MEXICO CITY – Spanish philosopher Adolfo Sanchez Vazquez, a disciple of Ortega y Gasset, died on Friday at his home in Mexico City, his nephew told Efe. He was 95.

Sanchez passed away quietly and “surrounded by his family,” Juan Adolfo Moreno said, describing the cause of death as respiratory failure due to pneumonia.

Born in the southern city of Algeciras, Sanchez attended the Central University of Madrid, where he became active in the Young Communists organization and a supporter of the Spanish Republic in the 1936-1939 civil war.

The triumph of the Francoist forces in the conflict prompted Sanchez to leave Spain for Mexico, where he was to spend the rest of his life.

Much of Sanchez’s work as a thinker and writer was devoted to an effort to rescue Marxism from dogmatism and Stalinist orthodoxy.

Sanchez was a professor emeritus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the country’s preeminent institution of higher education, and held honorary doctorates from universities in Spain and his adoptive homeland.

Spain awarded him the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise, while Mexico honored Sanchez with the National Prize for History, Social Science and Philosophy. EFE