María Rosalía Rita de Castro was born on February 24, 1837, in Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Although her baptismal certificate lists her as the daughter of unknown parents, her mother, María Teresa de la Cruz Castro y Abadía, was a noblewoman but economically deprived, and her father, a priest (José Martínez Viojo). Her godmother, Maria Francisca Martinez, in the service of her mother, was the one who undertook to take care of her so that she would not go to the orphanage. He always showed an inclination for the arts, not only for literature, but also for music, declamation and drawing.
What stood out above all in the work of this writer and poetess was that she wrote both in Castilian and Galician, making this language be reborn, which was called “rexurdimiento”, since Galician literature had disappeared since the Catholic Monarchs.
Galicia, once its independence was achieved, could not, however, recover its culture, which even gave rise to frustrated revolutions such as that of 1846.
At the age of 12 he began to write poems, publishing his first book “La Flor” in 1857.
She married the Galician chronicler Manuel Martínez Murguia, on October 10, 1858, an admirer of her work, with whom she had seven children, the last two of whom died early.
In 1858 he published “Lieders”, in “El álbum del Miño”. A year later he published his first novel, “La hija del mar”. Love disillusionment was the theme of his second novel “Flavio (1861). The three aforementioned works were written in Spanish.
His most important work in the vindication of Galician culture was “Cantares gallegos” published in 1863, where he described his land in Galician language, making a social denunciation of the conditions of exploitation of the harvesters of Castile, who were often forced to emigrate. In these glosses, he described popular customs and recreated typical characters such as bagpipers and beggars.
In 1863 he wrote “To my mother” a book of poems dedicated to his mother, with all the anguish that her death, which occurred in 1862, caused him. In 1866 she wrote “Ruins”, a novel about the lives of three women who find it difficult to adapt to modern life. In 1867 he published a novel of mystery and fantasy: “The Knight in Blue Boots”.
In 1880, while living in Castilian lands, he wrote “Follas novas” in Galician, where he touches on intimate themes with a pessimistic reflection on loneliness and death, denouncing the precarious living conditions of the Galician people. A year later a new short novel was published: “El primer loco” (The First Madman). In 1885 he wrote “En las orillas del Sar”, in Spanish.
Rosalía had a very fragile health, which was aggravated by a uterine cancer, which led to her death at the age of 48. He died in Padrón on July 15, 1885.
