Javier Prado “Lameiro”:veterinario y afamado escritor

Resumen

Javier Prado (1874-1492) obtained the veterinarian degree in Santiago de Compostela. He passes the exams for the “Inspectors of Livestock Hygiene, Provinces, Ports and Borders” body at 35 years old, getting the number 43. He is part of the Spanish veterinary golden generation, which is the first promotion of the National Body of Hygiene Inspectors, along with Gordón Ordás, Santos Aran, Cayetano López, Sanz Egaña and Rof Codina among others. He is appointed Provincial Head of the Veterinary Services of Ourense, charge that performs without interruption. His professional role was very prominent and he became an important advocate of the veterinary science. He also was the founding president of the Ourense Official Association of Veterinarians. But it was his written activity that gave him fame and popularity, being known by the name of Prado “Lameiro”. It is important his involvement in the reissue of the mythical newspaper “O Tío Marcos d’a Portela”, where he was the alma mater, developing in his articles the problems of the countryside, livestock genetic improvement, economic losses due to a bad agrarian management, and so on. He was the editor in chief of the “Nós” magazine, which was a firm commitment to the development of a cultured and modern artistic discourse, in direct dialogue with the innovative aesthetic currents that circulated in Europe at that time. He was the author of very successful books of poetry and theatre, his great passion. He was the most acclaimed and requested author at that time. Gordón Ordás himself would praise his most famous work “A Carón lo Lume” with some words that were recorded in history: “Veterinary is much more in need of noble hands of a poet who exalt it, than of calloused hands of blacksmiths who depress it”.