Agustín Espinosa García (born 1897 in Puerto de la Cruz – died 1939 in Los Realejos) was a surrealist writer, member of the Generation of ’27. He was born in Puerto de la Cruz, but lived in his family home in the neighbourhood of San Agustín in Los Realejos from childhood.
His first poems were published in Castalia magazine while finishing high school in La Laguna. Later, he studied Philosophy and Literature in Madrid and Granada, where he met Federico García Lorca.
In Madrid, he joins the avant-garde movements of that time. When he returned to the Canary Islands after a trip to Bucharest, he started teaching at high schools in Arrecife (Lanzarote), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
He founded the journals La Rosa de los Vientos [The Compass Rose] and the Gaceta de Arte [The Art Gazette] and promoted the dissemination of surrealism and other currents of the avant-garde movements in the Canary Islands. He was one of the signatories of the Manifiesto Surrealista [Surrealism Manifesto] in 1935.
He’s regarded as one of the best exponents of Surrealism in the Canary Islands. His 1934 work Crimen [Crime], whose cover was designed by artist Óscar Domínguez, is considered the peak of surrealist prose. On his travels around Spain and Paris, his insatiable thirst for knowledge and novelties prefigured the acceptance of this movement.
He passed away in 1939, in Los Realejos, at the age of forty-one.
