Rubén Darío (1867-1916), the Nicaraguan poet and founder of the literary movement known as Modernismo - somewhat akin to French Symbolisme - died more than a century ago, but his influence on Spanish-language poetry remains immense. Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca, Octavio Paz, César Vallejo, Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges, among many others, acknowledged their debt. Borges declared: 'Darío was an innovator in everything: subject matter, vocabulary, metre, the peculiar magic of certain words ... We can truly call him the Liberator.'

Darío's influence on Hispanic poetry is enormous: he is the conduit into Spanish for the most forward-looking kind of French poetry of his time, his own major influences including Hugo and Verlaine, and his relentless exploration of new metrical possibilities opened up new options for what was an ossified tradition at the time he erupted onto the scene.