DAWN OF THOUGHT. INSTITUTIONISM AND EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE

Emilio Prados Such was born in Malaga on March 4, 1899. His early years were spent in the family house built by his maternal grandfather, Miguel Such y Such, a passionate liberal from whom he inherited a love for books that marked his childhood and that of his older brothers, Inés y Miguel. The poet's family moved into an apartment on the central Larios St. His father’s business, a furniture store, occupied the ground floor. Two experiences marked him as a teenager: his studies at the Institute of Malaga (he would always remember the Latin inscriptions carved on the stone shields that decorate the yard), and the long periods he spent in the mountains outside Malaga, recuperating from the lung disease that he suffered. The Mediterranean landscape of this region and his friendship with the shephard Antonio Ríos awakened in him an idea of fulfilment that Prados never forgot.

In 1914, he moved to Madrid to join the newly created Children's Group of the Residencia de Estudiantes on Fortuny St., a boarding school with 25 students. His relationship with Juan Ramón Jiménez, who lived in the school, influenced his early inclination towards poetry, and he began to write in those years. In 1915, the boarding school moved to a new building on the Poplar Hill, next to the buildings for university students of the Residencia, which Prados joined in 1918. There, under the tutelage of José Moreno Villa, he made friends with the group of Federico García Lorca, José Bello, Juan Vicéns, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí. He also had the essential support from his brother Miguel, a student of neuropsychiatry whom the poet owed his early knowledge of Freud's work. In this sense it is important to highlight the pioneering role played by Prados as the introductor of psychoanalytic theories in the circle of the Residencia.  He quickly introduced the world of dreams into his poetry, an element that will be gradually incorporated into the work of some of his mates (Dalí, Moreno Villa, Buñuel, and Lorca, among others).

Prados spent much of 1921 at the Waldsanatorium of Davos-Platz (Switzerland), recovering from the severe lung disease that he suffered. There, he discovered the great names of European literature and strengthened his vocation as a writer. Back in Madrid, he learnt of Blanca Nagel’s engagement to José Maria Hinojosa’s brother. 
She had inspired some of his early poems and his idealized vision of Blanca appeared in his diary as well as in the dedication that opened his book, Tiempo. At that point, his friendship with Lorca became closer. The letters he sent to Federico show a great degree of confidentiality.

In 1922, he traveled to Germany to attend a course in philosophy at the University of Freiburg, an active center of cultural renewal. He made frequent trips to the Black Forest and visited museums and art galleries in major German cities, occasionally accompanied by Manuel Ángeles Ortiz. He also visited Paris, where he met Picasso and came in contact with the Spanish painters of his circle. He wrote about these experiences in Ambos (Malaga, 1923), a journal with which he actively collaborated.