José Rizal (1861–1896)
Born 1861 CE, died 1896 CE.
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered to be a national hero of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement in the 1880s, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain. By the early 1890s, amidst the Calamba land dispute, Rizal grew more separatist in his stance, conflicting with several colleagues in the Propaganda Movement. On July 6, 1892, a few days after establishing the secret society La Liga Filipina within Manila, Rizal was arrested by Spanish authorities for alleged possession of a seditious document, being banished to Dapitan in the island of Mindanao. During his exile, Rizal met Josephine Bracken, an Irish woman who later became his common-law wife. After four years in exile, Rizal left Dapitan for Cuba in August 1896 with the permission of Governor General Ramón Blanco, intending to serve as a doctor in the Spanish territory.
Text from the Wikipedia article José_Rizal, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.