At a young age Santayana traveled, with his father, from Spain to the United States to join his mother and half siblings in Boston. Santayana was educated in the U.S. at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University and later became a professor of philosophy at Harvard. He wrote all of his philosophical works in English and the majority of his correspondence in English. His Spanish letters were to relatives in Spain who did not know English.

“He also makes an important statement in this letter regarding his ‘American ness’: although he has always traveled with a Spanish passport and was never legally an American, he says that ‘socially and as a writer, I am an American in practice, and almost all my friends have been Americans.’” (William Holzberger’s “Preface” The Letters of George Santayana, Book 8)