Curriculum

He entered the Seminary in Mondoñedo when he was thirteen and ten years later, he was ordained as subdeacon on 13th June 1908. On 18th April 1909, Bishop Juan José Solís ordained him as priest together with other colleagues.

Daniel started his activity as a poet when he was still at the Seminary. He dedicated one of his first poems to Juan José Solís y Fernández at the moment he was ordained as bishop of Mondoñedo in 1907.

He was first appointed to Ortigueira in the second decade of the 20th century. In addition to his activity as a priest, he went on writing religious poems that were published in Vallibria, Hoy, As San Lucas and Acción Social de Mondoñedo, in Las Riberas del Eo or La Comarca de Ribadeo, and afterwards in Aurora de Vilalba, La Voz de Ortigueira, la Ilustración Gallega de Vigo and El Compostelano de Santiago.

Jesús Fojo, politician and printer from Ortigueira, offered him the opportunity to compile part of his texts to be published in book format. For the publication of his only book, A fala d'as musas (1936), Daniel asked Benjamín de Arriba y Castro, bishop of Mondoñedo, for permission to evaluate if the text could have some moral prejudice against the Church. The catholic authority said it has nothing against faith and good costumes. The texts also had to overcome the government censorship as they were written in Galician. Despite being the vernacular language in Galicia, Galician language was forbidden at that moment in any public demonstration.

After the preceptive permissions, the book was published at Jesús Fojo’s printing house in Ortigueira on 23rd December 1936 with a prologue by Álvaro Cunqueiro: “Es este libro la obra y el sueño de un hombre natural y escuetamente gallego”, “No es esta obra el anverso delicado de una tela de China. Es una blanca sábana de puro lino, florecida, por la gracia que alcanza el que con ángeles sueña, de las más hermosas flores de Galicia da al que labra la tierra de su lengua”. The cover was painted by Bernardino Vidarte, personal friend of both writers and author of some covers of other books written by Cunqueiro.

The subjects of A fala are common in his whole work and goes on following the poetic line developed by Antonio Noriega Varela. The 26 poems implied a landmark for Galician language because they were published in period in which the transmission of Galician culture could not be developed in its own language or like Carballo Calero explained in Historia da literatura galega contemporánea: "cando as musas galegas deixaron de falar en galego en letras de imprensa".

Some years later, Cunqueiro remembered Daniel Pernas again in his book Xente de aquí e de acolá (1971). He described him in his book making fun of his appetite: “Sabe Deus o que soñaría o reverendo don Daniel Pernas Nieto con axuda deles [lentes], que valencianas brancas, que viños tintos, que troitadas, que festas, naquelas longas e frías noites de inverno, cando acinzan coa xeada as polas núas dos bidueiros!”.

After the publication of A Fala, Fojo went on publishing poems by Pernas Nieto. After the first postwar period, Aquilino Iglesias Alvariño was the first author who published a work in Galician, Cómaros verdes (1947). Otero Pedrayo, Ricardo Carballo Calero, Eduardo Blanco Amor, Álvaro Cunqueiro, Ánxel Fole, Xosé Neira Vilas and Pimentel, among others, also published works in Galician language.

After his stay in Ortigueira, he was appointed to St María de Vilavella parish church in As Pontes and then to Santiago de Baroncelle and Aldixe in Abadín, San Pedro de Fazouro in Foz and Lindín-Argomoso in Mondoñedo.

By José Manuel Suárez Sandomingo