Miguel Hernández: Voice of the People and Social Justice

Miguel Hernández: A Poet of Justice and Social Values

Miguel Hernández (MH), from a humble family background (poet-pastor), held a unified conception of life and emerged as a "romantic" figure who desperately struggled for justice and freedom, defending humanity and social values. Viento del pueblo (1937) and El hombre acecha (1939) are the two most representative works of the poet's social and political life. These works reveal the man-poet and his will to transform society, his consciousness of collective responsibility, and his use of poetry as both a testimony and a denunciation of social injustice. They also express a self marked by a grim view of reality, shaped by the horror of war and the death of his child.

The Social Poetic Movement and Commitment

Miguel Hernández is part of the social poetic movement that emerged in the 1950s. His social poetry, exemplified by Viento del pueblo, El hombre acecha, and Cancionero y romancero de ausencias, demonstrates his ideological commitment to people suffering from a lack of freedom. The poet adopts an attitude of solidarity, and this solidarity becomes Miguel Hernández's greatest poetic theme: poetry born of the people, where the poet is merely a vessel for their feelings. He ultimately becomes the voice of the people in poetry, returning their experiences, transmuted into verse, to the very people they belong to.

Voice of the People and Lyrical Expression

The young poet from Orihuela, open to all kinds of influences, was impressed by Neruda's aesthetics (the innovative "impure poetry" by Pablo Neruda) and developed his own "impure poetry" in works like El rayo que no cesa, Viento del pueblo, and El hombre acecha. The poet transforms his grief, pain, and joy into lyrical material: amorous passion, the pain of incomprehension, the sentence that marks his life... everything exposed without shame, like one unafraid to air his deepest privacy.

Political Awareness and War Poetry

In short, the new generation of poets, with Miguel Hernández at the forefront, began to convey bloody experiences, daily concerns and distress, and broader social concerns. But this lyrical attitude was not simply aesthetically driven; it must be understood as politically motivated. During the difficult years of economic crisis and the troubled atmosphere of the Republic, the writer, who from personal experience knew the hardships of the working poor and the injustices suffered by the "Yuntero children," became acutely aware of his responsibility. Hence, the poet stood in solidarity with the country's sociopolitical reality.

In Viento del pueblo, Miguel Hernández mourns the anonymous dead, including García Lorca; he sings of the "Yuntero child," youth, and peasants... He is a poet who dedicates his vindictive poetry to serving the poor. His poems are war poems in which Miguel Hernández manifests, in flesh and spirit, the tragedy of Spain. He is the "nightingale of misfortunes," singing in a pained voice the desolation of war. He is a poet who emerged from the people, acutely aware of the harsh reality faced by the poor, victims of an unjust social system against which he rose up and took a stand until his death.