Jose Rizal y Alonso

Spanish exiled Philippine reformer and writer José Rizal from 1892 to 1896 for his political novels, later arrested him, and executed him for sedition; his death helped to fuel an insurrection against rule from 1896 to 1898.

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda, a polymath nationalist, most prominently advocated during the colonial era. Poeple consider him the national hero and commemorate the anniversary of his death as a holiday, called Rizal day. His military trial made him a martyr of the revolution.

The seventh of eleven children to a wealthy family in the town, Rizal attended the Ateneo Municipal de Manila, earning a Bachelor of Arts. He enrolled in medicine and philosophy and letters at the University of Santo Tomas and then traveled alone to Madrid, Spain, where he continued his studies at the Universidad Central de Madrid, earning the licentiate in medicine. He attended the University of Paris and earned a second doctorate at the University of Heidelberg. Rizal, a polyglot, conversed at least in ten languages. He was a prolific poet, essayist, diarist, correspondent, and novelist whose most famous works were his two novels, Noli me Tangere and El filibusterismo. These are social commentaries on the Philippines that formed the nucleus of literature that inspired dissent among peaceful reformists and spurred the militancy of armed revolutionaries against the Spanish colonial authorities.

As a political figure, Rizal was the founder of La Liga Filipina, a civic organization that subsequently gave birth to the Katipunan led by Andrés Bonifacio and Emilio Aguinaldo. He was a proponent of institutional reforms by peaceful means rather than by violent revolution. The general consensus among Rizal scholars, however, attributed his martyred death as the catalyst that precipitated the Philippine Revolution.