The sourced background on José Rizal.

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines.

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered a national hero of the Philippines, although no official proclamation formally declares him as such. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement in the 1880s, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.