Spanish politician, born in Ferrol on the 31st of July 1854. Coming of a middle-class family with university connections, he graduated (1871) at the university of Madrid and took his doctor’s degree (1872), becoming lecturer on Literature (1873). For a time he entered his father’s engineering works as general secretary and studied railway problems, but continued his literary work, publishing a history of Latin literature in two volumes. He was early attracted to politics, sympathizing first with the Republican and then with the Liberal party. He was elected deputy for Soria in 1881 and his parliamentary ability asserted itself from the first. He became under-secretary for the prime minister’s department under Posada Herrera in 1883, then Minister of Justice (1888) and of Finance (1894–95). He was president of the Chamber in the Moret administration, and became prime minister and chief of the Liberal party in 1910. It was while in office that he was murdered in Madrid on the 12th of November 1912. Canalejas was a remarkably consistent statesman. He believed in the possibility of a monarchy open to a thoroughgoing democratic policy both in economic and in strictly civil and political matters. A sincere Catholic, he was nevertheless a strong anti-clerical, and a champion of the rights of the State against the encroachments of the Church. By his death the Spanish Liberal party lost the only statesman capable of uniting it under one definite programme.
