Leopoldo María Panero (b. 1948, Madrid) is perhaps the greatest living Spanish poet and the most significant one since García Lorca and Aleixandre, yet he has been virtually unknown to the Anglophone literary world. Born to wealth and privilege in Franco's Spain, Panero succumbed to mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction as a young man, and was subjected to electroshock therapy. He voluntarily chose to enter a mental hospital in the Canaary Islands, where he has lived for the last 38 years.