Spain in the Nineteenth Century: New Essays on Experiences of Culture and Society [1 ed.] 9781526124753, 9781526124746

Citation preview

The essays in this collection present fundamentally important, under-studied topics in nineteenth-century Hispanic Studies and illustrate how Spaniards conceived of and undertook major activities that shaped their lives. Adaptability, paradox and/or logical inconsistency, in varying combinations and emphases, often come to the fore, not just because the essays reveal contradictions in a socio-economic system, but because they are expressions of a human quest for opportunity and survival in a complex and changing world.

Andrew Ginger is Chair of Spanish and Head of School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music at the University of Birmingham Geraldine Lawless is Lecturer in Spanish at Queens University, Belfast

Cover image: Eugenio Lucas Velázquez, Liberty Guiding the Church [La libertad guidando a España] (traditionally identified as The Republic Guiding Spain [La República guiando a España]) © Museo Lázaro Galdeano

Ginger and Lawless (eds)

The book includes contributions from leading scholars from the United States, United Kingdom and Spain. They are not confined to any single area of practice, nor do they share a home in social history, biography or literary criticism, though all of these subjects are included here. The volume will be of significant interest to all those who study modern Spain, and to scholars and students of nineteenth-century cultural studies.

Spain in the nineteenth century

The nineteenth-century Hispanic world had been shattered to its core by wars, civil wars and revolutions at the same time as it confronted a new period of European and North-American expansion and development. This book considers the major, dynamic ways in which people sought to adapt and change, or even simply to continue as they were.

Spain in the nineteenth century New essays on experiences of culture and society

ISBN 978-1-5261-2474-6

Edited by

9 781526 124746 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Andrew Ginger Geraldine Lawless

Spain in the nineteenth century

Series editors: Anna Barton, Andrew Smith Editorial board: David Amigoni, Isobel Armstrong, Philip Holden, Jerome McGann, Joanne Wilkes, Julia M. Wright Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century seeks to make a significant intervention into the critical narratives that dominate conventional and established understandings of nineteenth-century literature. Informed by the latest developments in criticism and theory the series provides a focus for how texts from the long nineteenth century, and more recent adaptations of them, revitalise our knowledge of and engagement with the period. It explores the radical possibilities offered by new methods, unexplored contexts and neglected authors and texts to re-map the literary-cultural landscape of the period and rigorously re-imagine its geographical and historical p ­ arameters. The series includes monographs, edited collections, and scholarly sourcebooks. Already published Creating character: Theories of nature and nurture in Victorian sensation fiction Helena Ifill Richard Marsh, popular fiction and literary culture, 1890–1915: Re-reading the fin de siècle   Victoria Margree, Daniel Orrells and Minna Vuohelainen (eds) Charlotte Brontë: Legacies and afterlives   Amber K. Regis and Deborah Wynne (eds) The Great Exhibition, 1851: A sourcebook   Jonathon Shears (ed.) Interventions: Rethinking the nineteenth century   Andrew Smith and Anna Barton (eds)

Spain in the nineteenth century New essays on experiences of culture and society

Edited by Andrew Ginger and Geraldine Lawless

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 2474 6 hardback First published 2018 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of plates List of contributors

page vi viii

Introduction1 Andrew Ginger and Geraldine Lawless   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12

How (not) to make a durable state Natalia Sobrevilla Perea How to be universal Andrew Ginger How to tell time Geraldine Lawless How to be religious under liberalism Gregorio Alonso How to prescribe a cure for the ills of art Oscar Vázquez How to know about right and wrong Alison Sinclair How to be a man Collin McKinney How to be a writer for the press – and how to write about it Rhian Davies How to be a cultural entrepreneur Henriette Partzsch How to be a man of letters Raquel Sánchez How to be an intellectual Luis G. Martínez del Campo How to live a colonial soldier’s life Catherine Davies

13 38 63 89 109 126 147 174 191 216 233 250

Index270 v

Plates

1 Pablo Picasso, Science and Charity. Barcelona (March–April) 1897. Oil on canvas. 197 × 249.5 cm (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Pablo Picasso, 1970, MPB 110.046, Photo: Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Photograph, Gasull Fotografia) 2 Enrique Simonet, Anatomy of the Heart; And She Had a Heart!, 1890. Oil on canvas. 177 × 291 cm (Museo del Prado [P6440], Permanent loan to the Museo Municipal de Málaga. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado) 3 Enrique Paternina García-Cid, The Mother’s Visit, c.1892. Oil on canvas. 155 × 215 cm. (Museo del Prado [P6035], Permanent loan to the Museo de Bellas Artes, Badajoz. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado) 4 Cesare Ripa, ‘Carita’, Iconologia (1593) (Padua, Pietro Paolo Tozzi, 1611), plate 71. Woodblock, black ink on crème paper. (From the Collections of the University Library, courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois) 5 Pablo Picasso, A Holy Vision – Revelation of the Miraculous Medal, Barcelona, c.1896. Pen and brush, sepia and black ink, and watercolour on laid paper. 31.1 × 24.1 cm (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Gift of Pablo Picasso 1970, MPB 110.667, Photo: Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Photograph, Gasull Fotografia) 6 J[uan] Comba (drawing); [Bernardino?] Rico (engraver). ‘Hospital Installed in the Palace of Fine Arts due to the Prevailing Epidemic.’ Engraving, Ilustración Española y Americana, vol. 34, no. 1 (8 January 1890), 16 (Collections of the University Library, courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois) 7 Pablo Picasso, Sketch for Science and charity. Barcelona, 1897. Oil on canvas on wood base. 23.8 × 26 cm (Museu Picasso, Barcelona, Donación Pablo Picasso 1970, MPB 110.099, Photo: Museu Picasso, Barcelona. Photograph, Gasull Fotografia) vi



List of plates

8 Daniel Huntington. Philosophy and Christian Art, 1868. Oil on canvas, 102.55 × 127.95 cm (Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art [M.69.48], Public Domain, Photograph: Los Angeles County Museum of Art www.lacma.org)

vii

Contributors

Gregorio Alonso is Lecturer in Spanish History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of La nación en capilla: Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España, 1793–1874 (2014). Catherine Davies is Director of the Institute of Modern Languages Research at the University of London. She is the author of Rosalía de Castro no seu tempo (1987), Contemporary Feminist Fiction in Spain (1994), A Place in the Sun: Women Writers in Twentieth-Century Cuba (1997), Spanish Women’s Writing, 1849–1990 (1998) and South American Independence: Gender, Politics, Text (2006, with Hilary Owen and Claire Brewster). Rhian Davies is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield. She is the author of La España Moderna and Regeneración: A Cultural Review in Restoration Spain (1889–1914) (2000) and Galdós y Lázaro: Una breve y fructífera colaboración (1889–91) (2002). Andrew Ginger is Chair of Spanish and Head of School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of Political Revolution and Literary Experiment in the Spanish Romantic Period (1999), Antonio Ros de Olano’s Experiments in Post-Romantic Prose (2000), Painting and the Turn to Cultural Modernity in Spain (2007) and Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (2012). Geraldine Lawless is Lecturer in Spanish at Queens University, Belfast. She is the author of Modernity’s Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-Century Spain (2011). Luis G. Martínez del Campo is Postdoctoral Researcher in Modern History at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is the author of La formación del gentleman español: Las residencias de estudiantes en España, viii



List of contributors

1910–1936 (2012) and Cultural Diplomacy. A Hundred Years of the BritishSpanish Society (2015). Collin McKinney is Associate Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. He is the author of Mapping the Social Body: Urbanization, the Gaze, and the Novels of Galdós (2010). Henriette Partzsch is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow. Henriette Partzsch is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow. Together with Yvette Bürki, she has published Redes de comunicación: Estudios sobre la prensa en el mundo hispanohablante (2016). Raquel Sánchez is Profesora Titular in Modern History at the Complutense University, Madrid. She is the author of Los patronos del libro. Las asociaciones corporativas de editores y libreros, 1900–1936 (2004, with J.A. Martínez Martín y Ana Martínez Rus), Alcalá Galiano y el liberalismo español (2005), Románticos españoles. Protagonistas de una época (2005), La razón libertaria: William Godwin, 1756–1836 (2008), El autor en España, 1900–1936 (2008), La historia imaginada. La Guerra de la Independencia en la literatura española (2008) and La lectura en la España contemporánea (2010, with Ana Martínez Rus). Alison Sinclair is Professor of Modern Spanish Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Deceived Husband (1993), Dislocations of Desire: Gender, Identity, and Strategy in La Regenta (1998), Unamuno, the Unknown, and the Vicissitudes of the Self (2001), Sex and Society in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: Hildegart Rodríguez and the World League for Sexual Reform (2007) and Trafficking Knowledge in Early Twentieth-Century Spain: Centres of Exchange and Cultural Imaginaries (2009). Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is Natalia Sobrevilla Perea is Professor of Latin American History at the University of Kent. She is the author of The Caudillo of the Andes: Andrés de Santa Cruz (2011) and The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian Atlantic World. The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 (2015, with Scott Eastman). Oscar Vázquez is Associate Professor in Art History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Inventing the Art Collection:  Patrons, Markets and the State in Nineteenth-Century Spain (2001) and The End Again: Degeneration and Visual Culture in Modern Spain (2017). ix

••

Introduction

Andrew Ginger and Geraldine Lawless

Over the past quarter of a century, the study of nineteenth-century Hispanic culture and society has undergone two major shifts. The first was a rejection of what the economic historian David Ringrose called ‘the myth of backwardness’: the notion that these cultures and societies were exceptions that trailed behind the wider West.1 Replacing this myth, there has been a concerted effort to show how Hispanic cultures and societies were integral parts and inflections of the development of the modern world. The second trend – particularly prevalent in cultural and literary study – was a critical focus on a core triad of nation, gender and representation. The interrelationship of these three was widely seen as defining the discursive and ideological structures of the hegemonic social systems of ‘modernity’. These two main tendencies in historiography combined in an understanding that the specific way that Hispanic cultures and societies were integral to the West was the manner in which they participated in the discursive and ideological structures of nation, gender and representation through which modern social systems constructed themselves. Jo Labanyi’s great study, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (2000) crystallized this trend.2 These breakthroughs were followed by a sustained expansion of what is studied, and by an equally sustained sophistication of method. There was an impulse to show how such societies related to broader patterns in the West, and this was accompanied by a voracious urge to address perspectives, approaches and theorizations that have proved fruitful in relation to these wider developments. There has been a rediscovered emphasis on imperialism, colonialism, slavery and race as key factors in society and conceptions of nationhood, both in Spain itself and in its dependent territories of the period, especially Cuba and the Philippines.3 Within Iberia, the combination of nation, gender and representation has provided a vehicle through which to understand the fraught dynamism of the relationships between Spain’s several nationalities.4 National narratives on which interpretations of these 1



Spain in the nineteenth century

­ ationalities rest have been queried, a stance encapsulated in the title of n the influential collection of essays Spain Beyond Spain (2005).5 Concerns with gender and related medical-historical approaches have expanded to encompass, inter alia, same-sex relations, hermaphroditism and so-called ‘deviance’.6 Just as there has been a concern to reconnect nineteenth-century Spain to wider developments, so there has been a preoccupation with the ways in which cross-border and global relationships shaped Spanish culture and society. These range from personal and intellectual connections across the Spanish-speaking Atlantic (and beyond), to the translation and re-working of European novels, to new understandings of networks linking so-called peripheral parts of Europe.7 It has become clear that some key ways in which Spanish national culture was debated were in fact forged in overtly transnational contexts.8 On an empirical level, there has been a much more determined and positive focus on the study of literature, ideas and culture of the period before the so-called Glorious Revolution (La Gloriosa) of 1868–74, so often previously taken to be a watershed in terms of quality of thought and artistry. There has been a renewed engagement with radical leftist thought as much as traditionalist visions;9 with startling experiments in literature and art in the first two-thirds of the century from the writers Rosalía de Castro and Antonio Ros de Olano to the painter Eugenio Lucas;10 and with whole genres, whether that might be illustrations in magazines, the nude in art, or popular novels concerned with sex;11 and broad cultural concerns such as the establishment of art collections.12 Though much remains to be done in creating modern editions, numerous important texts have been republished.13 In the world of the visual arts, there has been a re-housing of the nineteenth-century collections of the Prado within the extensions to the main building, as well as new catalogues and exhibitions.14 In re-situating nineteenth-century Spain within the wider West, historians of culture, politics and society have begun to bring out some of the unique features of its inflection of wider developments. Some of these – like bullfighting, or the persistent significance of the Catholic Church and of religious concerns, or the lengthy dependence of this European power on slavery – were, so to speak, hidden in plain sight, but needed to be subject to less mystification and more understanding of the specifics of their historical role on the ground.15 Others – notably the distinctive aesthetic contributions of Spanish artists and writers mentioned here – required new levels of comparativist study in order to be more fully understood. Often, a shift of perspective has been necessary to bring distinctive factors more fully into view. The institution of monarchy proved both central to the destiny of the country’s politics and profoundly compromised by a series of factors, from machinations and antiliberal sentiment at Court, to the accession of Isabel II as a child-queen in 2



Introduction

1833.16 A precocious radicalization and politicization of great swathes of the population extending into rural areas occurred due not least to the persistent, related civil war and violence, which at the same time gave power to military leaders within both the liberal and absolutist camps.17 If Spain was surprisingly radical in political terms, and (as of 1834) persistently parliamentary even as it was often praetorian in its dominant political forms, it was also characterized less by a failed attempt at creating a single national identity, than by a plural, energized dynamic of rival conceptions of nationality.18 At the same time, exile and thus life in other societies and cultures, became a defining experience for many Spanish intellectuals and writers for much of the century as they fled or were expelled from the country’s internal turbulence, often returning at a later date as their individual circumstances changed with the changing times.19 Meanwhile, the legacy of Islamic and Jewish Spain, and of the transoceanic early-modern Hispanic Monarchy complicated Spaniards’ relationship to the Orient (compared, say, to that of the French or the British) and meant that ethnic exclusion and inclusion was often framed in terms of a special racial heterogeneity.20

