Dr Jose Protacio Rizal was born in the town of Calamba, Laguna on 19th June 1861.

The second
son and the seventh among the eleven children of Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso.
With his mother as his first teacher, he began his early education at home and continued in Binan,
Laguna. He entered a Jesuit-run Ateneo Municipal de Manila in 1872 and obtained a bachelor's
degree with highest honors in 1876. He studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas but had
to stop because he felt that the Filipino students were being discriminated by their Dominican tutors.
He went to Madrid at Universidad Central de Madrid and in 1885 at the age of 24, he finished his
course in Philosophy and Letters with a grade of "Excellent".
He took graduate studies in Paris, France & Heidelberg, Germany. He also studied painting,
sculpture, he learned to read and write in at least 10 languages.
Rizal was a prolific writer and was anti-violence. He rather fight using his pen than his might. Rizal's
two books "Noli Me Tangere" (Touch Me Not) which he wrote while he was in Berlin, Germany in
1887 and "El Filibusterismo" (The Rebel) in Ghent, Belgiun in 1891 exposed the cruelties of the
Spanish friars in the Philippines, the defects of the Spanish administration and the vices of the
clergy, these books told about the oppression of the Spanish colonial rule. These two books made
Rizal as a marked man to the Spanish friars.
 In 1892 when Rizal returned to the Philippines, he formed La Liga Filipina , a non violent
reform society of patriotic citizen and a forum for Filipinos to express their hopes for reform, to
promote progress through commerce, industry and agriculture and freedom from the
oppressive Spanish colonial administration.
 On July 6, 1892, he was imprisoned in Fort Santiago, on the charge of instigating unrest
against Spain, he was exiled to Dapitan, in northwestern Mindanao. He remained in exile for
four years, while he was in political exile in Dapitan, he practice medicine, he established a
school for boys, promoted community development projects, he applied his knowledge in
engineering by constructing a system of waterworks in order to furnish clean water to the
townspeople. In Dapitan he also met, fell in love and lived with Josephine Bracken.
Books written by Jose Rizal | Source

 In 1896, the Katipunan, a nationalist secret society launched a revolt against the Spaniards,
although Jose Rizal had no connection with the organization, his enemies were able to linked
him with the revolt. To avoid being involved in the move to start a revolution, he asked
Governor Ramon Blanco to send him to Cuba but instead he was brought back to Manila and
jailed for the second time in Fort Santiago.

Rizal Monument at Luneta Park

The Rizal monument was created by a Swiss sculptor named Richard Kissling. The site is guarded 24 hours a
day 7 days a week by ceremonial soldiers known as Kabalyeros de Rizal.

On December 26, 1896, after a trial, Rizal was sentenced to die, he was convicted of rebellion,
sedition, and of forming illegal association. On the eve of his execution while confined in Fort
Santiago, Rizal wrote a poem Mi Ultimo Adios (My Last Farewell) and hid it inside the gas burner
and gave the gas burner to his sister Trinidad and his wife Josephine.
He was executed on December 30, 1896 at the age of 35 by a firing squad at Bagumbayan, now
known as Luneta Park in Manila.
Jose Rizal was a man of many accomplishments - a linguist, a novelist, a poet, a scientist, a doctor,
a painter, an educator, a reformer and a visionary, he left his people his greatest patriotic poem, Mi
Ultimo Adios to serve as an inspiration for the next generations

José Rizal Facts

José Rizal Quotes
José Rizal (1861-1896) was a national hero of the Philippines and the first Asian nationalist. He
expressed the growing national consciousness of many Filipinos who opposed Spanish colonial
tyranny and aspired to attain democratic rights.
José Rizal was born in Calamba, Laguna, on June 19, 1861, to a well-to-do family. He studied at the
Jesuit Ateneo Municipal in Manila and won many literary honors and prizes. He obtained a bachelor
of arts degree with highest honors in 1877. For a time he studied at the University of Santo Tomas,
and in 1882 he left for Spain to enter the Central University of Madrid, where he completed his
medical and humanistic studies.

