n his youth he worked as a teacher and his early poems, which did not pass beyond his friends’ circle, culminated in La Sombra De La Patria. Later, everything he wrote meant a true breakthrough in the world of literature.

His poems: El Misionero, La Inmortal, Jesús and also, why not?, his Milongas Clásicas, are works that place him at the highest level among the poets of the Spanish language. He was a vigorous, personal, complete poet, and either his life or his oeuvre admirably fit with the sobriquet he chose.

During his lifetime he published two books Lamentaciones, in 1906 and Almafuerte y la guerra, de 1914.

He lived in an extreme poverty despite his extraordinary intellectual output. He loved the poor and with them he shared the few things he always had. «He used to hand over his wages and even his clothes and his blankets to the poor... One winter night, when he was teacher at a school in the province of Buenos Aires, in order to sleep he had to wrap himself up with an Argentine flag of the small school; and so he was found the morning after, blue with cold...» (Account by Manuel Gálvez in Caras y Caretas, December 2, 1933, number 1835).

One of the first songs that the Gardel-Razzano duo performed was “A mi madre (Con los amigos)” whose verses belonged to him (See also: The true author of “A mi madre”).

He came to know the members of the duo because he was fond of folk traditions and was friend of the payador (itinerant singer) José Betinotti.

Palacios (Almafuerte) was born in San Justo (province of Buenos Aires) on May 13, 1854 and died in La Plata on February 28, 1917.