The focus of this book

The notion of Spain’s relative ‘normality’ within the West has thus become less a point of contention and novel conclusion, and more the starting-point of investigations. And, as research expands, so the growing richness of our understanding of nineteenth-century Spain is stretching beyond the limits of the nation–gender–representation triad. It is becoming important to bring other subjects more directly into view, without losing sight of those established objects of study. The same may be said of methods of research. At times, the nation– gender–representation triad has rested on very specific accounts of ideology, in which the latter is envisaged as the offshoots of a social system that rests on a foundational principle or principles. This has often led to a focus on ideological drives, or, conversely, on resistance to such forces. And, because of the premise that the perpetrators or the victims were unaware of what was driving them or lacked the necessary analytical tools, decisions about what to study risk being directed away from what these people themselves saw as important or significant. There have been some significant countervailing accounts to that trend. Sedgwick has commented on the risk inherent in US critical theory, that ‘where Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud by themselves are taken as constituting a pretty sufficient genealogy for the mainstream of New Historicist, deconstructive, feminist, queer, and psychoanalytic criticism, to apply a hermeneutics of suspicion is […] widely understood as a mandatory injunction rather than a possibility among other possibilities’.21 With more 3



Spain in the nineteenth century

specific reference to Spain, and apropos of cultural studies, Noël Valis in The Culture of Cursilería (2002) explains: In some versions […] a largely uncontested tenet presumes that historical realities can be invariably organized into monolithic blocks of dominant and marginal groups. The ‘dominant elite’ appears motivated purely by power and the desire to exclude the marginal, while the marginal seems uniquely characterized as the non-dominant, that is, as an essential (and often essentialized) lack, whose virtue derives from its nondominance. The result is a reductive impoverishment of our critical and historical understanding.22

Valis grapples with the relationship between long-term developments and (temporal and geographical) local specificities, and also with those grand narratives that tend to tidy away the leftovers and loose ends of lived ­ experience: Either we explain these pieces of varying size as part of the whole, in functionalist terms, so that everything fits the picture and coheres, narratively and otherwise, or, contrary to this organicist model that narrative tends to favor, we declare the existence of contradiction, disjunction and randomness. One recognizes ruptures within the presumed uniformity and homogenous strength of a culture and the role human agency plays in catalyzing the process of rupture.23

In considering Romanticism and its legacy, Valis comes to prize an emphasis on what she calls ‘cultural practice’.24 Within the revived field of biographical study, there has been a related attempt to understand the degree of agency that individuals exert, how they did so, and with what limitations, an approach best exemplified in this field by Isabel Burdiel’s account of Queen Isabel II.25 There is a similar awareness that individuals may be driven, and their lives framed by, concerns other than those of nationality per se, as Fernando Durán has observed of the religious and critically minded José María Blanco White, a leading Spanish exile in Britain.26 This collection of essays provides a strong focus for the exploration and stimulation of substantial new areas of inquiry. The shared concern is with how members of the cultural and intellectual elite in the nineteenth century conceived or undertook major activities that shaped their lives. In that spirit, each chapter title begins with the words ‘How to …’ and the volume looks at how nineteenth-century Spaniards went about specific tasks. The essays are not confined to any single area of practice, nor do they share a home in social history, biography, or literary criticism, though all these things are here. These essays share three things in varying degrees. First, there is an appreciation of the fact that plurality, contradictions and/or inconsistencies are an inevitable part of lived experience. Second, there is a willingness to let this be. And third, there is a reluctance to rationalize in terms of a conspiracy to oppress. The volume looks at how people did things without necessarily framing ques4



Introduction

tions of motive or incentive in terms that would bring the debate back to a master system of gender, racial, ethnographic, or national proportions. We thereby incorporate, but also break the limitations of, the nation– gender–representation paradigm by inviting researchers to range more freely in identifying what mattered to people in nineteenth-century cultures and societies. It is an inevitable reality of this kind of productive, open invitation, that the series of topics studied could be extended to the study of activities other than those we consider here, to a succession of further how tos … In one sense, that is the point: our objective is to broaden further still the scope of scholarship, and not to reduce matters to a closed system. At the same time, within this collection of essays, we present a major series of understudied and fundamentally important topics in nineteenth-century Hispanic Studies. The collection opens with a gaze upon nineteenth-century Spain from the distance of long-term history. From there, we move into the nineteenth century to survey a series of overarching challenges with which the cultural and intellectual elite wrestled, from how to be universal to how to right wrongs. Then we zoom into roles played by particular groups of people (literary figures, intellectuals, men), before finally focusing our eyes upon one individual life. Our concern is with cultural practices and with ways of living within a culture and society. We do not exclude the use of the term cultural practices as referring to the sociological and ideological manifestations of a social system, as may have been habitual in Hispanic cultural studies under the influence of Bourdieu, for example.27 However, we emphasize how people’s ways of conceiving their lives and their corresponding practices, in and of themselves, are fundamental to giving shape to cultures and societies, rather than being expressions of social systems. We are attentive here to something like what Richard Sennett has recently called ‘the craft of experience’, the ‘techniques’ that enable people to make their way through life and to participate.28 We are not concerned here, however, with presenting an ethical ideal. Adaptability, paradox and/or logical inconsistency, in varying combinations and emphases come to the fore in many of the essays, not so much because they reveal contradictions in a socio-economic system, as because they are expressions of a human quest for opportunity and survival in a complex and changing world. The nineteenth-century Hispanic world had been shattered to its core by wars, civil wars and revolutions, at the same time as it confronted a new period of European and North American expansion and development across numerous spheres of life, from the military to international publishing to industry. We explore here some of the major, dynamic ways in which people sought to adapt and change, or even simply to continue as they were. Context in these essays means much more than that certain conditions predominated in a given year or decade or even century, or in a particular place. The term is understood here in a much more rich and variegated way. 5



Spain in the nineteenth century

At times, the word context itself – suggestive as it is of a delineated location in time and place with boundaries about it – is more an obstacle than an aid to comprehension, however much it may be qualified or rendered complex. A patchwork of long-term factors and legacies were crucial and persistent in nineteenth-century Spain. So too – and together – were the wider effects of having governed a global empire over centuries, and a burning desire to integrate Spain and its territories into developments that were shaping the wider world. We begin with the long view of state formation out of which nineteenth-century Spain emerged. The state was struggling still with challenges and attempted solutions first confronted in the medieval and early-modern period. It was as much an orphan of its own system of governance over an area stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific as were its former domains in the Americas (and vice-versa). In this sense, the crises of nineteenth-century Spain were the crises of many centuries and of a vast region of the globe. Throughout the collection we see how long-term cultural and societal trends, stemming from the medieval and early-modern periods, remained significant reference points. This is particularly true of the Catholic Church, and, more broadly, of loyalty to Catholic and Christian belief. It is the case too with notions of chivalry, honour and valour, with long-standing social roles such as that of the man of letters (which appears to outweigh the feminine equivalent, mujer de letras, by over a thousand to one in usage in the nineteenth-century Spanish press),29 and with traditions concerning the genders from bearded men to so-called masculine women (mujeres varoniles). This is not to say that nothing new was afoot. Manifestly, the collapse of the historic system of monarchy was unprecedented, as was Spain’s eclipse by the Great Powers – even by the standards of the previous century. There was an influx from Europe and beyond of innovative ideas, practices and simply – but just as importantly – fashions and forms of gentility. Over time these included the widespread, explicit circulation of notions hostile to the faith. Equally, the older practices and ideas constituted something more, or other than a homogeneous body of traditional doctrine, with definitive dogmatic answers to the problems of humanity and of Spain, and with a common single origin. Much of the longer legacy was one of an ongoing struggle with recurrent problems and objectives, and between contested visions of the Crown or State and Church, as well as of the various component parts of what was called Spain, among many other choices or dilemmas. The legacy of the past was as often as not a ragbag of notions, accumulated over centuries, that was applied or revoked, accepted or rejected, diversely and by turns, as it always had been. The same may be said of the ‘new ideas’ themselves. Neither the ‘old’ nor the ‘new’ need be thought of as categories embodying either philosophical coherence or stemming from a single point in place and time. 6



Introduction

Many members of Spain’s cultural and intellectual elite were alert to, or at the very least vividly expressed, such challenges facing any clear notion of locatedness in a specific place or time. Often, their practices are implicitly suggestive of other ways of imagining the world than those enshrined in the word context, or, at a minimum, reveal the multiplicity and variety of relevant things that might simultaneously be thought to constitute the context. For example, the historic notion of the man of letters segues into that of the intellectual, and this can be understood in terms of interdependent technological, political and literary change. Ideas and practices travelled backward and forward across multiple borders and played out on different types of public stage as and when opportunities presented themselves. Not least through the prestige of women authors, literary networks directly joined Spain to other ‘peripheral’ cultures, as well as supposedly dominant centres like Paris. Some Spanish subjects both in and beyond Spain, openly advocated an altogether different conceptualization of place and time, not merely transnational or transhistorical, but unbounded by narrow notions of locatedness. Writers and artists might, for example, at one and the same time employ a view of history both as cyclical and as continual progress towards a future, slipping between contrasting or complementary visions. Others explicitly sought out ways in which the specificities of a particular location could be bound to all humanity across the centuries. They explored how things of the past or of other places are living realities beyond the confines of any supposed contextualization. In many cases, Spaniards juggled, wrestled with, or just made use of diverse value systems and terms of reference with quite distinct origins. Variegated sets of terminology overlapped in what Spaniards had to say, and in how they conceived their social roles. The trajectory of the artist Pablo Picasso is an exemplary instance of such phenomena. At the turn of the century, and – we might imagine – on course to be foundational for ‘modernism’, Picasso’s work is fraught with pressures emanating from diverse views of life with conflicting provenances. Not least among these, once more, is that ancient institution: the Catholic Church. Arguably, twentieth-century Spanish culture was born less of an embrace of the new per se, than of the multifaceted experiences of place and time bequeathed to it by the nineteenth; and the nineteenth, in turn, took these experiences from across the ages. The siglo diecinueve was much more than of its own time. Such nineteenth-century ways of doing things are suggestive of a further set of how tos with which this collection of essays – like this introductory chapter – deals. Collectively, these might be titled: how to write about nineteenth-century Spain. There are three ways in which the various chapters address that concern; on some occasions, a chapter deals primarily with one of these, on others with a combination of them. The first is to write about the nineteenth century in a fashion that gives breathing space to the multifaceted 7



Spain in the nineteenth century

nature of lived experience and practices, the coexistence of diverse conceptions of time, place and value. Here, style and tone are substance. The second is to set out explicitly a possible way of writing about the nineteenth century. In some instances, this takes the form of a specific overarching approach, such as life-writing, or the tracing of transnational networks of cultural transmission. In others, it takes shape as a series of emergent questions that researchers might ask themselves, for example about how to explore journalistic texts. The third is to find, in nineteenth-century Spanish culture, practices with which we might experiment when writing now: simultaneous expression of multiple temporalities, for example, or a poetics free of contextualization. Ways of being in nineteenth-century Spain are thus living sources for historians far beyond Iberia and well after the year 1900.

Notes

 1 David Ringrose, España, 1700–1900: El mito del fracaso (Madrid: Alianza, 1996).  2 Jo Labanyi, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).  3 For example: Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006); Alda Blanco, Cultura y conciencia imperial en la España del siglo XIX (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2012).  4 For example: Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, Galicia, A Sentimental Nation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013).  5 Brad Epps and Luis Fernández Cifuentes (eds), Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History and National Identity (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005).  6 For example: Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vázquez García, ‘Los invisibles’: A History of Male Homosexuality in Spain, 1850–1940 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007); Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vázquez García, Hermaphroditism, Medical Science and Sexual Identity in Spain, 1850–1960 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009); Akiko Tsuchiya, Marginal Subjects: Gender and Deviance in Fin-de-siècle Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011).  7 For example: Manuel Pérez Ledesma (ed.), Trayectorias transatlánticas (Siglo XIX): Personajes y redes entre España y América (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2013); Elisa Martí-López, Borrowed Words: Translation, Imitation, and The Making of The Nineteenth-Century Novel in Spain (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002); Henriette Partzsch, ‘The Complex Routes of Travelling Texts: Fredrika Bremer’s Reception in Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Transnational Dimension of Literary History’, Comparative Critical Studies 11:2–3 (2014), 281–93.  8 Notably: Carol Tully, Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber (1770–1836): A German Romantic in Spain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008).  9 For example: Andrew Ginger, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012); Florencia Peyrou, El

8



Introduction

republicanismo popular en España, 1840–1843 (Cadiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz, 2002); Derek Flitter, Spanish Romanticism and the Use of History: Ideology and the Historical Imagination (Oxford: Legenda, 2006). 10 For example: Geraldine Lawless, Modernity’s Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Stories (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2011); Andrew Ginger, Painting and the Turn to Cultural Modernity in Spain: The Time of Eugenio Lucas Velázquez (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 2007). 11 For example: Lou Charnon-Deutsch, Hold That Pose: Visual Culture in the Late Nineteenth-Century Spanish Periodical (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 2008); Carlos Reyero, Desvestidas: El cuerpo y la forma real (Madrid: Alianza, 2009); Pura Fernández, Mujer pública y vida privada: Del arte eunuco a la novela lupanaria (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008). 12 Oscar E. Vázquez, Inventing the Art Collection: Patrons, Markets, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). 13 Among many examples: Antonio Ros de Olano, Relatos, ed., Jaume Pont (Barcelona: Crítica, 2008); José Joaquín de Mora, Leyendas españolas, ed. Salvador García Castañeda and Alberto Romero Ferrer (Seville: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2011). 14 These include the monumental catalogue El Siglo XIX en el Prado, ed. José Luis Díez and Javier Barón (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007). 15 For example: Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in The Afternoon: A History of The Spanish Bullfight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Gregorio Alonso, La nación en capilla: Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España (Granada: Editorial Comares, 2014); Lisa Surwillo, Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 16 Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: No se puede reinar inocentemente (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2004). 17 For example: Mark Lawrence, Spain’s First Carlist War, 1833–40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Guy Thomson, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain: Democracy, Association and Revolution, 1854–75 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Thomson uses the phrase ‘precocious politicisation’ (4). 18 Ginger, Liberalismo y romanticismo. 19 For example: Gregorio Alonso and Daniel Muñoz Sempere (eds), Londres y el liberalismo hispánico (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2011); Jean-René Aymes, Españoles en París en la época romántica (Madrid: Alianza, 2008); Henry Kamen, The Disinherited: The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (London: Penguin, 2007). 20 For example: Susan Martín-Márquez, Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008); Cristina Álvarez Millán and Claudia Heide (eds), Pascual de Gayangos: A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Joshua Goode, Impurity of Blood: Defining Race in Spain, 1870–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009); Joan Torres-Pau, Asia en la España del siglo XIX. Literatos, viajeros, intelectuales y diplomáticos ante Oriente (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2013).

