GALLEGO, JUAN NICASIO. - Spanish poet, b. at Zamora on 14 Dec. 1777, d. at Madrid on 9 Jan. 1853. He studied the humanities at Salamanca, where he received Holy Orders and came into contact with the group of neoclassical poets at that University.
To this period belong the love poems composed in accordance with the models established by the pastoral school of the time. When the French invasion occurred (1808), G. went to Seville and, after the war, embraced liberalism. His elegies are famous: A la muerte de la Duquesa de Privas, A la memoria de Garcilaso, and, above all, El Dos de Mayo, a stirring exaltation of the uprising against Napoleon. He translated Manzoni’s The Betrothed under the title Las navias.
BIBL.: G.’s Le Obras poéticas were published by the Real Academia Española, Madrid 1854. - Studies: E. González Negro, Elogio de Don Y. N. G., Zamora 1876; M. Núñez de Arenas, Miscelánea romántica, in Boletín Menéndez y Pelayo, 9 (1927), p. 25 ff. Guillermo Díaz-Plaja