Agustín Millares Carlo Biography

Agustín Millares Carlo

(Las Palmas, 1893-1980) Spanish writer, historian and palaeographer.After studying primary and secondary education in the Canarian city, he graduated in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Madrid.He taught Latin at the Ateneo de Madrid and held the chairs of Paleography at the University of Granada (1922) and Madrid (1926).In 1923 he had returned to Madrid to join the Municipal Archive as a physician; However, after winning the Madrid chair, he devoted himself entirely to teaching and research, with publications that earned him a full membership at the Royal Academy of History.

In the years prior to During the Spanish Civil War, Millares Carlo played a considerable intellectual role: he was the author of prestigious paleography manuals, editor of the Library, Archive and Museum magazine, history scholar, etc.After the war he went into exile, which took place in Mexico and Venezuela.In Mexico he was linked to La Casa de España (later called Colegio de México) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

When he retired in this country in 1959, he traveled to Venezuela, at the invitation of the University of Zulia (Maracaibo).He was Director of the Humanistic Research Center of the University of Zulia, as well as of the Baraltiana, Recensiones and Bulletin of the General Library magazines.

In 1963 he was replaced in his chair at the University of Madrid (now again called Complutense), although he retired just a month after taking possession of it again.After his long stay in Latin America, he returned definitively to Spain in 1975 and collaborated in the Cultural Plan of the Cabildo de las Palmas.His teaching work concluded in the academic year 1978-1989 at the Associated Center of Las Palmas of the National Distance Education University (UNED).

To his credit, Millares Carlo has a large amount of research and publications in the areas of librarianship, archivology, philology, palaeography, editions of classical texts and translations from Greek and Latin into Spanish.He is the author of a fundamental Treaty of Spanish paleography (1929 and following) and of the Essay of a bio-bibliography of natural writers of the Canary Islands (1932), which deserved the National Bibliography Prize of 1929.

Other important works are his anthological manual of Latin Literature (1945), Spanish Literature until the end of the XV century (1950), Bibliographic repertoire of the Mexican archives (1957), Three bibliographic studies (1961), and their Documentary contributions to the history of Madrid (1971).