9



Spain in the nineteenth century

21 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is About You’, in Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 1–37 (the quotation is from p. 5). 22 Noël Valis, The Culture of Cursilería: Bad Taste, Kitsch, and Class in Modern Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 118. 23 Valis, The Culture of Cursilería, 281. 24 Valis, The Culture of Cursilería, 119. 25 Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: Una biografía (1830–1904) (Madrid: Taurus, 2010). 26 Fernando Durán, José María Blanco White; o, La conciencia errante (Seville: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2005). 27 A particularly influential use of Bourdieu was Paul Julian Smith, The Moderns: Time, Space, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 28 Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (London: Penguin, 2008), 289–90. 29 A ratio of 1577:1 was obtained by a search of the two terms in the digitized copies of Spanish periodicals in the Biblioteca Nacional Hemeroteca Digital. Google Ngrams for 1800–99 on the corpus of texts in Spanish show a similarly vast divide, as happens with parallel terms (such as literato or literata as nouns). On the history of nineteenth-century Spanish struggles over efforts to construct female alternatives to the phrase ‘hombre de letras’, see La mujer de letras o la letraherida: Discursos y representaciones sobre la mujer escritora en el siglo XIX, ed. Pura Fernández and Marie-Linda Ortega (Madrid: CSIC, 2008), 17–32.

References

Alonso, Gregorio, La nación en capilla: Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España (Granada: Editorial Comares, 2014) Alonso, Gregorio, and Daniel Muñoz Sempere (eds), Londres y el liberalismo hispánico (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2011) Álvarez Millán, Cristina, and Claudia Heide (eds), Pascual de Gayangos: A NineteenthCentury Spanish Arabist (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008) Aymes, Jean-René, Españoles en París en la época romántica (Madrid: Alianza, 2008) Blanco, Alda, Cultura y conciencia imperial en la España del siglo XIX (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2012) Barón, Javier, and José Luis Díez (eds), El Siglo XIX en el Prado (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado, 2007) Burdiel, Isabel, Isabel II: No se puede reinar inocentemente (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2004) —, Isabel II: Una biografía (1830–1904) (Madrid: Taurus, 2010) Charnon-Deutsch, Lou, Hold That Pose: Visual Culture in the Late Nineteenth-Century Spanish Periodical (Philadelphia: Penn State University Press, 2008) Cleminson, Richard, and Francisco Vázquez García, Hermaphroditism, Medical Science and Sexual Identity in Spain, 1850–1960 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009) —, ‘Los invisibles’: A History of Male Homosexuality in Spain, 1850–1940 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007)

10



Introduction

Durán, Fernando, José María Blanco White; o, La conciencia errante (Seville: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2005) Epps, Brad, and Luis Fernández Cifuentes (eds), Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History and National Identity (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005) Fernández, Pura, Mujer pública y vida privada: Del arte eunuco a la novela lupanaria (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008) Fernández, Pura, and Marie-Linda Ortega (eds), La mujer de letras o la letraherida: Discursos y representaciones sobre la mujer escritora en el siglo XIX (Madrid: CSIC, 2008) Flitter, Derek, Spanish Romanticism and the Use of History: Ideology and the Historical Imagination (Oxford: Legenda, 2006) Ginger, Andrew, Painting and the Turn to Cultural Modernity in Spain: The Time of Eugenio Lucas Velázquez (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 2007) —, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012) Goode, Joshua, Impurity of Blood: Defining Race in Spain, 1870–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009) Kamen, Henry, The Disinherited: The Exiles Who Created Spanish Culture (London: Penguin, 2007) Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve, ‘Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is About You’, in Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction, ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 1–37 Labanyi, Jo, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Lawless, Geraldine, Modernity’s Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Stories (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2011) Lawrence, Mark, Spain’s First Carlist War, 1833–40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Martí-López, Elisa, Borrowed Words: Translation, Imitation, and The Making of The Nineteenth-Century Novel in Spain (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2002) Martín-Márquez, Susan, Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008) Miguélez-Carballeira, Helena, Galicia, A Sentimental Nation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013) Mora, José Joaquín de, Leyendas españolas, ed. Salvador García Castañeda and Alberto Romero Ferrer (Seville: Fundación José Manuel Lara, 2011) Partzsch, Henriette, ‘The Complex Routes of Travelling Texts: Fredrika Bremer’s Reception in Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Transnational Dimension of Literary History’, Comparative Critical Studies 11:2–3 (2014), 281–93 Pérez Ledesma, Manuel (ed.), Trayectorias transatlánticas (Siglo XIX): Personajes y redes entre España y América (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2013) Peyrou, Florencia, El republicanismo popular en España, 1840–1843 (Cadiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz, 2002); Reyero, Carlos, Desvestidas: El cuerpo y la forma real (Madrid: Alianza, 2009)

11



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Ringrose, David, España, 1700–1900: El mito del fracaso (Madrid: Alianza, 1996) Ros de Olano, Antonio, Relatos, ed. Jaume Pont (Barcelona: Crítica, 2008) Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher, The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006) Shubert, Adrian, Death and Money in The Afternoon: A History of The Spanish Bullfight (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Smith, Paul, Julian The Moderns: Time, Space, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Spanish Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Sennett, Richard, The Craftsman (London: Penguin, 2008) Surwillo, Lisa, Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014) Thomson, Guy, The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain: Democracy, Association and Revolution, 1854–75 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Torres-Pau, Joan, Asia en la España del siglo XIX. Literatos, viajeros, intelectuales y diplomáticos ante Oriente (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2013) Tsuchiya, Akiko, Marginal Subjects: Gender and Deviance in Fin-de-siècle Spain (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011) Tully, Carol, Johann Nikolas Böhl von Faber (1770–1836): A German Romantic in Spain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008) Valis, Noël, The Culture of Cursilería: Bad Taste, Kitsch, and Class in Modern Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002) Vázquez, Oscar E., Inventing the Art Collection: Patrons, Markets, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001)

12

1

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How (not) to make a durable state Natalia Sobrevilla Perea

The great transformations brought by the age of revolution at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth resulted in the final dismemberment of the composite Hispanic Monarchy (monarquía española) and the emergence of over a dozen new states, which embarked on the process of creating nations. This was not only the case as regards the new republics that arose in the Spanish transatlantic possessions from Mexico to Chile but also with respect to Spain, which had to redefine itself and build a nation on the remains of an empire that still included the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines as well as territories in the mainland with important cultural and linguistic differences such as those found in the Basque country, Galicia and Catalonia. The key question was how to build a durable state. The tendency to study Spain and its American possessions severed from each other, as if they had not been part of the same imperial structure, has resulted in two very distinct and fruitful historiographical traditions, one focused on the Iberian peninsula and the other concentrated on Hispanic America. Until recently, however, only a few studies have aimed to bring together their deeply intertwined history. This has been, in no small measure, due to the interest in Atlantic history, as well as the use of new methodologies less encumbered with borders, such as cultural history.1 In the light of such approaches, this chapter paints an overarching picture of the rise and fall of the Hispanic Monarchy on both sides of the Atlantic. By looking at shared elements in the longue durée it hopes to shed light on the institutions that shaped the process of nation-building in the period that followed the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. This vantage point has been chosen because it is only by looking at the way in which the Hispanic Monarchy came into being that it is possible to understand fully what emerged after its downfall and to identify the main problems that continue to mar the nations and states emerging in its wake. In their 2014 article in defence of longue durée, David Armitage and Jo Guildi posit that this 13



Spain in the nineteenth century

perspective ‘allows us to step outside of the confines of national history to ask about the rise of long-term complexes, over many decades, centuries, or even millennia’.2 Jeremy Adelman noted in his 2004 review essay, ‘Latin American Longue Durées’, that Latin Americans have long been enamoured by the longue durée, citing on the one hand Octavio Paz and on the other the great influence of the French School of the Annales in the region.3 Very little has been done, however, to study both sides of the Hispanic Atlantic using this view in spite of the relevance of their shared history. The inspiration for approaching them together does not stem from culturalist explanations that tend to portray the Hispanic world as less developed because of deeply ingrained cultural traits, a view championed by authors as diverse as Richard Morse, Brian Loveman and Claudio Veliz.4 This work draws its inspiration instead from Max Weber’s sociological interpretation of the role played by the Catholic Church in shaping institutions and from what political scientists and economists call path dependence.5 I argue that the way in which the Hispanic Monarchy was constituted by the amalgamation of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, with their histories of expansion and dynastic unions, as well as how the colonial enterprise was carried out resulted in deeply embedded systems of government and governance that created particular idiosyncrasies. The way in which the composite monarchy unravelled from the eighteenth century onwards and the attempts by the new Bourbon monarchs to stem this decline are also considered as they created some of the challenges with which the new states had to grapple in the nineteenth century. By looking at Europe and America I hope to present a richer picture of the differences and similarities that characterized both areas in the national period.

The establishment of the Hispanic Monarchy

The composite Hispanic Monarchy emerged at the end of the fifteenth century with a union of crowns when Isabel of Castile (1474–1504) and Ferdinand of Aragon (1476–1516) married. Driven by a religious zeal that led them to be called the Catholic Monarchs (Reyes Católicos), they defeated the final remnants of the Moors in Granada, expelled the Jews from Spain and embraced the colonial enterprise with the discovery of what was then believed to be a passage to the Indies through the west. Both Aragon and Castile were already composite monarchies.6 In the case of the former, there had been a union of Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and their Mediterranean possessions, while the latter was made up of Castile, León, Toledo and the aggregation of Murcia, Cordoba, Jaén, Seville and Granada, more recently taken from the Moors. Galicia, Asturias and some of the Basque provinces had also pledged their allegiance to the crown of Castile without complete incorporation. Each 14



How (not) to make a durable state

territory maintained their particular institutions through a direct relationship with the monarch, with laws and practices differing by locality.7 Throughout the fifteenth century the Hispanic Monarchy grew, fuelled to a great extent by the wealth of gold and silver that came from the recently acquired transatlantic colonies. The way in which these regions were colonized and administered responded to the knowledge available to the Catholic kings. Most historiography has highlighted the leading role played by the Crown of Castile and the experience gained during the Reconquista. The Queen had personally financed Columbus’ expedition and regarded the lands gained as belonging only to Castile. Practices such as that of naming adelantados, individuals who received royal charter to embark on the project of colonization, and of issuing capitulaciones, orders by which the Crown reserved itself some prerogatives, had been at the centre of the long wars with the Moors. Towns and later cities played an important role in the conquest and settlement of America, just as they had with the Moors. Other institutions, however, such as the viceroyalties established in the cities of Mexico and Lima, to govern the northern and southern American regions in the name of the King, were shaped by Aragonese experience in the Mediterranean.8 The King of Aragon had reigned over his Italian possessions using the vice-regal system since the Duchy of Athens was set up in the fourteenth century.9 This was in part because it was clear that these lands did not belong to the Crown but personally to the King, and because their constitutional system demanded he should have a representative if absent. A viceroy had governed Sicily since 1415, Sardinia since 1417 and after the defeat of the French in 1504 this was also the case of Naples.10 Ferdinand appointed viceroys to represent him in Catalonia in 1479, Galicia in 1486, Navarre in 1512, and Aragon itself in 1517. The only other viceroyalties created in the peninsula after his death were those of Valencia in 1520,11 and Portugal between 1580 and 1640 when dynastic arrangements brought it to the Spanish monarch.12 Although by the early eighteenth century European viceroyalties had disappeared, that of Navarre stubbornly remained in place until 1843.13 The other institution that represented the King was the Audiencia or royal court. This was a Castilian institution, first established in Valladolid in 1371. The Catholic kings started a process of rolling these out, by creating one in Ciudad Real in 1494. This was quickly followed by another created to govern the newly conquered region of Granada in 1505. From then on the creation of these judicial entities gathered speed and they were established at the same time on both sides of the Atlantic, with the setting up of the Audiencias of Seville in 1525, Canarias in 1526, Santo Domingo in 1526 and New Spain (Mexico) in 1527.14 This was a case, therefore, not so much of the imposition of new colonial structures in the Americas, as the development of new systems 15



