Novelist and Valencian politician (1867-1928). One of the most read and translated writers in Europe, Japan, and the United States. His most notable works are Arroz y tartana, Flor de mayo, La barraca, and Entre naranjos y cañas y barro, lifelike, raw, and unparalelled testimonies of Valencia at the end of the 19th century. Politically he was a steadfast federal republican, anticlerical, populist, pro-free trade, progressive, and regenerationist. Leader of the masses, he founded blasquismo, a movement that dominated municipal life in Valencia in the first third of the 20th century. In 1908 he renounced his political duties and, after a failed attemped at agricultural colonization in Argentina, he traveled around the world from Europe to America, Paris to Hollywood. As many people said after, his life was his greatest novel.