Spanish poet, literary critic and translator. Spanish ambassador to Uruguay and Argentina. He was a friend of Federico García Lorca in his Madrid years. Later, as ambassador, they met again in Montevideo, during Lorca’s successful theatrical tour of Uruguay and Argentina with the company of Lola Membrives.
As a theatrical critic he published praiseworthy reviews of works by Federico, with whom he had a close relationship.
Born in Badajoz, he was soon orphaned and had to move to Madrid to study law. He worked as a teacher of art at the School of Arts and Crafts and of French language and literature at the School of Languages. He upheld the ideas of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Teaching Institution) and Krausism, and organized various events and tributes at the Athenaeum in which writers and artists of the time took part. He also frequented the Café Regina tertulia, where he became friends with Manuel Azaña. He began to collaborate in the press and to publish from 1906 onwards. He worked as a literary and art critic and in 1921 he collaborated with Juan Ramón Jiménez in the publication of the magazine Índice. He edited such prestigious publications as Literary Journals, where Federico García Lorca considered the possibility of publishing Suites, with a prolog by Díez-Canedo. In 1931, he reviews Book of Poems in El Sol.
He maintained a close relationship with Federico. He attended the reading of the play The Billy-Club Puppets (together with Eduardo Marquina and Cipriano Rivas Cherif). He attended the premiere of The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife and, as a theater critic, wrote a laudatory review in which he highlighted the influence of puppetry in the Granada-born play and aspects such as his commitment to simple theater and the use of the chorus. Federico would meet him again in Montevideo, where Díez-Canedo was ambassador. He was one of those waiting for him on the dock on January 30 when he disembarked in that city.
In 1935, he joined the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy). During the Civil War he wrote in Hora de España and took part in the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture. In 1938, he went into exile in Mexico, where he collaborated with La Casa de España, the UNAM and other institutions.
He died in Mexico on June 7, 1944.