Spain in the nineteenth century

of government for a range of territories that were acquired at the same time. Recently acquired, Seville and the Canary Islands had to be incorporated into the government of Castile just as much as Santo Domingo or Mexico. In other parts of the Hispanic Monarchy the Real Audiencia took longer to become entrenched. This was the case in Aragon where the collegiate and itinerant vice-chancellery set up between 1319 and 1387 was settled in Zaragoza by 1528. Judicial prerogatives were maintained, particularly those linked to the Generalitat (an administrative region that was initially set up for taxation) in Catalonia and Valencia, which the Habsburg monarchs swore to respect in public ceremonies.15 Even so, an Audiencia was created in Valencia in 1506.16 Much earlier, even before the creation of the one at Ciudad Real, Ferdinand had set up an Audiencia to organize justice in Catalonia in 1493. It is therefore evident that the union of the crowns led to some systematization within the monarchy, even if it was limited to the lower courts of justice. The Habsburgs came to rule Spain after Juana (1504–55), the daughter of Queen Isabel, inherited the throne of Castile upon her mother’s death. Juana’s marriage to Philip of Ghent brought the Low Countries into the realm, and made Flanders central to dynastic aspirations in the fifteenth and sixteen centuries. This process reached its zenith when Charles (1516–56), the grandson of the Catholic kings, took over Castile due to his mother’s incapacity, and, not long after, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Encompassing the Holy Roman territories, as well as large sections of Italy, the Low Countries most of the western Mediterranean islands, all of Iberia, bar Portugal, and the Spanish Americas, this was the largest empire of its time. According to John Elliot, Charles understood it to be an aggregation of parts and scrupulously respected each individual system of government.17 The union in fact did not last long, for Charles divided the realm, giving the German lands and the Holy Roman Empire to his brother Ferdinand and the rest of his possessions to his son Philip (1556–98). This period coincided with the expanded use of the Audiencia. New courts were created in Panama in 1538, Guatemala and Lima in 1543, in Guadalajara (New Galicia) and Santa Fe de Bogotá (New Granada) in 1548, Charcas (Upper Peru) in 1559, Quito in 1563 and Manila in 1583.18 In Europe, new Audiencias were only established outside the mainland, in Las Palmas in 1568, Mallorca in 1571, as well as in Italy, Sardinia in 1564 and Sicily in 1569.19 The Audiencia was key because it mediated the relationship between the King, who was the ultimate arbiter of law, and his people, especially in the places where there was no viceroy to directly represent the monarch in courtly ceremony.20 The other institution central to governance in this extensive collection of territories was the Catholic Church. The Hispanic Monarchy that emerged from the Reconquista was conceived as a Catholic monarchy. The American venture that followed was undertaken with this same religious 16



How (not) to make a durable state

zeal and the conversion of the newly discovered people was seen as a unique opportunity to expand the mission of Christ. In 1494, the Pope himself divided this new world at the Treaty of Tordesillas between the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, so they could enlarge the Catholic family. Catholicism was important not only in the new Atlantic and Pacific possessions where new subjects had to be incorporated in the true faith, but also much closer to home in the Italian, Mediterranean and even Peninsular regions where different languages, customs and practices were commonplace. The Pope had granted different Iberian kingdoms permissions for their missionary work in places like the Canary Islands as early as the fourteenth century. During the Reconquista, the kingdoms gained the right to collect ecclesiastical taxes, which was important to support their enterprise financially.21 Once expansion moved beyond Europe, the Hispanic Monarchy received the right to royal patronage in 1523. This meant that the King of Spain could control every administrative aspect of religion, not just taxation but most crucially who was appointed to ecclesiastical positions.22 This support of the ‘defenders of the true faith’ was understandable in the context of the Counter-Reformation, with Spain deeply involved in bloody campaigns in Flanders and the Netherlands. Catholicism was not just the glue, which brought together a vast and diverse empire, but also one of its main arms for governance. The Church administered faith, through catechism and conversion, and held a monopoly over university-level education. Births, deaths and marriages were recorded in the parish, and ecclesiastical courts had jurisdiction over what today is family law. The newly created Inquisition ensured compliance. The Church also played a crucial role in the economy. Convents and monasteries had throughout the Middle Ages managed vast tracts of land, but in the recently acquired possessions they were at the very vanguard of the colonization process with the establishment of missions and in many cases managing large haciendas and textile-producing proto-factories known as obrajes.23 The King’s deputies in the viceroyalties, the courts of justice and the Catholic Church administered the realm, yet control was not absolute and there was plenty of room for those living in the provinces to manoeuvre. This ancien-régime composite monarchy allowed interest groups to lobby and receive special graces directly from the King. As the head, he united a vast and diverse realm conceived as his body, administered centrally by Councils each dedicated to particular areas of governance. John Elliot has argued that by devolving much of the power to the viceroys and the Audiencias, but limiting these through Councils and requiring everything to be overseen by Madrid, a system of checks and balances was established that drove everyone to paralysis.24 At the height of the Habsburg period in the seventeenth century, all posts from the lowest level of government to the highest were purchased. This 17



Spain in the nineteenth century

made it possible for local elites from Mallorca to Charcas, Sicily to Mexico, and Guatemala to Manila, to exercise their power and govern in name of the King.25 To govern this immense empire the Habsburgs balanced centralization with a high level of devolution.

The unravelling of the Hispanic Monarchy

Steeped in the historical experience of Rome, the Spanish were very aware their empire would eventually unravel.26 The sixteen-century Comunero revolt in Castile, rebellions in Portugal, Sicily, Naples and Catalonia in 1640 and the eighty years of war in the Low Countries highlighted the difficulties in building a cohesive union. Although the Netherlands had been de facto independent from Spain for many years prior to the peace of Westphalia in 1648, this official recognition mattered.27 Historiography has described the seventeenth century as one of decline, but revisionists such as Christopher Storrs have noted that in spite of the important losses in Flanders, Charles II (1665–1700) managed to maintain much of his European possessions in the face of growing threats, in no small measure due to his ability to integrate them successfully while respecting their traditional systems of governance.28 This was a period of great expansion in the Americas as the viceroyalties grew in importance and grandeur at the height of the Baroque era. Exploration continued and new territories were occupied and exploited. Gold and silver mines, as well as sugar, indigo and cacao plantations continued to provide great wealth. The Catholic ethic was central to the endeavour as missions reached into the deepest jungles claiming new souls, and towns of all sizes teemed with convents and monasteries.29 Even though the wars of religion had ended, Catholic zeal still animated Spain’s foreign policy.30 While the Hispanic Monarchy continued to be the most important defender of the faith, the ideas that made the Enlightenment possible developed. Spain remained anchored in the past even as the Age of Discovery fuelled new ways of thinking, and as colonialism, with the terrible blight of slavery, set the engines of capitalism in motion. The death of Charles II without an heir in 1700 jolted Spain back into the centre of European power politics. Concern with the balance of power in Europe and the desire to take territories close to home and have access to extremely lucrative transatlantic trade led two pretenders to pursue war in order to secure the Spanish succession: the grandson of the King of France and the son of the Emperor of Austria.31 In 1701, as the last testament of the last Habsburg prescribed, the Bourbon Duke of Anjou was sworn in Madrid as Felipe V, King of the Spains (Las Españas, in the plural). An alliance was formed between England, the Netherlands and some Germanic states in support of the Austrian candidate, Charles. Two years later Portugal and the Duchy of Savoy joined them and 18



How (not) to make a durable state

in 1704 they won the most important battle of the war at Blenheim. The elites in Castile wanting to remain at the core of the Hispanic Monarchy backed Felipe.32 But the Bourbon grip over the European possessions was shaky, and by 1706 Charles controlled them all from his court in Valencia and Barcelona.33 Andalusia had lost Gibraltar to the British as early as 1702 and was under constant pressure from Portugal.34 In 1707, the pro-Habsburg allies took Menorca.35 On the mainland victory at the battle of Almansa in 1707 ensured Bourbon control of Valencia and allowed the retaking of Aragon.36 Felipe V (1700–1724) abolished all traditional rights in this region as punishment for backing his rival and overhauled the system of government with the decrees known as the Nueva Planta (New basis).37 Even though this confirmed the monarch’s absolute power, the loyalty of Basque and Navarrese provinces was recognized as they retained their traditional rights and fueros (a Spanish legal concept referring to laws, rights and privileges). The long-held Catalan antipathy to the French due to constant border conflicts had led them to support Charles. The latter remained in Barcelona until his proclamation as Austrian emperor in 1711, when he departed for Vienna leaving his wife in charge. The union of Austria and Spain was seen with great suspicion in many quarters in Europe, especially after 1712 when Felipe renounced his right to the French Crown.38 This paved the way to the final peace agreement signed at Utrecht in 1713 where all the Hispanic Monarchy’s European possessions passed to the Austrian Habsburgs, while the Bourbons retained the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands and the overseas territories.39 In spite of this Catalonia, Mallorca and Ibiza remained in open rebellion well into 1715 when they were retaken by force and the decretos de nueva planta implemented.40 The War of the Spanish Succession also played out in colonial outposts where empires met. In the South Atlantic, at the River Plate, the Spanish and Portuguese competed for control of the Colony of Sacramento. In the Caribbean, privateers attempted to take islands and targeted the Spanish and French fleets, in order to capture their precious metals. In North America, expeditions were sent from the Carolines to attack Spanish Florida and the border between New England and the French territories of Quebec was hotly contested.41 The peace of Utrecht showed the degree to which economic considerations had been paramount for the British who gained the right to send one ship per year to the Spanish colonies and a monopoly over their slave trade for 30 years through a contract known as the asiento.42 Once confirmed in power, the Bourbon kings set out to reorganize their reduced yet still enormous empire and focused on the administrative and economic dimensions, which included an overhaul of the tax system. The changes in the peninsula were echoed in the colonies with the complete restructuring of the governance of their oversees possessions with the installing of 19



Spain in the nineteenth century

intendencias, modelled on the French system. In northern South America, the Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, with its capital in Santa Fe de Bogotá, was created. This was first attempted in 1717, but financial difficulties led to its suspension in 1729 and a second and definitive effort was carried out in 1739. The Crown wanted to reassert its power by prohibiting the sale of positions and many in the Americas saw it as a second conquest. The Jesuits, who had been expelled from Portugal, France and their dominions, came under scrutiny as they were thought not to be serving the King directly, because they obeyed the Pope. They were eventually expelled from the Hispanic Monarchy in 1767.43 This had great economic and social impact because of the crucial role they played in missions, haciendas (large farms) and in education. One of the consequences was that American-born Jesuits wrote about their provinces of origin in such as way as to foster local identities.44 In 1776 two major events convulsed the Americas. Best know is the declaration of independence of the thirteen colonies that succeeded in separating from Britain, but more impactful in the Hispanic Monarchy was the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (River Plate).45 This new territory controlled a vast area that had developed in the eighteenth century and had in Buenos Aires the most significant port in the South Atlantic. This was in no small part due to its confrontation with the Portuguese at Sacramento and the growing importance of the silver trade coming from the mines of Potosí. The Cerro Rico had been producing silver for the Hispanic Monarchy since its discovery in the sixteenth century and it articulated all of the economy of the southern Andes. These new administrative structures, however, brought great disruption to the region mainly because they were accompanied by more punitive taxation. Discontent was rife and it led to the Tupac Amaru rebellion in 1780.46 This was the largest uprising seen in the Americas to date with unrest extending over all over the central and southern Andes from its epicentre in Cuzco and lasting for nearly six months. It continued until 1781 in present-day Bolivia and made the great frustration of the indigenous people living in these areas clear, as they clamoured for the King and against bad government. To address this a new Audiencia was created in Cuzco in 1785.47 The King was unimpeachable; the system of government, corrupt. Reform only brought disquiet from the Comunero revolt in New Granada to anti-tax riots in the city of Arequipa.48 Another of the changes was in the development of an armed local militia. In nearly three hundred years the Hispanic Monarchy had not needed a large coercive force in its American possessions, but, since the advent of the Bourbons, local militias were developed to defend the territories from external threats. These together with some veterans who came from the peninsula defeated the uprisings. Local identities were central to these militias and it is telling how they were organized based on regional adscriptions with companies of biscaínos, catalanes, patricios (Basques, 20



How (not) to make a durable state

Catalans and locals) alongside those from the Americas such as the arribeños from Upper Peru. Some companies were structured on caste identities such as Indians, and free Afro-descendants, the Pardos and Morenos.49 By 1789 when the French Revolution and the wars of the Convention erupted, the Hispanic Monarchy was already in some degree of disarray. Initial victory against them in the Pyrenees at Rosellón in 1793 was reversed a year later when the French entered Catalonia, Navarre and some of the Basque provinces. In 1795 the Chief Minister Godoy signed a peace treaty ceding the Spanish part of Hispaniola to the French, whose sugar-producing colony of Saint Domingue occupied the other half. The island had been engulfed in a slave revolt since 1791 and in 1793 British troops were sent from Jamaica, but there had been no success in stemming the rebels inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution.50 In 1801 Toussaint L’Ouverture occupied the whole island and proclaimed a constitution. This success was contemporaneous with the rise of Napoleon in Europe. So, in 1802 Bonaparte sent an ill-fated expedition where most of his men perished. In 1804 Haitian independence was declared. The second nation in the Americas emerged with slaves ousting their masters. This offered a great contrast to the first where a federation based on a Constitution sworn in 1783, joined slave-owning states with those that proclaimed freedom for all.51 The rise of Napoleon had a great impact on the Hispanic Monarchy, even though by 1804 France’s American ventures were all but over with the loss of Saint Domingue and the sale of the Louisiana to the United States. With the defeat of the French navy at Trafalgar in 1805 it became increasingly difficult for the Spanish to traverse the Atlantic and in 1806 and 1807 the British attempted to take over Buenos Aires.52 In 1807, owing to the blockade, Charles IV allowed Napoleonic troops to enter Spain to invade Portugal. As the army took positions not just at the border but also at strategic points throughout the peninsula, public discontent led to a mutiny in the town of Aranjuez in March 1808. Crown prince Ferdinand VII was proclaimed King after the abdication of his father.53 Napoleon then lured the Bourbon royal family to Bayonne and obtained their abdications in favour of his brother Joseph. This was met with serious opposition in some quarters in Spain, unleashing a constitutional crisis of unheard of proportions. The royal abdications at Bayonne were the real turning point for the Hispanic Monarchy, which was abruptly jolted out of the Ancien Régime.54

