Nunez de Arce He was born in Valladolid, Spain, on August 4, 1832. Due to an error in his birth certificate, some historians place this event on September 4 instead of August 4. This disagreement was clarified by the Valladolid historian Narciso Alonso Manuel Cortés.
His father was Don Manuel Núñez, who moved with his family to Toledo; being Gaspar very young he began to work in the post office of that city. His mother was Dona Eladia de Arce. In Toledo, Gaspar he became a voracious reader and spent most of his childhood studying in the cathedral library, under the tutelage of the religious Ramón Fernández de Loaysa.
During adolescence, his parents tried to take him to a diocesan seminary to undertake an ecclesiastical career, but Nunez de Arce He opposed. At seventeen, his first theatrical drama entitled Love and pride He performed in Toledo, was very well received by the public and earned him the status of adopted son of the city.
Shortly after, on August 25, 1850, some fragments of the story The devil and the poet They were published in the Madrid newspaper El Popular. This work, along with Love and Pride, were the first works of Nunez de Arce to be made public.
After refusing to enter the priesthood, he moved to Madrid, where he enrolled in some classes. He began working as editor of the liberal-leaning newspaper El Observador, where he began to sign his articles and chronicles under the pseudonym “El Bachiller Honduras“Later he founded a newspaper titled after his pseudonym.
Between 1859 and 1860 he participated as a reporter in the Africa Campaign, a conflict that pitted Spain against the Sultanate of Morocco. Many of these chronicles were published in the liberal newspaper La Iberia. After this experience, he published Memories of the Africa campaign, a kind of newspaper in which the details of this confrontation are related. In 1860 he joined the Liberal Union party, recently founded by Leopoldo O’Donnell.
After the African campaign, on February 8, 1861, he married Doña Isidora Franco. In the following years he was appointed governor of Logroño and deputy for the province of Valladolid.
In 1865 he was exiled and imprisoned in Cáceres due to his writings against Ramón María Narváez, a radical conservative and later president of the cabinet under the mandate of Queen Elizabeth II.
After completing his exile and due to health problems, he moved with his wife to Barcelona. There he wrote one of his most famous poems, The doubt, signed on April 20, 1868. It was later compiled into the poems Battle cries (1875).
While Nunez de Arce He was still in Barcelona, the September Revolution broke out, in which he participated as secretary of the revolutionary junta of this city. The result of this revolt was the dethronement of Isabel II and the establishment of a provisional government.
After the events of September, he moved to Madrid, where he was commissioned to write the Manifesto for the nation, published in the Gazette of October 26 of the same year. From then on, he was editor and reviewer of the various documents of his party.
In 1871, with the dissolution of the liberal union, he joined the liberal progressive party of Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, to which he belonged until his death. In that party, he held various positions, he was a state councilor between 1871 and 1874; Secretary General of the Presidency in 1872; Minister of Foreign Affairs, Interior and Education in 1883; Senator for life in 1886 and governor of Banco Hipotecario in 1887.
As a writer and academic, he was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of the Language on January 8, 1874 and president of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists between 1882 and 1903.
From 1890 he retired from political activities due to his delicate health conditions. He died at his residence in Madrid on June 9, 1903, due to stomach cancer. His remains were transferred to the Pantheon of illustrious men of the 19th century.