The professor promoted Spanish literature throughout the United States and was awarded the Official Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica.

• On April 1st, Javier Herrero Saura, who was born in Murcia on August 12th, 1926, died in his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. He authored numerous books and studies on Spanish literature and is considered one of the greatest Hispanic scholars of his generation. Herrero was first trained in Spain, in schools of his hometown, and in Mallorca and Madrid, where he established a close friendship with the jurist Elías Díaz.

He lived in Germany (Heidelberg and Bonn) and later in Edinburgh, where he discovered the value of intellectual freedom, the pleasure of open dialogue and the importance of cultural tolerance.

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• Javier Herrero Saura was born in Murcia, Spain on August 12, 1926. On April 1, 2023, at the age of 96, that life came to a close at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, surrounded by his children.

During that near centenarian span, Javier was much beloved as a husband, father, grandfather, professor, colleague and friend. His academic brilliance and enthusiasm in the classroom left generations of students enthralled by the adventures of Don Quijote, the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca and Spanish reactionary ideology, among others. Javier was also awarded numerous distinctions for his life's work, including receipt of La Cruz de La Orden de Isabela Catolica and election as President of the Cervantes Association of America. His greatest academic joy and delight however, he found teaching at the University of Virginia. In 1979 he became the chairman of the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. He would be instrumental, over the next decade, in transforming the department into one of the best in the nation.

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