The constitutional challenges of establishing states

The process that unfolded after the Napoleonic takeover of the peninsula in both Spain and Spanish America heralded great change on both sides of the Atlantic. The royal abdications were unprecedented and differed from 21



Spain in the nineteenth century

­ revious dynastic complications because, had the King died, an heir would p have been crowned, but as the monarch and his possible heirs were all prisoners, this was not an option.55 There was a swift reaction against the invasion particularly in Madrid, Valencia and Zaragoza.56 Napoleon attempted to establish a new constitution in Bayonne, but few representatives attended the discussions. In opposition to the Bonapartists government, eighteen local Juntas (governing committees) were set up claiming to be caretakers in the monarch’s absence, with the one in Seville calling itself the Junta Suprema de España e Indias (Supreme Committee for Spain and the Indies).57 The abdications broke the traditional constitutional arrangements, so, as José Carlos Chiaramonte has persuasively argued, some anti-Bonapartists appealed to old theories of natural law, iusnaturalismo.58 The concept was simple yet revolutionary: as the people had given power to the King, in his absence that power returned to the people. In the Americas, the first reaction was complete support for the Bourbon King through effusive ceremonies.59 Juntas were, nonetheless, established in Montevideo, Chuquisaca and La Paz, as well as in Quito between 1808 and 1809.60 It was no coincidence that these were the cities that had lost most autonomy with the creation of the Viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata. By emulating the Juntas in the peninsula they took an opportunity to claim more autonomy while still declaring their support to the King.61 The Viceroy of Peru disbanded several of these Juntas and took the opportunity to re-establish his influence over territories lost following the Bourbon administrative reforms. More distant Montevideo entered into prolonged conflict with Buenos Aires.62 In 1810 a new string of Juntas sprang up all over the Americas, in Caracas, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Cartagena and Santiago de Chile.63 In September, a revolution erupted in Mexico when Father Miguel Hidalgo took the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe and rallied his congregation against bad government and in defence of the absent King. Meanwhile, in the peninsula, the fighting against the French continued and representatives to a meeting of the Cortes (Parliament) were called to Cadiz, one of the only cities to remain unoccupied and enjoying British military support. The British had also transported the entire Portuguese royal family from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. From there, Queen consort, Infanta Carlota Joaquina, sister of captive King Ferdinand claimed the regency of Portugal, to little effect.64 The Napoleonic invasion catapulted Spain and its American possessions into modernity, as it was no longer possible to follow the established constitutional practices. The French Revolution had changed the way in which legitimacy was conceptualized and, although those in Spain and America claimed they were acting in the name of the monarch and in defence of tradition, they had changed the basis of the governing pact by handing sovereignty to the people who then gave it to the King.65 The elections of representatives 22



How (not) to make a durable state

to the Cadiz Cortes were so revolutionary precisely because they were based on the idea of representation. Deputies were elected by the citizens of the Hispanic Monarchy to represent their locality.66 It was also at this point that the American territories were conceptualized as equal, and not as subordinate colonies of Spain. As elections took some time to organize and representatives had to travel far and wide, the Cortes were initially set up with interim deputies. As the Catholic Church was the only possible institution that could provide logistical support, elections took place at parishes where the records of the people in each locality were held. Political ritual was born within the churchyard, with elections being carried out after the priest preached in mass on the importance of the choices being made.67 In 1812 the Constitution was enacted, intended to govern the whole Hispanic Monarchy; the King was head of state not because of his divine right to govern, but because of the will of the people.68 The Cortes were dominated by the first generation of liberals, the term itself coined at Cadiz. They granted citizenship to all adult men who could trace their origins either in Spain or America. This included the indigenous, but excluded those of African descent, although exceptions were made for those who could prove they were worthy.69 In spite of these liberal measures, the Constitution included a declaration that the Monarchy was Catholic and that the faith would be defended. This has confounded some who imagine this as incompatible with liberalism, but as José María Portillo Valdés has shown, it was logical considering the deeply religious world from which these men came.70 Catholicism continued to be at the centre of identity in the vast crumbling Hispanic Monarchy.71 It was also the basis on which citizenship was built as the first of the three levels of these indirect elections was carried out in the parish overseen by local priests. Constitutions were read out to those who could not read during service.72 Not all the territories in the Americas sent representatives to Cadiz, and in some areas alternative constitutions were put forward. This was the case in Caracas and many provinces of New Granada where new charters emerged at a dizzying pace.73 In the south, Chile and the Río de la Plata were unsure how to react, although they did not engage directly with the Cadiz Cortes and were governed by their local Juntas. But they did not renounce their relationship with the King just yet.74 In the Americas, conflict erupted between those who wanted to maintain their links with the Hispanic Monarchy and those who wished to sever them. In Mexico, this led to the confrontation between Hidalgo and his supporters who, after his death, continued to fight in the jungles on the periphery and even enacted their own constitution in Apatzingan in 1814. In Venezuela, staunch backers of the monarchy allied themselves with some of the poorest sectors of society and began a bloody confrontation that lasted a decade and succeeded in bringing down two attempts to create an independent republic. Lima, with Viceroy Fernando de Abascal at its 23



Spain in the nineteenth century

helm, sent out expeditions from Peru that recaptured Quito, Santiago and the provinces of Upper Peru for the King.75 After Napoleon’s defeat, Ferdinand VII returned to the Spanish throne in 1814. His first action was to abolish the Constitution and disown those who had participated in its passing. Liberals sought refuge in London while many of those demobilized after the conflict in Europe travelled to the Americas, some to fight on the side of the King with the expedition led by Pablo Morillo, and others as volunteers recruited by Bolívar.76 This retrenchment resulted in the declaration of independence by the United Provinces of South America in Tucuman in 1816. It was not clear at that point where the borders of this new entity would be, or how it should be governed, but it did allow for an army to cross the Andes on to Chile and secure independence there in 1818.77 A blockade against the Viceroyalty of Peru was then established by the newly created navy, which was mostly manned by the British. In 1819, Spain negotiated with the United States the sale of Florida and new borders were established in North America.78 Until 1820, even though there was conflict raging and the Río de la Plata had effectively broken free, the Hispanic Monarchy still hoped that there could be a way back. The March 1820 revolution in the peninsula in favour of the Cadiz Constitution made that impossible.79 The King was forced to accept the charter and a liberal regime took over in the peninsula. This had important repercussions in the Americas. In Mexico and Central America, it made the Plan de Iguala possible. This cemented independence from Spain for a Mexican monarchy with an cast-iron guarantee that the Catholic religion would be maintained and defended. The failure to convince a Bourbon prince to take the Crown resulted in the crowning of Agustin de Iturbide, the leader at Iguala, as Emperor of Mexico.80 The monarchical option was explored in Buenos Aires and in Lima, but was discarded and in most of South America, except in Brazil. The Portuguese liberal Cortes had forced the King to return in 1822 and as they attempted to redress the balance of power between Portugal and the American possessions, his son declared Brazil to be an independent empire.81 By then, Colombia had emerged under the stewardship of Simón Bolívar, replacing the Viceroyalty of New Granada with the territories what we know today as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.82 The return of the Cadiz Constitution between 1820 and 1823 brought back popular sovereignty and representation. And while most of the American possessions succeeded in gaining independence, much of southern Peru and present-day Bolivia remained staunchly loyalist. During the triennium, a group of experienced royalist officers kept control of the south central Andes and reintroduced the Cadiz Constitution.83 The liberal revival was short-lived, as an invading army sent by the Holy Alliance, the ‘hundred thousand sons 24



How (not) to make a durable state

of Saint Louis’, came into Spain from France and restored Ferdinand VII as absolute monarch. The division of the Crown supporters in the Andes allowed Bolívar and his armies to defeat with their enemy at Ayacucho after which they signed a Capitulation in 1824. This formal document recognized defeat and ended the more than three centuries of Spanish control over an entire continent. The only territories that remained under the Crown were the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean and the Philippines in the Pacific. Although the Hispanic Monarchy was re-established in the peninsula, it was not really possible to return to the status quo ante and the scene was set for further confrontation in the peninsula. In the Americas, new republics had sprung up, but it took a long time for them to consolidate and the problems that they had to confront were extremely similar to those faced by Spain.

The nineteenth century: The legacy of the longue durée

The half century that followed the Napoleonic invasion was one of instability and saw many parallel developments in Spain and Spanish America, as people on both sides of the Atlantic struggled to find the most appropriate structures for government and wrestled with the legacy of the liberalism of the 1812 Cadiz Constitution. The period between 1820 and 1840 was extremely convulsed. In the Americas, this was because the first attempts at creating states were unsuccessful. In Mexico, the Empire collapsed and confrontations between centralists and federalists ensued.84 Central America abandoned Mexico and attempted a short-lived union as the Provincias Unidas de Centro America (United Provinces of Central America), which gave way to a República Federal de Centro America (Federal Republic of Central America), and lasted until 1838.85 Colombia also proved to be fragile, disintegrating into the states of Venezuela, Nueva Granada and Ecuador in 1830.86 Peru and Bolivia joined in a Confederation between 1836 and 1839, but were unable to flourish against internal opposition and endured attacks from Chile.87 The Provincias Unidas de Sud América (United Provinces of South America) established in Tucumán in 1816 lasted as an official denomination until 1826, even though in reality they were more a collection of provinces than an actual unitary state. The union of the provinces of the former Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata reached its nadir in 1820, and confrontations between those proposing a federation and those who sought centralization dominated politics for the next fifty years.88 Paraguay remained staunchly independent from 1811, and Uruguay was formed as a buffer state between the Empire of Brazil and the Río de la Plata in 1828.89 In Spain, Ferdinand held on to power from 1823 until 1833, but his death brought dynastic strife as his brother Carlos refused to accept the changes to the law of succession that made it possible for his 3-year-old niece to inherit 25



Spain in the nineteenth century

the crown. This resulted in the first Carlist war between 1833 and 1840 that pitted him against his sister-in-law, Queen Regent Maria Cristina.90 Even though the succession was the trigger, other issues fuelled conflict. Carlos had the support of the most reactionary religious factions that wanted to see the reintroduction of the Inquisition, as well as the backing of the traditional Basque and Navarre regions that resented the loss of their traditional rights. Although there were pockets of support for the Carlists all around the Peninsula, their control was greatest in the north, moving from the Basque Provinces, Navarre into Aragon and Catalonia, where the possibility of regaining historic rights provided motivation.91 The army sided in most part with the young Queen and her mother. General Baldomero Espartero, veteran of the Peruvian wars of independence, became ever more powerful due to his success in battle, and in his role in ending the first Carlist war.92 So, when the Queen Regent ran foul of her liberal backers and was forced into exile in 1840, the Cortes elected Espartero as regent. His heavy-handed tactics led the progressive-wing of the liberals to abandon him, and after the bombardment of Barcelona, the uprising of General Juan Prim led to his downfall in 1843. At 13 years old, Queen Isabel II was declared old enough to take care of government and took charge, although her liberal ministers did most of the work. The next crisis exploded when she did not marry the son of her uncle Carlos, but chose a different cousin. This triggered the second Carlist war, which she fought against her cousin Carlos, and was characterized by guerrilla upheaval in Catalonia. It lasted from 1846 until 1849.93 The difficulties faced by the new republics in the former Spanish possessions in the Americas mirrored the ones found in Spain after the Napoleonic invasion. All the territories had experienced prolonged war, with guerrilla mobilization and irregular forces. Regions and local powers became stronger as they were forced to exercise power and survive with little support from the centre. It was therefore very difficult to control vast areas lacking communication infrastructure where local powers had gained power and had armed backers. This dynamic was present in every single case as the new states, including the one created in Spain, struggled to impose a legitimate monopoly of violence. Armies were created from militias and the military emerged as the most important institution in all these territories as they reaped the benefits of becoming indispensable in times of war. The issue of legitimacy was at the centre of the problem of creating new states. After the Napoleonic invasion the basis upon which monarchs governed was shaken. In the peninsula, it was possible to return to the monarchy, whereas in America republican solutions had to be found. In both cases it was nevertheless required to invoke a legitimate origin of power, which in most cases was a constitution. The Cadiz 1812 document was central in all 26



