José del Río Pick street

José del Rio Sainz, well known as Pick was a great poet, and he was a sailor and a journalist too. He was born in Santander in 1884 and he died in Madrid in 1964. He has been awarded with the “Fastenrath” by the RAE, which is given to the best Spanish writers.

It is one of the best poets of the twentieth century , this man has great singularity and he did various things, and he was good at all, so as a navigator, as a writer or as a journalist. Some of his “best sellers” as a poet are "Las tres hijas del capitán" or "Aire de la calle." As a journalist he was involved in editing the newspaper “Hidalguía Cantabra” which was the organ of the liberal party. As a navigator in 1917 the leaders of Santander port made him the command of the ship, named "Cantabria", which drove every morning for 20 years. He was also a journalist in the war in Morocco. The strange thing is that their publications were not signed with his name, but he signed with other names such as Pick or even he signed with a silhouette inspired by the statue in his name, which is in Santander. He has also wrote a play and a operetta.       

He is known as a revolutionary in the twenties because he defended that Cantabria belonged to Castilla la Vieja since, as he defended in one of his numerous theses "las afinidades de uso, de costumbre, e incluso de tradición, nos unen a Burgos" this created a revolution at the time, because most of the Cantabrian village disagreed with him. In 1927 he was one of the main journalists of the newspaper "Voice of Cantabria". Pick received a street as a symbol of how good he was as a poetry and as a journalist. He has a nice statue in Santander sculpted in bronze.

By mistake, the law of Cantabria, which establishes the hymn of Cantabria says that José del Rio pick is the author of the hymn. However, this is not so, as the true author of the hymn was Jose del Rio Gatoo.

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