Ramón y Cajal, the pioneer neuroanatomist, was one of the earliest Nobel laureates, sharing the 1906 physiology prize with Camillo Golgi at the height of his career. He went on to become something of an elder statesman in his field, overcoming the need, far more onerous then than now, to publish his results in foreign languages, while campaigning to bring Spain, if not to the forefront, than at least into communication with the rest of European science. In this he largely succeeded, though to date he remains the only Spaniard to have received a Nobel science award. One of that select generation whose research careers spanned the emergence of the most crucial modern technologies, he began work in total obscurity in the 1880s but lived to see his discoveries become commonplaces of the textbook, as he in person grew to be a hero of Spanish culture almost unequalled in his time and still remembered with justifiable pride.