El estudiante de Salamanca

José de Espronceda is an indisputable classic of Spanish poetry. What student does not know the start of his famous Pirate Song: "Con diez cañones por banda / viento en popa a toda vela / no corta el mar sino vuela / un velero bergantín"? But Espronceda is much more: in the opinion of Jaime Gil de Biedma, he would be the writer who introduced modernity in Spanish poetry, who left behind ways and ways of another time (swans and parnassus), and who began with a fast and penetrating style to speak to contemporary men and women in their language and their concerns. "El estudiante de Salamanca" is one of the most important long poems written in the Spanish language: a narrative poem about the attractiveness of evil, starring a young man who is as charismatic as he is unscrupulous in love; a poem Byron wouldn't have minded signing. We also gather in this volume the rest of his "greatest hits": the spirited songs, the powerful hymn to the sun and the poems about the nuances of love and passion. Pieces where pirates, beggars, witches, convicts parade... Anti-heroes and outcasts on whom Spanish poetry had rarely set its sights, now elevated to poetry with a powerful, modern, catchy style.