Curriculum

He moved with his parents, Toribio Laverde González and Asunción Ruiz Puertas, to Nueva, Llanes when he was four. In that village he studied the first letters and Latin with Antonio González. In 1847, he moved to Oviedo and studied Philosophy. Then, he studied Law in Oviedo, Madrid, Valladolid and Salamanca. In 1859 he took his degree in Law and in Philosophy and Arts in Oviedo. Later on he took a doctor’s degree in both subjects. In 1862 competed for several chairs and got one at the Secondary School of Lugo in 1863, then he became director of that centre and filled his office from 1870 to 1873. He also competed for the vacancy of Latin Literature at the Universities of Valladolid and Santiago. He was appointed to both of them but he chose the University of Valladolid and took up his post on 1st October 1873. Then he changed this chair for the one of Spanish General Literature and was elected dean in the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1874, he formed part of the board of examiners that gave his friend Marcelino Fernández Pelayo the extraordinary degree prize. On 18th October 1876 he was appointed to the University of Santiago, where he stayed until his death.

He focused mainly on the literary and philosophical studies and he became known as a prose writer and poet. He was a very good friend of Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo and wrote to him such an amount of letters that a year before Marcelino’s death, he confessed that most of his Works wouldn’t have been created without Laverde’s stimulus. He also wrote letters to other great intellectuals of that time like Juan Valera. In 1865, he published “Gran almanaque de las dos Asturias” and defended the Project of the Cantabrian railway in letters and articles published in El Trabajo, Revista Ovetense and La Abeja Montañesa of Santander, which was criticized in almost all Asturian press.

He got an honourable mention at the Poetry Contest of the Spanish Academy, celebrated in 1865. In 1872, he was nominated as head of administration. He was also a member of the Royal Academies of Language (1864) and History (1868). He defended our philosophical past and influenced Menéndez Pelayo on his first works.