RIZAL’S LIFE:
MADRID STUDIES AND THE
PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
A. STUDENT LIFE IN MADRID
• On November 3, 1882, Rizal enrolled in the
Universidad Central de Madrid in two courses,
Medicine and Philosophy and Letters.
• Aside from his university studies, he studied
painting and sculpture, took language lessons on
French, German and English in the Academy of
San Carlos, and honed his fencing and shooting
skills in the Hall of Arms Sanz y Carbonell.
STUDENT LIFE IN MADRID
• Rizal led a Spartan life in Madrid. He lived
frugally, managed his time wisely for studying,
attending lectures and going to the operas and
religious fiestas.
• Contrary to other claims, Rizal drank occasionally
but lightly, especially when he was in the
company of friends. His only way of gambling was
the lottery which really became habitual.
MADRID INSPIRATION
• It was during this time that he visited the
home of Don Pablo Ortega y Rey. He was a
former civil governor of Manila. Rizal and
other Filipino Students played parlor games
with his two charming daughters, Pilar and
Consuelo. It was Consuelo who awakened
Rizal’s heart.
MADRID INSPIRATION
• As time passed by, Rizal and Consuelo became intimately
close. And although Eduardo de Lete was also courting
her, Consuelo came to love Rizal. However, with great
will power, Rizal did not allow the romance to grow for
reasons that first, he still loved Leonor and, second, he
was planning to leave Madrid right after his studies.
• In the end, Consuelo chose Lete over Rizal, not because
she came short of her love for the latter, but because he
was just being inconsistent with her.
B. THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
• Between 1872 and 1892, a national
consciousness was growing among the
Filipino émigrés who had settled in Europe.
In the freer atmosphere of Europe, these
émigrés--liberals exiled in 1872 and students
attending European universities--formed the
Propaganda Movement.
B. THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
• Organized for literary and cultural purposes
more than for political ends, the Propagandists,
who included upper-class Filipinos from all the
lowland Christian areas, strove to "awaken the
sleeping intellect of the Spaniard to the needs of
our country" and to create a closer, more equal
association of the islands and the motherland.
B. THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
• Among their specific goals were:
• representation of the Philippines in the Cortes,
or Spanish parliament;
• secularization of the clergy;
• legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality;
• creation of a public school system independent
of the friars;
B. THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT
• abolition of the polo (labor service) and
vandala (forced sale of local products to the
government);
• guarantee of basic freedoms of speech and
association;
• and equal opportunity for Filipinos and
Spanish to enter government service.
JOSE RIZAL, THE PROPAGANDIST
• In 1882, shortly after his arrival in Madrid, Rizal,
joined the Circulo-Hispano-Filipina. This circle
was composed of Filipinos and Spaniards who
believed that reforms be introduced in the
Philippines. Its founder was Juan Atayde.
• Upon the request of the members of the society,
he wrote a poem entitled Mi Piden Versos (They
Asked Me For Verses).
JOSE RIZAL, THE PROPAGANDIST
•His love for books encouraged him to
economize his living expenses and soon,
with great diligence, he was able to
build a fair-sized private library,
consisting mostly of second-hand books
bought from a bookstore owned by a
certain Señor Roses.
JOSE RIZAL, THE PROPAGANDIST
•His collections of numerous books were on
medicine, philosophy, languages, geography
and the arts among others.
•Rizal was deeply affected by Beecher
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Eugene Sue’s
The Wandering Jew. These books aroused his
sympathy for his oppressed people.
ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE
• During the decade that followed, Rizal's career spanned
two worlds:
• Among small communities of Filipino students in Madrid
and other European cities, he became a leader and
eloquent spokesman.
• And in the wider world of European science and
scholarship, particularly in Germany, he formed close
relationships with prominent natural and social
scientists.
ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE
• The new discipline of anthropology was of special
interest to him; he was committed to refuting the
friars' stereotypes of Filipino racial inferiority with
scientific arguments.
• His greatest impact on the development of a Filipino
national consciousness, however, was his publication
of two novels--Noli Me Tangere (Touch me not) in 1886
and El Filibusterismo (The reign of greed) in 1891.
ACTIVITIES IN EUROPE
• Rizal drew on his personal experiences and
depicted the conditions of Spanish rule in
the islands, particularly the abuses of the
friars.
• Although the friars had Rizal's books banned,
they were smuggled into the Philippines and
rapidly gained a wide readership.
OTHER IMPORTANT PROPAGANDISTS
•Graciano Lopez Jaena, a noted orator
and pamphleteer who had left the
islands for Spain in 1880 after the
publication of his satirical short novel,
Fray Botod (Brother Fatso), an
unflattering portrait of a provincial friar.
