non Follas novas, ramallo de toxos e silvas sós, hirtas, coma as miñas penas, feras, coma a miña dor."
Watermark: Portrait of Rosalia de Castro.
Dimensions: 130 x 69 mm.
Date of Issue: 23 October 1979 (in circulation from 1983).
Date of withdrawal: 1992.
Printed by Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, Madrid.
Spain Banknotes
1979-1985 Issue
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Spanish Currency - 500 Pesetas
Rosalía de Castro
María Rosalía Rita de Castro (24 February 1837 – 15 July 1885), was a Spanish romanticist writer and poet.
Writing in Gallego, the Galician language, after the period known as the Séculos Escuros (lit. Dark Centuries), she became an important figure of the Galician Romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento ("Renaissance"), along with Manuel Curros Enríquez and Eduardo Pondal. Her poetry is marked by saudade, an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy.
She married Manuel Murguía, a member of the important literary group known as the Royal Galician Academy, historian, journalist and editor of Rosalía's books. The couple had seven children: Alexandra (1859–1937), Aura (1868–1942), twins Gala (1871–1964) and Ovidio (1871–1900), Amara (1873–1921), Adriano (1875–1876) and Valentina (stillborn, 1877). Only two of Rosaía's children married, Aura in 1897 and Gala in 1922; neither they nor their siblings left any children, and thus, today there are no living descendants of Rosalía de Castro and her husband. Their son Ovidio was a promising painter, unfortunately his early death cut his career short.
Rosalía published her first collection of poetry in Galician, Cantares gallegos ("Galician Songs"), on 17 May 1863. This date, 17 May, is now known as the Día das Letras Galegas ("Galician Literature Day"), and commemorates Rosalía's achievement by dedicating, every year, this special day to a different writer, who must also write in the Galician language, since 1963. Día das Letras Galegas is an official holiday in the Autonomous Community of Galicia.
Relative poverty and sadness marked Rosalía's life, inspite of this, she had a strong sense of commitment to the poor and to the defenseless. She was a strong opponent of authoritative abuse or abuse of authority and big defender of women's rights. Rosalia suffered from uterine cancer and died in Padrón, province of A Coruña, Spain, on 15 July, 1885.
She is buried in the Panteón de Galegos Ilustres, a pantheon (mausoleum) in the Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Legacy
Rosalia de Castro is today one of the unquestionable poet laureates of Galicia (Spain). Highly educated, expected to speak and write in Spanish only, she took the bold, unconventional step of writing her early poems in the Galician language. Her defiance earned her the contempt and spite of many that deemed Galician as a Spanish dialect fit "only for the illiterate and the churlish". However, Rosalía's defiant gesture won her the love and admiration of the common folk, who spoke Galician at home or on a daily basis. Schools in Galicia, in Spain, in Russia and in Uruguay, libraries, cultural associations, awards, parks, folklore groups, choirs, compositions of her poems, a Galician traditional morning song adorned with the lyrics of one of her poems, a professional sports team, monuments at home and abroad, a theater, restaurants, a label of white wine, lodgings, a banknote formerly in circulation, a postage stamp, a FS98 Iberia Airbus A340, a sea-rescue plane, a school train and many streets have all taken her name.
International translations
Small Stations Press published Rosalía de Castro's Galician Songs in English, translated by *Erín Moure, in 2013. The Moure translation of de Castro's New Leaves is expected to be published by Small Stations in September, 2016. Edwin Mellen Press also published in 2010 "the most thorough and representative volume of poetry and prose from Rosalia de Castro (1837–1885) ever translated into English." In 2007, Shearsman Books published a paperback of selected poems translated by Michael Smith. In 2004, Louis J. Rodrigues wrote for the literary magazine Babel a translation and analysis of two Rosalian poems, Nasín cando as prantas nasen and Negra Sombra. In 1991, State University of New York Press launched an English anthology edited and translated by Anna-Marie Aldaz, Barbara N. Gantt and Anne C. Bromley. In 1977 Kathleen Kulp-Hill translated several Galician poems as part of her work entitled "Rosalía de Castro"; this book is still available from AllBookstores.com. In 1964 the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a selection of Galician poems translated into English by Charles David Ley; this book may be found in Spanish Rare Books libraries.
In Japan, the first volume of Rosalian poetry was translated in 2009 by Takekazu Asaka which is available from DTP Publishing (Tokyo). In the nineteen-nineties Katsuyo Ohata wrote two articles in the journal, "The Review of Inquiry and Research" at Kansai Gaidai University (Osaka, Japan) on the Galician poet: "El inconsciente creativo de Rosalía de Castro" and "En las orillas del Sar: El mundo íntimo de Rosalía de Castro."
Editoria Crisálida, in 2008, published an anthology of Rosalia's Galician poems in Portuguese, translated by Andityas Soares de Moura. There is a statue in her honor in the Galicia Square in the city of Porto, Portugal, by the sculptor Barata Feyo (September 1954).
In the French-speaking world Folle Avoine in 2003 offered a French anthology of Galician poems translated by Jose-Carlos Gonzalez.
Recognition
The name Rosalía de Castro has been used by several institutions, public spaces and/or parks, and on consumer goods, thus showing the social influence and impact this poet has had on the region. Today, it is possible to find schools and universities named after the writer in the Spanish Autonomous Region of Galicia as well as other parts of Spain. Russia, Venezuela (Teatro Rosalía de Castro) and Uruguay also have places that bear the name of this distinguished poet. Furthermore, there are numerous parks, plazas and streets, cultural associations, prizes granted to people that are intimately linked with the Galician and Spanish languages, libraries, folk groups, choirs, and even a wine with the name Rías Baixas. There is also a plane from the airline Iberia, as well as an aircraft belonging to the Maritime Safety and Rescue Society (Salvamento Marítimo), have been given the name of Rosalía de Castro. Moreover, there are a multitude of monuments, commemorative plaques and sculptures dedicated to her in many parts of the world.
On 23 October 1979, the last of the 500 peseta bills was printed, being that in 1987, this bill was to be substituted by a coin of the same value. The bill had the portrait of Rosalía de Castro displayed on the obverse side, created by Pablo Sampedro Moledo, and on the reverse side was the House/Museum of Rosalía located in Padrón and a few handwritten verses from Rosalía de Castro's work Follas Novas. With the printing of this bill, Rosalía de Castro became, along with Isabella I of Castile, the only female (not allegorical) to be placed on the obverse side of a Spanish bill.
Follas novas
Follas novas (New Leaves) is a collection of poetry by the Galician Rosalía de Castro, published in 1880. It is her second and last collection in the Galician language. The majority of the poems were written during 1869-1870, when the family lived in Simancas, but the collection also includes literary work from the 1870s, part of which had already been published in newspapers. This book is considered one of the fundamental works of Galician literature, which was triggering the Galician Rexurdimento.
The collection consists of five books: Vaguedás, Do íntimo, Varia, Da terra and As viuvas dos vivos e as viuvas dos mortos.
Follas novas is considered to be the highlight of Castro's career. It also represents a transitional phase between her first Galician collection Cantares gallegos (1863) and the radical novel En las orillas del Sar written in Castilian Spanish. In addition to romantic poetry, Follas novas contains social comments about the role of women and Galician emigration for economical reasons. The last book of the collection, As viuvas dos vivos e as viuvas dos mortos (Widows of the living and widows of the dead) is about women whose husbands left the country for economical reasons. In the preface, Castro explains that the publication and distribution of the collection was supported by the Galician community in Cuba.