Gadfly and Propagandist

In Spain, Rizal composed his sociohistorical novel Noli me tangere (1887), which reflected the
sufferings of his countrymen under Spanish feudal despotism and their rebellion. His mother had
been a victim of gross injustice at the hands of a vindictive Spanish official of the guardia
civil. Because Rizal satirized the ruling friar caste and severely criticized the iniquitous social
structure in the Philippines, his book was banned and its readers punished. He replied to his censors
with searing lampoons and diatribes, such as La vision de Fray Rodriguez and Por telefono. Writing
for the Filipino propaganda newspaper La Solidaridad, edited by Filipino intellectuals in Spain, Rizal
fashioned perceptive historical critiques like La indolencia de los Filipinos (The Indolence of the
Filipinos) and Filipinas dentro de cien años (The Philippines a Century Hence) and wrote numerous
polemical pieces in response to current events.
Of decisive importance to the development of Rizal's political thought was the age-old agrarian
trouble in his hometown in 1887-1892. The people of Calamba, including Rizal's family, who were
tenants of an estate owned by the Dominican friars, submitted a "memorial" to the government on
Jan. 8, 1888, listing their complaints and grievances about their exploitation by the religious
corporation. After a long court litigation, the tenants lost their case, and Governor Valeriano Weyler,
the "butcher of Cuba," ordered troops to expel the tenants from their ancestral farms at gunpoint and
burn the houses. Among the victims were Rizal's father and three sisters, who were later deported.
Rizal arrived home on Aug. 5, 1887, but after 6 months he left for Europe in the belief that his
presence in the Philippines was endangering his relatives. The crisis in Calamba together with the
1888 petition of many Filipinos against rampant abuses by the friars registered a collective impact in
Rizal's sequel to his first book, El filibusterismo (1891).
Rizal's primary intention in both books is expressed in a letter to a friend (although this specifically
refers to the first book): "I have endeavored to answer the calumnies which for centuries had been
heaped on us and our country; I have described the social condition, the life, our beliefs, our hopes,
our desires, our grievances, our griefs; I have unmasked hypocrisy which, under the guise of religion,
came to impoverish and to brutalize us… ." In El filibusterismo, Rizal predicted the outbreak of a
mass peasant revolution by showing how the bourgeois individualist hero of both novels, who is the
product of the decadent feudal system, works only for his personal and diabolic interests. Rizal
perceived the internal contradictions of the system as the source of social development concretely
manifested in the class struggle.

Prison and Exile

Anguished at the plight of his family, Rizal rushed to Hong Kong for the purpose of ultimately going
back to Manila. Here he conceived the idea of establishing a Filipino colony in Borneo and drafted
the constitution of the Liga Filipina (Philippine League), a reformist civic association designed to
promote national unity and liberalism. The Liga, founded on July 3, 1892, did not survive, though it
inspired Andres Bonifacio, a Manila worker, to organize the first Filipino revolutionary party, the
Katipunan, which spearheaded the 1896 revolution against Spain. Rizal was arrested and deported to
Dapitan, Mindanao, on July 7, 1892.
For 4 years Rizal remained in exile in Dapitan, where he practiced ophthalmology, built a school and
waterworks, planned town improvements, wrote, and carried out scientific experiments. Then he
successfully petitioned the Spanish government to join the Spanish army in Cuba as a surgeon; but
on his way to Spain to enlist, the Philippine revolution broke out, and Rizal was returned from Spain,
imprisoned, and tried for false charges of treason and complicity with the revolution. His enemies in
the government and Church were operating behind the scenes, and he was convicted. The day before
he was executed he wrote to a friend: "I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. So I am going to die
with a tranquil conscience."
The day of Rizal's execution, Dec. 30, 1896, signifies for many Filipinos the turning point in the long
history of Spanish domination and the rise of a revolutionary people desiring freedom, independence,
and justice. Rizal still continues to inspire the people, especially the peasants, workers, and
intellectuals, by his exemplary selflessness and intense patriotic devotion. His radical humanist
outlook forms part of the ideology of national democracy which Filipino nationalists today consider
the objective of their revolutionary struggle