Luis de los Cobos

Luis de los Cobos Almaraz (Valladolid, 20 April 1927 – Geneva, 16 November 2012) was a Spanish composer. In 1944 he was briefly jailed for taking part in protests against the Francoist government, and after he finished his studies in 1949 he couldn't find a job since he lacked the certificate of adherence to the Spanish State, so he went to exile, settling in Geneva after studying orchestral conducting under Bernardo Molinari in Rome and Eugène Bigot in Paris. Like Xavier Montsalvatge and Manuel Castillo he has been defined as a missing link in the postwar Spanish music, as he was influenced by Shostakovichian modernism while the Spanish scene evolved from nationalism to the Darmstadt avantgarde through his contemporaries of the 1951 Generation. He composed four operas, two symphonies, four concertos and six string quartets.