JOSÉ PROTACIO RIZAL MERCADO Y ALONSO REALONDA ( Born on June 19, 1861,Calamba, Laguna, Philippines – Died on December 30,1896, Manila, Philippines), was a patriot, physician and man of letters whose life and literary works were an inspiration to the Philippine nationalist movement.
Rizal was the son of a prosperous landowner and sugar planter of Chinese-Filipino descent on the island of Luzon. His mother, Teodora Alonso, one of the most highly educated women in the Philippines during that era, exerted a powerful influence on his intellectual development.
He was educated at the Ateneo de Manila and at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. In 1882 he went to study medicine and liberal arts at the University ofMadrid in Spain. A brilliant student, he soon became the leader of a small community of Filipino students in Spain. He committed himself to the reform of Spanish rule in the Philippines, though he never advocated independence. In his eyes, the chief enemy of reform was not Spain, which was going through a profound revolution, but the Franciscan, Augustinian and Dominican friars who held the country in political and economic paralysis. 
Rizal continued his medical studies in Paris, France and in Heidelberg, Germany. In 1886, he published his first novel in Spanish, Noli Me Tangere, a passionate exposure of the evils of the friars’ rule, comparable in its effect to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. A sequel in 1891, El Filibusterismo, established his reputation as the leading spokesman of the Philippine reform movement. He annotated an edition in 1890 on Antonio Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, which showed that the native people of the Philippines had a long history before the coming of the Spaniards.
He became the leader of the Propaganda Movement, contributing numerous articles to its newspaper, La Solidaridad, published in Barcelona, Spain. As expressed in the newspaper, Rizal’s political program included: integration of the Philippines as a province of Spain; representation in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament); replacement of the Spanish friars by Filipino priests; freedom of assembly and expression; and, equality of Filipinos and Spaniards before the law.
Against the advice of his parents and friends, Rizal returned to the Philippines in 1892. He found a non-violent reform society in Manila called, La Liga Filipina. He was deported to Dapitan, in the northwest Mindanao island, south of the Philippines. He remained in exile for 4 years, doing scientific research and founding a school and a hospital. In 1896, the Katipunan, a nationalist secret society, launched a revolt against Spain. Although he had no connections with that organization or any part in the insurrection, Rizal was arrested and tried for sedition by the Spanish military. Found guilty, he was publicly executed by a firing squad in Bagumbayan, Manila (now called Rizal Park). His martyrdom convinced Filipinos that there was no alternative but independence from Spain. On the eve of his execution, while confined in Fort Santiago, Rizal wrote Mi Ultimo Adios ("My Last Farewell"), a masterpiece in 19th-century Spanish verse.
