Antonio Tovar

Antonio Tovar Llorente (Valladolid, 17 May 1911 - Madrid, 13 December 1985) was a Spanish philologist, linguist and historian.

The son of a notary, he grew up in Elorrio (Vizcaya), Morella (Castellón) and Villena (Alicante) where as a child he learned to speak Basque and Valencian. He studied Law at the Universidad María Cristina de El Escorial, History at the University of Valladolid, and Classical Philology in Madrid, Paris and Berlin . He had as teachers, among others Cayetano de Mergelina, Manuel Gómez-Moreno, Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Eduard Schwyzer.

He was president of the University Student Federation (FUE) in Valladolid, a republican-leaning organisation, but in September 1936 after beginning the civil war, he adopted a Falangist attitude influenced by his intimate friend Dionisio Ridruejo, and became one of those responsible for the propaganda of the nationalist government in Burgos, though his disillusionment with the Francisco Franco regime started.

During the Spanish coup of July 1936 he was in Berlin visiting a Hitler Youth camp. He returned to the nationalist zone. During the Spanish Civil War, Ridruejo as National Chief of Propaganda entrusted the radio departament to Tovar and he was made responsible for Radio Nacional de España when it was being broadcast from Salamanca (1938). He also worked with the Falangist newspaper Arriba España in Pamplona, edited by Fermín Yzurdiaga.

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