José Hierro

José "Pepe" Hierro, who has died aged 80 of respiratory complications, was one of the last of the golden century of Spain's poets. Though born in Madrid, he lived, from the age of two, in Santander, on the north coast. Too young to fight in the civil war, he was arrested in 1939 for organising help for a group of prisoners, one of whom was his father. He was tortured, and not released until 1944.

Hierro discovered poetry in prison - there was Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti and Luis Cernuda, though his favourite was Gerardo Diego. After his release, he co-founded the poetry review, Proel, although publishing problems forced him, in 1952, to move to Madrid, where he worked in administration at Spanish Radio until retirement in 1987.

The first of his 20 books of poetry, Tierra sin nosotros (Land Without Us), appeared in 1947. Prolific in the 1950s, a decade of socially committed poetry, he was not easily classifiable. "The social poets call me personal; the personal poets call me social," he said. His most obviously social book was Quinta del 42, (Generation Of 1942), of whom he observed, "they carried on their shoulders the sorrow of the war".

Hierro followed an increasingly solitary and personal road, with titles such as Cuanto sé de mí (All I Know About Myself, 1957). By 1964, in his Libro de las alucinaciones (Book Of Hallucinations), he seemed to have reached a lucid and desolate end of the road: "Now nothing matters to me/ not my life nor my poems/ exactly as they do not matter to any of you."

It seemed logical that this book should inaugurate a 27-year poetic silence. Despite his surreal flights of imagination, Hierro fled from the idea of the poet as seer. "I, José Hierro, a man/ just like many others," he wrote, and insisted repeatedly on his ordinariness. Indeed, his critique of social poets was that they might write about the people, but did not reach the people.

During his years of silence, his reputation was consolidated, as critics and readers recognised the originality of his work, in which meticulous documentary realism combined with free-flying images.

Then a late creative burst produced Agenda (1991) and Cuaderno de Nueva York, (New York Notebook, 1998), which brought Hierro popular success. New York Notebook is accessible and apparently simple, but with the resonant after-kick of great poetry. Near-nihilist, defiant and calm in old age, he ends: "After all, all has been nothing/ although one day it was all."

To crown many prizes, in 1998 Hierro won Spain's premier literary award, the Cervantes - though he never allowed prizes to affect him. Despite needing oxygen to breathe, he used his late fame to embark on what he enjoyed: readings and school visits, the last one in Córdoba on December 10.

Tall and broad, with a shaved head and erect bearing, Hierro had a gravelly voice, a direct approach and a serious mien. Yet he was no pedant, and not vain. He played down his own achievements, evading, with laughter and friendliness, the sadness and pain that emerges in his verse. Though elected in 1999 to the Spanish Royal Academy, he never got around to reading the acceptance speech.

He is survived by his wife, Angelines Torres, and their four children.

· José 'Pepe' Hierro del Real, poet, born April 3 1922; died December 21 2002

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