María Zambrano Alarcón was born on 22 April 1904 in Vélez-Málaga, Spain, daughter of Blas José Zambrano García de Carabante, friend and collaborator of Antonio Machado, and Araceli Alarcón Delgado. In 1905, the family moved to Madrid and a year afterwards to Segovia, where her father obtained a job as Spanish Grammar professor. She spent there her teenage years. Zambrano studied under and was influenced by José Ortega y Gasset and went on to teach metaphysics at Madrid University and at the Instituto Cervantes from 1931 to 1936. During the 20s and 30s, she actively campaigned for the establishment of the Spanish Second Republic. However, after Spain became a Republic again, disillusioned with the realities of party politics, she declined the possibility of becoming an MP and refused further participation in party politics. Nevertheless, with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, she openly sided with the Republic and consequently went into exile after its defeat in 1939. After living in France, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Italy, France again and Switzerland, Zambrano finally returned to Madrid in 1984 after the death of Franco.
Recognition
Respected by her peers, she maintained contact with Italian intellectuals as well as her compatriots Rafael Alberti and Jorge Guillén. A slow process of recognition of her work commenced in Spain in 1966 with the publication of J. L. Aranguren's article "Los sueños de María Zambrano" in the important cultural and scientific Revista de Occidente, founded by Ortega y Gasset, a review to which leading contemporary philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl contributed. In 1981 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Communications and Humanities in its first edition, and in 1983 Malaga University named her Doctor honoris causa. In 1988 she became the first woman to be awarded the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. , a film directed by :Es:José Luis García Sánchez|José Luis García Sánchez in 2004, is about her life. In December 2007, when the Madrid-Málaga high-speed rail line was opened, railway company RENFE renamed Málaga railway station María Zambrano. Likewise, the central library of her alma mater, the Complutense University of Madrid was named after her. In 2017 the Segovia City Council unanimously approved to declare her an adopted daughter of the city.
Philosophy
For Zambrano philosophy starts with the divine, with the explanation of the daily things with the gods until someone ask himself: what are things? In this way the philosophical attitude is born. This is one of the two main attitudes: the philosophical and the poetical one. The first emerges when human beings wonder, i.e. because of the ignorance. On the other hand, the poetical one is the answer, the calmness and in which we can find the answers to everything once it is discovered. Her philosophical attitude is conveyed by means of an unusual language and a creative expression of her way of thinking. It determines her literary style and is the basis for what she named her "method".
Politics
In all Zambrano's work there is a political spirit manifested in very different ways in her thinking. Her political action was more direct in the preceding years of the establishment of the Second Republic and, without doubts, in the Civil War. Nonetheless, she refused to take part in any political party and thus rejected a seat in the General Courts offered by Jimenez de Asua. Thus, she opted to go on with her philosophical vocation but did not give up on politics rather decided to do politics from the core of thought itself. She explained in her first book "Horizonte del liberalismo", "politics are done always when it is thought to direct life" and that is precisely what she aspired to achieve by means of her poetic activity, criticism of fascist movements, the discursive reason and rationalism.