How (not) to make a durable state

the attempts at creating new polities, even in the places where it was never implemented because it served as a blueprint for imagining a new political organization.94 The efforts to come to terms with the relationship with the Catholic Church consumed all of the new independent republics that tried to renegotiate their relationship with the Vatican, as they considered they had inherited the rights of kings to name their own ecclesiastical authorities. Each new state dealt with the Church in different ways, but the way in which this relationship was conceptualized by liberals and conservatives set the tone for many of the conflicts that characterized the nineteenth century in Spain and Spanish America. All of the states that emerged from the Hispanic Monarchy remain to this day staunchly Catholic, even though they have established different types of relationships with the Vatican. Although some are less religious than others, and during the nineteenth century the battles for freedom of religion were fought and mostly won, Catholicism is still part of the cultural fabric of all these nations.95 The civil wars that plagued both the newly independent republics in Spanish America, as well as Spain had a common origin in the long history of the Hispanic Monarchy. The questions over legitimacy that emerged from the monarchical crisis of 1808 and pitted regions against each other, were not just due to short-term junctures, but had brewed over an extensive period of time. These confrontations began with the way in which territories were organized and administered from the sixteenth century onwards. The territorial jurisdiction of the Audiencias, it has been noted, map onto those of most of the new nations in Spanish America,96 just as is the case with the modern Autonomous Communities (comunidades autónomas) in Spain. If we consider that these judicial-administrative spaces were the cornerstone of the Hispanic Monarchy’s administrative structure, it is clear that this is no coincidence, as, in spite of great changes over time, the Audiencia was extremely important in the administration of regions that then developed a sense of identity. It is not that things have not changed in the past five hundred years – far from it. It is more that the efforts made to reduce the differences between these territories were not made until the eighteenth century, and even then they were not very successful. Local administration was very important in such a large polity and as such it became the centre for the new polities that formed with the fall of the Monarchy. Deeper cultural traits were, nevertheless, shared. This is why, when studied side by side, the nineteenth-century histories of Spain and Spanish America show that political instability, the importance of the Church and the military were all at the centre of their difficulties consolidating as nation states in the nineteenth century. The long-term efforts to make a durable state had ultimately unravelled. The long-term problem of how to make a durable state remained. 27



Spain in the nineteenth century

Notes

 1 All translations are mine or by the editors. One of the most interesting attempts is the one by Jen-Fréderic Schaub in his essay, ‘Hacia una historiografía eurocolonial. América portuguesa y monarquía hispánica’, in El gobierno de un mundo. Virreintos y audiencias en la América Hispánica, ed. Feliciano Barrios (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2004), 1053–75.  2 David Armitage and Jo Guildi, ‘The Return of the Longue Durée: An AngloAmerican Perspective’, Annales. Histoire. Sciences Sociales 69:4 (2014), 4.  3 Jeremy Adelman, ‘Latin American Longues Durées’, Latin American Research Review 39:1 (2004), 223–7.  4 Richard M. Morse wrote widely on Latin American culture, from his first essays in the 1950s, to one of his most complete works New World Soundings: Culture and Ideology in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989). Brian Loveman has many books that present this argument, but one of the ones to do so most forcefully is The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in Spanish America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994). Claudio Veliz has also written widely on this, but The Centralist Tradition in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) remains a classic.  5 Paul Pierson presents a very up-to-date discussion of path dependence and its role in contemporary social science in Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). See especially chapter 1 ‘Positive Feedback and Path Dependence’.  6 John H. Elliot developed the concept of the composite monarchy in several of his works, but one of his first formulations was in Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (London: Penguin, 1963).  7 For more on this see A.A. Thompson, ‘Castile, Spain and the Monarchy: The Political Community from The Patria Natural to Patria Nacional ’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. Richard Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 125–59 (see especially p. 136).  8 On the creation of systems of governance in America see Barrios, El gobierno de un mundo. See in particular the essay by Carlos Garriga, ‘Las audiencias: Justicia y gobierno de las Indias’, 711–94.  9 On the Catalan Aragonese experience see Elliot, Imperial Spain, 30–45. 10 Fernando Ciaramitaro, ‘Virrey, gobierno virreinal y absolutismo: El caso de la Nueva España y el Reino de Sicilia’, Studia Historica. Historia Moderna 30 (2008), 235–71. 11 The position of viceroy was occupied between 1523 and 1538 by Germana de Foix, who had married Ferdinand after the death of Isabel in 1505 at the age of 18 and later had a daughter with her step-grandson Emperor Charles I. See Rosa Elena Ríos Lloret, ‘Doña Germana de Foix’, in Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina, ed. Isabel Morant, vol. 1: De la Prehistoria a la Edad Media, ed. Asunción Lavrin and María Angeles Querol Fernández (Madrid: Cátedra, 2005), 615–34.

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12 For more details see John Elliot, Spain and Its Worlds 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 13 Navarre was a late addition to Ferdinand’s territories, only acquired in 1512. This fact, and its closeness to France, might explain the strength of this constitutional agreement. See Elliot, Imperial Spain, 140–47. 14 Tomás Polanco Alcántara, Las reales audiencias en las provincias americanas de España (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992). 15 Xavier Gil argues that although Aragon did ultimately lose some of its rights it managed to maintain most of them because it worked within the composite monarchy. See ‘Aragonese Constitutionalism and Habsburg Rule: The Varying Meanings of Liberty’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, ed. Kagan and Parker, 160–87. 16 James Casey, ‘De reino a provincia: De la Valencia foral a la absolutista’ (1609–1707)’, in Historia del pueblo valenciano, ed. Manuel Cerdá (Valencia: Levante, 1988), 453–72. 17 Elliot, Imperial Spain, 166–73. 18 Polanco Alcántara, Las reales audiencias en las provincias americanas. 19 Antonio Planas Roselló, La Real Audiencia de Mallorca en la época de los Austrias (1571–1715) (Barcelona: Universidad Pompeu Fabra, 2010). 20 Alejandra B. Osorio has written on these Baroque ceremonies and the performance of power. See, Inventing Lima: Baroque’s Modernity in Peru’s South Sea Metropolis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 21 Elliot, Spain and Its Worlds, 13–14. 22 For more on this see David A. Brading, ‘La monarquía católica’, in Inventando la nación. Iberoamérica siglo XIX, ed. Antonio Annino and François-Xavier Guerra (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003), 15–46. 23 Brading, ‘La monarquía católica’. 24 Elliot, Imperial Spain, 118–19. 25 For a classic study of this see Mark Burkholder, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977). 26 Elliot, Spain and Its Worlds, 115. 27 For more on this see Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1988). 28 Christopher Storrs, The Resilience of The Spanish Monarchy, 1665–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). See especially chapter 5, ‘Centre and Periphery in the Spanish Monarchy’. 29 Kathryn Burns has developed the idea of the ‘spiritual economy’ to describe the important role religious organisations played in colonial society. See Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). 30 On this see Christopher Storrs, ‘The Role of Religion in Spanish Foreign Policy in the reign of Carlos II (1665–1700)’, in War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713, ed. David Onnekink (London: Ashgate, 2013), 25–46. 31 For a classic study see Henry Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain 1700–15 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969).

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32 Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 248. 33 For a detailed analysis of the European dimension of the conflict see José Manuel de Bernardo Ares, ‘Las dos Españas de 1706 según las cartas reales de los Reyes Borbónicos’, and Pere Molas Ribalta, ‘¿Qué fue de Italia y Flandes?’, in La pérdida de Europa. La guerra de Sucesión por la Monarquía de España, ed. Antonio ÁlvarezOssorio, Bernardo J. García García and Virginia León (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, 2007), 249–70, 693–716. 34 José Calvo Poyato, Guerra de Sucesión en Andalucía (Cordoba: Diputación Provincial, 1982). 35 José Luis Ponde, La Guerra de Sucesión en Menorca. Causas, hechos y consecuencias (Mahon: Museo Militar de Menorca, 1984). See also the essays collected in La Guerra de Sucesión en España y América. X Jornadas Nacionales de Historia Militar Sevilla (Madrid: Deimos, 2000). 36 Kamen, The War of Succession in Spain, 17–20. 37 For more on this process see Joaquim Albareda, Felipe V y el triunfo del absolutismo. Cataluña en un conflicto europeo (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2002). 38 Joaquim Albareda describes this process in great detail in La Guerra de Sucesión de España (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010), 360–85. 39 For a detailed analysis of the peace treaty see Albareda, La Guerra de Sucesión de España, 314–59. 40 See Albareda, Felipe V for more details. 41 Adam James Lyons, ‘The 1711 Expedition to Quebec: Politics and The Limitations of Global Strategy in The Reign of Queen Anne’ (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2011). 42 For some novel work on the asiento see Lía de Luxán Hernández and Santiago de Luxán Meléndez, ‘Las dificultades de funcionamiento del Asiento de Negros británico en el imperio español, 1713–1739: La misión de Tomás Geraldino en Londres’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1:3 (2013), 273–307. 43 See Magnus Mörner, The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (New York: Knopf, 1969). 44 A well-known example is that of ‘Carta a los españoles americanos’ written by Peruvian Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzman in 1791, first published in French in 1799 and then in Spanish in 1801. A digital version can be accessed at: http:// digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/29000/1/Viscardo-Gutierrez%20Escudero.pdf (accessed 16 January 2015). 45 I have written extensively on this issue. For an overview, see ‘Luchando por “la patria” en los Andes 1808–1815’, Revista Andina (2012), 61–83. 46 For the most recent and comprehensive book see Charles Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Also crucial to understand the period are Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), and Sinclair Thompson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). 47 Walker, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion.

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48 See the work of David Cahill, From Rebellion to Independence in the Andes: Soundings from Southern Peru, 1750–1830 (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2002), and John Leddy Pheland, The People and The King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia 1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011). 49 For a detailed study of this and how it changed after independence see Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Coloured by the Past: The Birth of the Armed Forces in Republican Peru’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina 22:1 (2011), 57–79. 50 For a classic study see C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and The San Domingo Revolution (London: Allison and Busby, 1980). 51 For Haiti see David Geggus, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Cambridge: Hackett, 2014). 52 Support for the Hispanic Monarchy was overwhelming. See Klaus Gallo, Las invasiones inglesas (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2004). 53 One of the most important analyses of this process and what it meant for the Hispanic Monarchy is François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001). 54 This episode has been covered by most of the literature. For one of the most authoritative readings of the event, see Jaime E. Rodríguez, The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 55 Ferdinand, and his brothers Carlos and Francisco de Paula were all held in Valençay until the defeat of Napoleon. 56 The Biblioteca Nacional de España has collected the most important resources for studying this conflict: Guerra de la Independencia española, 1808–1814. Guía de recursos bibliográficos: www.bne.es/es/Micrositios/Guias/Guerra_independencia/ index.html (accessed 6 December 2017). 57 Manuel Moreno Alonso, La Junta Suprema de Sevilla (Seville: Alfar, 2001). 58 José Carlos Chiaramonte, Nación y estado en Iberoamérica: El lenguaje político en tiempos de las independencias (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2004). 59 On the importance of ceremonies in this context see El origen de las fiestas patrias. Hispanoamérica en la era de las independencias, ed. Pablo Ortemberg (Rosario: Prohistoria, 2013). 60 The first was set up in 1808 and the other three in 1809. 61 For more details of this see Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Luchando por “la patria” en los Andes’. 62 To understand the situation in the South Atlantic see Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 63 A concise yet detailed text for this period is Brian Hammnet, ‘Process and Pattern: A Re-examination of the Ibero-American Independence Movements, 1808–1826’, Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997), 279–328. 64 Marcela Ternavasio, ‘De legitimistas a revolucionarios. Notas sobre los “carlotistas” rioplatenses, 1808–1810’, Bicentenaire des indépendances Amérique Latine Caribes (Paris: Institut Français, 2011), 240–60. 65 Roberto Breña has written extensively on this, noting the differences with the

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French experience, as there was an explicit defence of the King. See El imperio de las circunstancias las independencias hispanoamericanas y la revolución liberal española (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2012). 66 François-Xavier Guerra has asserted that the elections themselves were ‘the revolution’. See François-Xavier Guerra and Marie Danielle Demelas, ‘Un processus révolutionnaire méconnu: l’adoption des formes représentatives modernes en Espagne et Amérique Latine (1808–1810)’, Caravelle 60 (1993), 5–57. 67 Scott Eastman and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (eds), The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World: The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 (Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 2015). 68 Eastman and Sobrevilla Perea, The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World. 69 For more on these debates see Eastman and Sobrevilla Perea, The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World. 70 José María Portillo Valdés, ‘De la monarquía católica a la nación de los católicos’, Historia y Política 17 (2007), 17–35. 71 For more on this enduring Catholicism see Gregorio Alonso, La nación en capilla. Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España, 1793–1874 (Madrid: Comares, 2014). 72 Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, ‘Loyalism and Liberalism in Peru’, in The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World, ed. Eastman and Sobrevilla Perea, 111–32. 73 Daniel Gutiérrez Ardila presents a detailed analysis of this complex panorama in Un Nuevo Reino. Geografía, política, pactismo y diplomacia durante el interregno en Nueva Granada (Bogota: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2010). 74 For an example of this see Juan Luis Ossa, ‘Revolución y constitucionalismo en Chile, 1808–1814’, Revista de Historia Iberoamericana 1:5 (2012), 111–39. 75 For a recent study of his work in the region see Georges Lomné and Scarlett O’Phelan, Abascal y contra-independencia de América del Sur (Lima: IFEA/PUCP, 2013). 76 Matthew Brown looks at this phenomenon in detail in Adventuring Through Spanish Colonies: Simon Bolivar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006). 77 Juan Luis Ossa, ‘The Army of the Andes: Chilean and Rioplatense Politics in an Age of Military Organisation, 1814–1817’, Journal of Latin American Studies 46:1 (2014), 29–58. 78 Charlton Tebeau, A History of Florida (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1980). 79 Rafael de Riego began his movement with a Pronunciamiento. For more on this see Will Fowler’s project and the links between Mexico and Spain: The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821–1876: http://arts.st-andrews.ac.uk/ pronunciamientos/ (accessed 16 January 2015). 80 Brian Hamnnet, Roots Of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750–1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 81 Roderick Cavaliero, The Independence of Brazil (London: British Academic Press, 1993).

