José Rizal

José Rizal trained as an eye doctor but spent the 1880s writing political reform essays as part of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, arguing for change within Spanish rule. By the early 1890s, amid a land dispute in Calamba, his position hardened toward separation, putting him at odds with fellow reformers. On July 6, 1892, days after founding the secret society La Liga Filipina in Manila, Spanish authorities arrested him for possession of a seditious document and exiled him to Dapitan on Mindanao, where he met Josephine Bracken, who became his common-law wife. After four years, he left for Cuba in August 1896 with permission to serve as a military doctor, but was arrested in Barcelona that October after the Philippine Revolution erupted - a revolt inspired by his novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891). In December 1896, the Spanish colonial government executed him for rebellion, though he had no hand in planning the uprising; he approved its aims, which led eventually to independence.