was the most important Spanish philosopher of the twentieth century. In his famous work, The Revolt of the Masses (1930), he expressed, in an almost prophetic way, a cultural pessimism which developed along with the evolution of the 'mass man'. While he gained international renown with this work, he had been considered a foremost thinker and politician for much longer already in Spain. After studying at various Spanish and German universities, Ortega y Gasset was named Professor of Psychology, Logic, and Ethics in Madrid in 1910. He published a great number of cultural, philosophical and political essays in many newspapers and journals, which are still considered a high point in Spanish essay-writing. In 1923, he started the Revista de Occidente, a political and literary journal which was meant to boost Spanish intellectual life by publishing translations of the works of western philosophers like Johan Huizinga, Edmund Husserl and Bertrand Russell. His outspoken republican activism forced Ortega y Gasset to flee Spain at the begining of the Civil War, in 1936. After staying in Argentina and Portugal, he returned to Franco's Spain in 1948. At the head of the Instituto de Humanidades, which he had founded himself, he continued working until his death on his impressive philosophical oeuvre.