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82 For the most recent and comprehensive reassessment of this period see Anthony  McFarlane, War and Independence in Spanish America (London: Routledge, 2014). 83 Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, ‘From Europe to the Americas and Back: Becoming Los Ayacuchos’, European Historical Quarterly 41:3 (2011), 472–88. 84 Timothy E. Anna, Forging Mexico, 1821–1835 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001). 85 Jordana Dym, From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State, and Federation in Central America, 1759–1839 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006). 86 David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia. A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 87 Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, The Caudillo of The Andes, Andrés de Santa Cruz (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerisity Press, 2011). 88 Noemí Goldman and Ricardo Salvatore, Caudillismos rioplatenses. Nuevas miradas a un viejo problema (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1998) 89 Julio Sánchez Gómez, ‘La independencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay: Los realistas en la Banda Oriental’, in Bastillas, cetros y blasones: La independencia en Iberoamérica, ed. Ivana Frasquet (Madrid: MAPFRE, 2006), 57–92. 90 Mark Lawrence, Spain’s First Carlist War, 1833–40 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 91 Lawrence, Spain’s First Carlist War. 92 Adrian Shubert, ‘Baldomero Espartero (1793–1879). Del ídolo al olvido’, in Liberales, agitadores y conspiradores. Biografías heterodoxas del siglo XIX, ed. Isabel Burdiel and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000), 183–208. 93 Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza Gómez de Valugera, Las guerras carlistas (San Sebastian: ACTAS, 2006). 94 Eastman and Sobrevilla Perea (eds), The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World. 95 For the case of Spain, see Alonso, La nación en capilla. 96 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1992).

References

Adelman, Jeremy, ‘Latin American Longues Durées’, Latin American Research Review 39:1 (2004), 223–37 —, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) Albareda, Joaquim, Felipe V y el triunfo del absolutismo. Cataluña en un conflicto europeo (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya, 2002) —, La Guerra de Sucesión de España (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010) Alonso, Gregorio, La nación en capilla. Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España, 1793–1874 (Madrid: Comares, 2014)

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Álvarez-Ossorio, Antonio, Bernardo J. García García and Virginia León (eds), La pérdida de Europa. La guerra de Sucesión por la Monarquía de España (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes, 2007) Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1992) Anna, Timothy E., Forging Mexico, 1821–1835 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001) Armitage, David, and Jo Guildi, ‘The Return of the Longue Durée: An AngloAmerican Perspective’, Annales. Histoire. Sciences Sociales 69:4 (2014), 289–318 Barrios, Feliciano (ed.), El gobierno de un mundo. Virreintos y audiencias en la América Hispánica (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2004) Bernardo Ares, José Manuel de, ‘Las dos Españas de 1706 según las cartas reales de los Reyes Borbónicos’, in La pérdida de Europa, ed. Álvarez-Ossorio, García García, and León, 249–70. Biblioteca Nacional de España, Guerra de la Independencia española, 1808–1814. Guía de recursos bibliográficos: www.bne.es/es/Micrositios/Guias/Guerra_independencia/ index.html (accessed 6 December 2017) Brading, David A., ‘La monarquía católica’, in Inventando la nación. Iberoamérica siglo XIX, ed. Antonio Annino and François-Xavier Guerra (Madrid: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003), 15–46 Breña, Roberto, El imperio de las circunstancias las independencias hispanoamericanas y la revolución liberal española (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2012) Brown, Matthew, Adventuring Through Spanish Colonies: Simon Bolivar, Foreign Mercenaries and the Birth of New Nations (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006) Bullón de Mendoza Gómez de Valugera, Alfonso, Las guerras carlistas (San Sebastian: ACTAS, 2006) Burkholder, Mark, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687–1808 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977) Burns, Kathryn, Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999) Bushnell, David, The Making of Modern Colombia. A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) Cahill, David, From Rebellion to Independence in the Andes: Soundings from Southern Peru, 1750–1830 (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2002) Calvo Poyato, José, Guerra de Sucesión en Andalucía (Cordoba: Diputación Provincial, 1982) Casey, James, ‘De reino a provincia: De la Valencia foral a la absolutista (1609–1707)’, in Historia del pueblo valenciano, ed. Manuel Cerdá (Valencia: Levante, 1988), 453–72 Cavaliero, Roderick, The Independence of Brazil (London: British Academic Press, 1993) Chiaramonte, José Carlos, Nación y estado en Iberoamérica: El lenguaje político en tiempos de las independencias (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2004)

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Ciaramitaro, Fernando, ‘Virrey, gobierno virreinal y absolutismo: El caso de la Nueva España y el Reino de Sicilia’, Studia Historica. Historia Moderna 30 (2008), 235–71 Dym, Jordana, From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State, and Federation in Central America, 1759–1839 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006) Eastman, Scott, and Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (eds), The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World: The Impact of the Cádiz Constitution of 1812 (Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 2015) Elliot, John H., Imperial Spain 1469–1716 (London: Penguin, 1963) —, Spain and Its Worlds 1500–1700 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) Fowler, Will, The Pronunciamiento in Independent Mexico 1821–1876: http://arts. st-andrews.ac.uk/pronunciamientos/ (accessed 16 January 2015) Gallo, Klaus, Las invasiones inglesas (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2004) Garriga, Carlos, ‘Las audiencias: Justicia y gobierno de las Indias’, in El gobierno de un mundo, ed. Jen-Fréderic Schaub, 711–94 Geggus, David, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History (Cambridge: Hackett, 2014) Gil, Xavier, ‘Aragonese Constitutionalism and Habsburg Rule: The Varying Meanings  of Liberty’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, ed. Kagan and Parker, 160–87 Goldman, Noemí, and Ricardo Salvatore (eds), Caudillismos rioplatenses. Nuevas miradas a un viejo problema (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1998) Guerra, François-Xavier, Modernidad e independencias: Ensayos sobre las revoluciones hispánicas (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001) Guerra, François-Xavier, and Marie Danielle Demelas, ‘Un processus révolutionnaire méconnu: l’adoption des formes représentatives modernes en Espagne et Amérique Latine (1808–1810)’, Caravelle 60 (1993), 5–57 Gutiérrez Ardila, Daniel, Un Nuevo Reino. Geografía, política, pactismo y diplomacia durante el interregno en Nueva Granada (Bogota: Universidad Externado de Colombia, 2010) Hammnet, Brian, Roots Of Insurgency: Mexican Regions, 1750–1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) —, ‘Process and Pattern: A Re-examination of the Ibero-American Independence Movements, 1808–1826’, Journal of Latin American Studies 29 (1997), 279–328 James, C.L.R., The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and The San Domingo Revolution (London: Allison and Busby, 1980) Kagan, Richard and Geoffrey Parker (eds), Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Kamen, Henry, The War of Succession in Spain 1700–15 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969) Lawrence, Mark, Spain’s First Carlist War, 1833–40 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Lomné, Georges, and Scarlett O’Phelan, Abascal y contra-independencia de América del Sur (Lima: IFEA/PUCP, 2013) Loveman, Brian, The Constitution of Tyranny: Regimes of Exception in Spanish America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994)

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Luxán Hernández, Lía de, and Santiago de Luxán Meléndez, ‘Las dificultades de funcionamiento del Asiento de Negros británico en el imperio español, 1713–1739: La misión de Tomás Geraldino en Londres’, Colonial Latin American Historical Review 1:3 (2013), 273–307 Lyons, Adam James, ‘The 1711 Expedition to Quebec: Politics and The Limitations of Global Strategy in The Reign of Queen Anne’ (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2011) McFarlane, Anthony, War and Independence in Spanish America (London: Routledge, 2014) Molas Ribalta, Pere, ‘¿Qué fue de Italia y Flandes?’, in La pérdida de Europa, ed. Álvarez-Ossorio, García García and León, 693–716 Moreno Alonso, Manuel, La Junta Suprema de Sevilla (Seville: Alfar, 2001) Mörner, Magnus, The Expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America (New York: Knopf, 1969) Morse, Richard M., New World Soundings. Culture and Ideology in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) Ortemberg, Pablo (ed.), El origen de las fiestas patrias. Hispanoamérica en la era de las independencias (Rosario: Prohistoria, 2013) Osorio, Alejandra B., Inventing Lima: Baroque’s Modernity in Peru’s South Sea Metropolis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Ossa, Juan Luis, ‘Revolución y constitucionalismo en Chile, 1808–1814’, Revista de Historia Iberoamericana 1:5 (2012), 111–39 —, ‘The Army of the Andes: Chilean and Rioplatense Politics in an Age of Military Organisation, 1814–1817’, Journal of Latin American Studies 46:1 (2014), 29–58 Parker, Geoffrey, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1988) Pheland, John Leddy, The People and the King: The Comunero Revolution in Colombia 1781 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011) Pierson, Paul, Politics in Time: History, Institutions and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) Planas Roselló, Antonio, La Real Audiencia de Mallorca en la época de los Austrias (1571–1715) (Barcelona: Universidad Pompeu Fabra, 2010) Polanco Alcántara, Tomás, Las reales audiencias en las provincias americanas de España (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992) Ponde, José Luis, La Guerra de Sucesión en Menorca. Causas, hechos y consecuencias (Mahon: Museo Militar de Menorca, 1984) Portillo Valdés, José María, ‘De la monarquía católica a la nación de los católicos’, Historia y Política 17 (2007), 17–35 Ríos Lloret, Rosa Elena, ‘Doña Germana de Foix’, in Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina, ed. Isabel Morant, vol. 1: De la Prehistoria a la Edad Media, ed. Asunción Lavrin and María Angeles Querol Fernández (Madrid: Cátedra, 2005), 615–34 Rodríguez, Jaime E., The Independence of Spanish America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Sánchez Gómez, Julio, ‘La independencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay: Los

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realistas en la Banda Oriental’, in Bastillas, cetros y blasones: La independencia en Iberoamérica, ed. Ivana Frasquet (Madrid: MAPFRE, 2006), 57–92 Schaub, Jen-Fréderic, ‘Hacia una historiografía eurocolonial. América portuguesa y monarquía hispánica’, in El gobierno de un mundo. Virreintos y audiencias en la América Hispánica, ed. Feliciano Barrios, 1053–75 Serulnikov, Sergio, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003) Shubert, Adrian, ‘Baldomero Espartero (1793–1879). Del ídolo al olvido’, in Liberales, agitadores y conspiradores. Biografías heterodoxas del siglo XIX, ed. Isabel Burdiel and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2000), 183–208 Sobrevilla Perea, Natalia, ‘Coloured by the Past: The Birth of the Armed Forces in Republican Peru’, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina 22:1 (2011), 57–79 —, ‘From Europe to the Americas and Back: Becoming Los Ayacuchos’, European Historical Quarterly 41:3 (2011), 472–88 —, The Caudillo of The Andes, Andrés de Santa Cruz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) —, ‘Luchando por “la patria” en los Andes 1808–1815’, Revista Andina (2012), 61–83 —, ‘Loyalism and Liberalism in Peru’, in The Rise of Constitutional Government in the Iberian World, ed. Eastman and Sobrevilla Perea, 111–32 Storrs, Christopher, The Resilience of The Spanish Monarchy, 1665–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) —, ‘The Role of Religion in Spanish Foreign Policy in the reign of Carlos II (1665– 1700)’, in War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713, ed. David Onnekink (London: Ashgate, 2013), 25–46 Tebeau, Charlton, A History of Florida (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1980) Ternavasio, Marcela, ‘De legitimistas a revolucionarios. Notas sobre los “carlotistas” rioplatenses, 1808–1810’, Bicentenaire des indépendances Amérique Latine Caribes (Paris: Institut Français, 2011), 240–60 Thompson, A.A., ‘Castile, Spain and the Monarchy: The Political Community from The Patria Natural to Patria Nacional ’, in Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World, Essays in Honour of John H. Elliott, ed. Kagan and Parker, 125–59 Thompson, Sinclair, We Alone Will Rule: Native Andean Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003) Various Authors, La Guerra de Sucesión en España y América. X Jornadas Nacionales de Historia Militar Sevilla (Madrid: Deimos, 2000) Viscardo, Juan Pablo, ‘Carta a los españoles americanos’ (1791), available at: http:// digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/29000/1/Viscardo-Gutierrez%20Escudero.pdf (accessed 16 January 2015) Veliz, Claudio, The Centralist Tradition in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) Walker, Charles, The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)

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2

••

How to be universal Andrew Ginger

The U-word

Universal was, for a time, a dirty word in many quarters of cultural study. Michel Foucault foretold that nineteenth-century Europe’s notion of universal humanity – its face of man – would be wiped from the sands of time.1 Homi Bhabha criticized even the claim that Europe projected a universalizing, homogenizing modernity: this was, in some respects, a self-serving, self-deceiving myth.2 The universal is suspect: it may be a cover story for local interests, a projected self-image of those who hold power, a thin veil for prejudice, or just a means to crush what makes others different.3 The lively critic is tasked with its unmasking. Thus, if the great nineteenth-century Spanish museum, the Prado, lays claims to universality, then Spanish cultural studies reveals the bourgeois male preferences lurking behind its facade.4 Antonio Monegal contemplates the field of Spanish literature, and spies claims to universal literary value beneath it, crowding out difference.5 The title of Bhabha’s famous work – The Location of Culture – speaks volumes about the mistrust of universality. The universal seems not just opposed to what is situated in a place and time – of which Bhabha provides a nuanced, critical and qualified account; it appears to lie beyond any attempt, however sophisticated, to frame the study of culture in relation to locations. In recent years, some cultural theorists have given certain kinds of universality a more favourable press. But they tend to write either in a broad Marxist or Radical Left Hegelian tradition (Badiou, Žižek). Žižek’s kind of universalism has found support in some areas of Spanish studies, for example in David Vilasecas’s Hindsight and the Real. Postcolonial perspectives in Latin American cultural studies offer a highly attenuated, nuanced alternative, what Mignolo calls ‘diversity as a universal project’. Almost by definition, such approaches do few favours to, and overtly reject, many strains of nineteenth-century universalism.6 More accommodating revisions 38