OTHER IMPORTANT PROPAGANDISTS
•Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, an
Austrian geographer and
ethnologist whom Rizal had met
in Germany;
OTHER IMPORTANT PROPAGANDISTS
•Marcelo del Pilar, a reform-minded lawyer.
•Del Pilar was active in the anti-friar
movement in the islands until obliged to flee
to Spain in 1888, where he became editor of
La Solidaridad and assumed leadership of the
Filipino community in Spain.
RIZAL’S FIRST HOMECOMING
•In 1887 Rizal returned briefly to the
islands, but because of the furor
surrounding the appearance of Noli
Me Tangere the previous year, he
was advised by the governor to
leave.
SECOND TRAVEL ABROAD
•He returned to Europe by way of Japan
and North America to complete his
second novel and an edition of Antonio
de Morga's seventeenth-century work,
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (History
of the Philippine Islands).
SECOND TRAVEL ABROAD
•The latter project stemmed from an
ethnological interest in the cultural
connections between the peoples of the pre-
Spanish Philippines and those of the larger
Malay region (including modern Malaysia and
Indonesia) and the closely related political
objective of encouraging national pride.
SECOND TRAVEL ABROAD
•De Morga provided positive
information about the islands'
early inhabitants, and reliable
accounts of pre-Christian
religion and social customs.
JOSE RIZAL, THE MASON
• Rizal then came into contact with the liberal and
republican elements, majority of them were Masons.
He was easily impressed by the way prominent
Spanish Masons attack the government. In time, his
friends, who were Masons, persuaded him into
Masonry. Thus in 1883, he joined the Masonry, Rizal
naturally ceases going to church and led a life as a
“free thinker”. His first Masonic lodge was “Acacia”.
JOSE RIZAL, THE MASON
• Rizal's prime encounter with Freemasonry
occurred when he was in Spain, where he made
the acquaintance of some liberal and republican
Spaniards who were mostly Masons.
• He admired the way these Masons scrutinized and
criticized the methods of the government and
criticized the haughty friars, a freedom which
could not be practiced in the Philippines.
JOSE RIZAL, THE MASON
• Eventually, in 1883, Rizal joined the Masonic
lodge in Madrid which was called Acacia. His
central motive in joining the society was to
secure the aid of the Freemasons in his battle
against the abusive friars in the Philippines.
Since the friars used the might of Catholicism to
oppress and persecute the country's patriots,
Rizal intended to fight them with Freemasonry.
JOSE RIZAL, THE MASON
•On November 15, 1890, Rizal became
a Master Mason in Lodge Solidaridad
in Madrid.
•Two years later he was awarded
Master Mason in Paris by Le Grand
Orient de France.
MASONIC COMRADES
•Some of his comrades including Graciano
Lopez Jaena, Mariano Ponce, and Marcelo
H. del Pilar, were also active Masons.
•Rizal, on the other hand, was more placid.
His only Masonic writing was entitled
"Science, Virtue and Labor," which he
delivered in 1889.
FILIPINO MASTERS OF THE
ARTS
• It was during this period when two Filipino
masters of the brush won honors at the
National Exposition of the Fine Arts in
Madrid Juan Luna’s canvas “Spoliarium” won
a gold medal (3 won) while Felix Hidalgo’s
“Christian Virgins Exposed to the Populace”
took home a silver medal (12 won).
FILIPINO MASTERS OF THE ARTS
• Rizal, in banquet in honor of the two gave an eloquent
speech that highlighted his poetic genius and refined
sarcasm about the bigotry and blindness of many
Spaniards who could not comprehend the university
genius.
• Rizal declared in the speech called “Brindis” that
talent is not a monopoly of any race or country
because it can be found in anyone and anywhere
around the world.
JOSE RIZAL: A DOCTOR AND A PHILOSOPHER
•He then completed his medicine studies for that year at
the Universidad Central de Madrid on June 21, 1884.
•The next academic year (1884-1885) he studied and
passed all the subjects leading to degree of Doctor of
Medicine.
•Due to the fact, however, that he did not present the
thesis required for graduation, nor paid the
corresponding fees.
JOSE RIZAL: A DOCTOR AND A PHILOSOPHER
•He was not awarded his doctor’s diploma.
Nevertheless, he was given his Licentiate
in Medicine and was entitled to practice.
The only thing he was disqualified from
doing was to teach Medicine in the
university, which was, anyway, not part
his plans.
JOSE RIZAL: A DOCTOR AND A PHILOSOPHER
•On his 24th birthday he was awarded by the
university the degree in Licentiate in Philosophy
and Letters with the rating of excellent.
•Upon completing his studies, he became more
eager to see more of Europe to practice
medicine and to discover more things that would
be beneficial to his people and his native land.
