Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui (1907–59) was a poet, journalist, anti-fascist political activist and supporter of the Second Spanish Republic, founding member of the AIAPE (Agrupación de Intelectuales, Artistas, Periodistas y Escritores), and contributor to the magazine Alfar (La Coruña, from 1929), among other cultural and political activities in local circles. His essay, published in Alfar, reveals a close, universalist reading of the work of the poet and essayist Vicente Basso Maglio, La expresión heroica (La Coruña: Biblioteca Alfar, 1928, cover by Rafael Barradas). Ortiz Saralegui contributed to several magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, such as La Pluma, La cruz del Sur, and founded the radio station El espectador (where he worked from 1931 to 1961). He reviews Basso Maglio’s work and studies his creative processes (that are literary, though also philosophical and visual), praising them over the course of history. Saralegui focuses on the pain, the loneliness, and the social risks that are involved in the creative act. That process requires courage and an attitude, described by Basso Maglio as “heroic,” which leads to a spiritual “echo” over time: Plato, Raphael, Mantegna, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Barradas, poets from the “Novecientos” group in Uruguay, critics and thinkers such as Eugenio D’Ors, Walt Whitman, and many others. In his article, Saralegui refers to those key figures of creative thought in order to produce—with no implied challenge or totalizing involvement—examples that range from “local” to “international:” from the predictable gaucho art in Uruguay to an assimilated avant-gardism.