A day like today: Antonio Machado

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At 4:30 in the morning there was the cry of a child who had just been born. It was Seville of the year 1875, the boy was baptized as Antonio Machado and years later the World would know him as a high-flying poet.

Born in a family of liberal intellectuals, Machado led his life along the wide path of free thought; and when the Spanish civil war broke out, he was found, of course, by the hand of Republican revolutionaries.

But the bloody claws of Franco's fascism were not going to forgive his age or his poet's soul and he had to escape to France, where he died.

Therefore, one of his most beautiful poems, disseminated by his compatriot Joan Manuel Serrat, describes his departure and the farewell of the country that will not be seen again.

And there, on that border between free France and sunken Spain in Franco's night, the poet's voice was heard crying his exile.

A day like today, July 26, 1875, Antonio Machado was being born in his Seviila, from which he remembered an old courtyard lit by a flowering lemon tree.

And he was born for poetry and for freedom. Today we remember: "I walk alone, sad, tired, thoughtful and old."

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