Work & Activities

NOVELIn 1850, when he was only seventeen years old, he wrote his first novel titled Desde el cielo, which will be published four years later in Madrid. Almost all his stories and novels date from the 50's: La Virgen de la Servilleta (1852), Luisa (1852), Un can-can de mussard (1853), Un Artista (1853), El regalo de boda (1855), Mi madre Antonia (1856), El ángel de la muerte (1857), Don Diego Gelmírez (1859) and La mujer de fuego (1859).HISTORYIn 1856, he published an article about Galician History in the newspaper La Oliva. His interest in Galician history and culture showed very early in his work La primera luz (The first light), which was first published in 1852.From 1860 onwards some new titles would announce his mature work: De las guerras de Galicia en el siglo XV de su verdadero carácter (1861), Diccionario de escritores gallegos (1862), which was left unfinished and Las efemérides de Galicia (1865).The year 1865 was very important for Galician History because the first volume of his work Historia de Galicia was published. The second volume would be published in 1866. In 1878, he took part in the promotion of the fortnightly magazine La Ilustración de Galicia y Asturias. However, it was not very successful.In 1882 he continued with the series of his two greater works writing Estudios sobre la propiedad territorial en Galicia. El foro. Sus orígenes, su historia y sus condiciones. With this work he won a prize at the contest of the Floral Games in Pontevedra and it was published in Madrid that same year. Then he would write Galicia (Barcelona, 1888) and the volumes III (A Coruña, 1888) and IV (A Coruña, 1891) of his work Historia de Galicia. The volume V was left unfinished. Having left Madrid and back again in Galicia, he published Los Precursores in 1885. From this year onwards he collaborated in magazines and newspapers and made some speeches about Galician regionalism. When regionalism started to weaken, Murguía worked again as archivist, scholar and historian. In 1898, he published a book, which was dedicated to archbishop Xelmírez and in 1905 a book dedicated to the Galician troubadours.