How to be universal

of universalist outlooks may be found elsewhere. Critics such as Donald Wehrs and David Haney read a broad range of nineteenth-century literature in relation to one of its descendants, the French ethical philosopher Levinas and his universal ethics.7 Yet, even this approach risks framing the debate in a constrictive and, in some ways, familiar fashion. Once again disavowing bad kinds of ‘totalizations’ – that is, attempts to present a systematic account of everything – Levinasian ethics finds universality in recognizing how radically different one person is from any other. This is ‘totalization as unfinished process’, in the words of Bradley Stephens’s powerful revaluation of Victor Hugo’s work.8 Its intellectual merits or demerits aside,9 and even allowing for the fresh vistas it opens on to the 1800s, the Levinasian viewpoint is obviously at odds with much of the nineteenth-century mainstream, so often given to system building and generality. Truth to tell, so far as nineteenth-century Spanish culture goes, one has only to trawl the indexes of recent monographs to discover how infrequent is sustained, constructive discussion of universality. The tale told of nineteenthcentury Spanish history and culture has usually been one of nation-building and its discontents.10 There have been some ventures into transnational phenomena, such as Elisa Martí-López’s Borrowed Words,11 but few into the universal as a topic in itself. As a result of these combined factors – a widespread hostility and a specific neglect – we risk assuming a familiarity with nineteenth-century Spanish universalism that we do not actually have. In saying all this, I do not mean lightly to dismiss the all-too-obvious oppressions wrought in the name of universality by nineteenth-century Europeans, including Spaniards. But I do mean both to bring the topic of universality more fully back into view, and to proceed with care in exploring the Spanish take on it. Some of the most illuminating recent work on the nineteenth century, such as that of Susan Manning on the English-speaking world, sets established terms of debate somewhat to one side. In so doing, critics like Manning recover unexpected insights from half-forgotten ways of thinking, and with them a language in which to address problems of our own.12 Some writers, notably Martha Nussbaum, have looked to the broader history of universalism and of notions of global citizenship to find the potential within them to address pressing current dilemmas and impasses. Writing of ancient Stoic thought, Nussbaum remarks on how its very notion of global humanity underwrote both its critical outlook and its respect for valuable local bonds: ‘Only a human identity that transcends these divisions shows us why we should look at one another with respect across them.’13 Taking a broader view still in The Undivided Past (2013) – a long perspective on the history of human societies and of how that history has been written – David Cannadine comments, ‘To write about the past no less than to live in the present, we 39



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need to see beyond our difference […] to embrace and to celebrate the common humanity that has always bound us together.’14 It is not necessary ultimately to adhere to the specific arguments put by, for example, Nussbaum or Cannadine, to appreciate from their writings that many historic notions of the universal may merit at least a hearing. In a century supposedly so given to Spanish nation-building, one of the intellectual towers was Julián Sanz del Río’s book Ideal de la humanidad para la vida (Ideal of humanity for life) (1860). Every scholar of the country knows this, and yet the basic fact – that the work concerns humankind as a whole – attracts surprisingly little sensitive attention in and of itself.15 Sanz del Río describes all humanity as a single, organic society. His central point is that there is a ‘fin humano antes que fin nacional o particular’ (human purpose prior to any national or particular purpose).16 There are many such telling historical realities. For example, school children habitually studied universal history, and there were vast numbers of textbooks published on the subject: a quick search of the Spanish National Library throws up scores of items on historia universal spawned between 1800 and 1899. Nineteenthcentury universalism was a massive phenomenon in Spain and, at the very least, requires something more than clichéd and caricatured attention if we are to understand the historical period. Universalism in Spanish territories ranged from expressions of brutal racism through to calls for revolutionary federalism, for Philippine nationalism, or for the emancipation of women. For all the flaws in many versions of nineteenth-century universality, our casual dismissal of it may deprive us of some rich insights. Given that its oppressive dimensions are by now extremely well documented, this chapter mainly focuses on what might be called its historical remainder: what is left above and beyond the most obvious cruelties wrought in its name. The chapter considers how aspects of this ‘remainder’ may lead us to question blanket assumptions about the homogenizing intent of nineteenth-century universalism.

Why be universal?

Subjects of the Spanish government in the nineteenth century had two primary, overlapping, but not identical motives for wishing to be universal. The first arose from the state’s present situation and longer history. Spain had been a large world monarchy into the opening years of the century; now it was much reduced following the independence of almost all of the Americas. Many Spanish commentators felt acutely the need to secure their country’s standing in the world, and with it the urge for recognition of Spain’s historic role in the shaping of the globe. There was a sense of loss, a wish to be noticed, and a desire to participate. 40



How to be universal

In the prospectus to its very first issue, in 1857, the widely read, and strikingly named, journal Museo Universal (Universal museum), gave powerful voice to such sentiments. All talents throughout place and time, it said, serve the ‘gran obra de universal organización’ (great work of universal organization). The Spanish publication hoped to lend its own weight to the effort, but noted that Spain’s vast part in the history of human civilization was little noticed elsewhere following its decline. The journal’s contribution to the great task of universal organization would include an effort to ‘apreciar y hacer apreciar lo que España fue, y lo que será algún dia’ (appreciate and make people appreciate what Spain was, and what it will one day be).17 At the same time, the rump Spanish state in Iberia and in its scattered overseas possessions was made up of disparate former kingdoms and powerful local loyalties. A notion of universality could provide a common framework for articulating how these pieces fitted together, and with the world beyond. Gazing back in 1877 on the troubles of Spain’s long history and of its recent past, the Federalist politician and thinker Francisco Pi i Margall remarked that, ‘Reinos que fueron por mucho tiempo independientes y se unieron bajo la condición de que se les respetase su autonomía, es natural que tiendan siempre que puedan a recobrarla’ (It is natural that kingdoms that were for a long time independent and that united with each other on the condition that their autonomy was respected always tend to seek to recover that autonomy).18 His remedy was to seek a new understanding of the notion of unity itself and, by the same token, of a united humanity: ‘La unidad, lo repito, está en la existencia de unos mismos poderes para cada orden de intereses, no en la absorción de todos los intereses por un solo poder. Así como partiendo de esta idea se puede sin violencia llegar a recoger en un haz la humanidad entera’ (Unity, I repeat, lies in there being the same set of powers for each order of interests, not in the absorption of all interests by a single power. So it is that, taking this idea as a starting point, one can manage without violence to gather the whole of humanity in one sheaf).19 The leading Philippine politician, Pedro Alejandro Paterno, writing his La familia tagálog en la historia universal (The Tagalog family in universal history) (1892), sought to defend his country’s dignity precisely by showing it traverse the paths taken by all humanity.20 The notion of universality could, thus, open up a space for marginalized or fallen polities to act on an even plane with hegemonic powers, or at least for fantasizing about so doing. It was a potential corrective to imbalances of force in the world. In 1875, for example, the mathematician Vicente Puyals de la Bastida repeated his long-standing advocacy of a number system with 12 as its base. The matter, the title of his latest book announced, was of ‘universal importance’. Puyals de la Bastida claimed that his discovery was an eternal truth about numerals and would be welcomed with joy by all peoples. The system would free them from the 41



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dominant decimal system, emanating from France, which only force had successfully imposed upon them.21 The very fact of Great Power hegemony in the affairs of the world was, then, a stimulus to universalism in less potent regions. Rather than being just a colonial or neo-colonial imposition, the aspiration to universality could take the form of a counterweight, a counterattack even. Amartya Sen offers a version of this approach in his influential book, The Idea of Justice (2009). Sen admires the thoughts of the Western Enlightenment, and powerfully argues that very similar ‘ideas of justice […] have been pursued in many different parts of the world’. He therefore seeks to rescue such contributions from having been ‘overlooked or marginalized’.22 The second motive for universalism was a genuine concern with matters general to humanity. These accounted for a great deal of lived experience. There were allegiances to supranational movements, belief systems and institutions that claimed universal relevance. Such things were major factors in life in Spanish territories, from religion through to politics. A teacher in Cuba, Nicolás María Serrano y Díez wrote in a textbook of 1885 that only the Catholic Church showed us the true unity of humanity, and that ‘la doctrina de la redención de todos los hombres con la misma sangre del Hombre-Dios, es la causa principal de la civilización del mundo y de la más completa y universal que esperamos en lo futuro’ (the doctrine of the redemption of all men by the very same blood of the Man-God is the principal cause of world civilization and of the more complete and universal civilization that we await in the future).23 Writing for Spanish university students, Juan Ortega y Rubio claimed that his compendium of universal history would serve the ‘gran familia humana’ (great human family) in the love of justice, liberty and progress.24 And there were important activities and areas of inquiry that, in the broadest terms, were manifestly shared by all or nearly all human societies: transport, housing, counting, treating the sick, for example. Following the collapse of the ancien régime and much of the old empire, Spanish government and civil society dedicated much energy to such matters.25 Thus, two highly influential doctors, Francisco Méndez Álvaro and Matías Nieto Serrano, launched the publication in 1847 of a multi-volume Prontuario universal de ciencias médicas (Universal guide to medical sciences) to help students shine in their medical exams.26 In 1867 the urban planner, Ildefonso Cerdá, preparing the ground for his transformation of Barcelona, began by tracing a theory of all human habitation. Dwelling, he claimed, was more universal even than clothing: humanity owes all that it is to the construction of housing.27 There was considerable overlap between the two sets of motives that I have outlined. The activities of all humanity formed a stage on which Spaniards and Spain could demonstrate their universal significance. This was – and is – one of the attractions of statistical measurement, as exemplified in 42



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Pascual Madoz’s seminal geographical-statistical-historical dictionary (1843, revised 1846). Madoz claims that statistics came about so states could assess by common measure who was superior, without having recourse to war.28 Likewise, notable contributions to supranational institutions and movements were a source of long-established, chivalric values: honour and glory. The prologue to the liberal nationalist constitution of 1812 assures us that ‘Leyes humanas, sí, muy humanas y filosóficas aparecen en nuestros códigos para gloria de sus autores, honra y loor de la Nación entera’ (Humane laws, yes, very humane and thoughtful laws appear in our legal codes to the glory of their authors, and to the honour and praise of the whole Nation). The measure of that is what the prologue terms the history of all human societies.29 One of the giants of nineteenth-century Spanish medicine, Pedro Mata, urges his fellow doctors to strive so as to join the great names in humanity’s progress. In so doing, he depicts himself in 1859 as the first knight to enter the joust.30 That other nations could build fine bridges, lay out roads, dissect a brain, or make a well-formed law was a spur to showing that Spanish subjects could do the same. Pedro Alejandro Paterno presented Tagalog divorce law as a model for the most civilized nations of Europe.31 Narcisco Monturiol, the inventor of the submarine El Ictíneo, announced in 1860 that a new hour had struck: humanity would take possession now of the underwater world and, as it did so, Spaniards would rise above the pride of other nations, showing their equal worth. Echoing Spain’s earlier, and now largely abandoned, imperial ventures in the Americas, Monturiol spoke of a great conquest in a new world.32 What is at stake here is not just what aspirations to universality are or mean. Rather, it also matters what they do, what effect they have. Of course, to say that some exemplar of Spanish literature or art is of universal importance implies beliefs – right or wrong – about what is of value to all humanity. But it is also an action, a staking out of a place in the sun. For this reason, Spanish universalism often takes shape in pedagogy, didacticism, or practical endeavour. Spaniards are concerned with learning, teaching and showing how to be universal. Frequently, practical difficulties and immediate societal challenges are the stimulus for universalist utterances. It would be quite wrong to deduce from this that nineteenth-century Spanish subjects had no taste for universal metaphysics. On the contrary, some shared that preoccupation with contemporaries elsewhere. It is simply that their interest in abstractions was often practical in origin and had a view to conclusions that would be practical in application. So, when the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote the often speculative En torno al casticismo (About Traditionalism) (1895), he took as its start and end point the raging, daily, public debate about foreign culture invading Spain and the need to renew social and political activity in the country.33 43



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Particularity, multiplicity and universality

These outlines already contradict many later caricatures of the universal. Much cultural criticism directed at nineteenth-century thinking supposes particularity and universality to be quite distinct things. In fact, the universal was explicitly understood as the involvement, activity, and participation of particular groups and agents. It has this at least in common with what Kwame Anthony Appiah describes in his book The Ethics of Identity (2005) as a ‘form of universalism that is sensitive to the ways in which historical context may shape the significance of a practice’.34 In the territories of Spain, riven internally to the point of cantonalism, and begging externally at the Great Powers’ feast, prophets arose who took flight on this current of thought. Seeking to resolve Spain’s recurrent crises, the Federalist Pi i Margall detached the notion of nationality from the forms it habitually took in the nineteenth century: appeals to communities based on common language, or so-called natural frontiers, or supposed shared history, or racial identity. These he viewed as historically false, or, at the very least, absurd in their consequences. For example, on linguistic grounds, one could deduce that, while the Basque country should be given independence, Spanish America ought once more to be part of Spain. Instead, Pi advocated a shared human framework for identity and nationality, based on the autonomy of every identifiable level of human activity from the municipality upwards. The foundation stone would be the concrete reality of day-to-day shared life in communities, so palpable and real, not some vague appeal to ontology.35 The broader yearning for forms of participation that would truly incorporate diversity gave rise to aspirational, anti-discriminatory forms of universalism. A case in point is the famous article series ‘La Mujer’ (‘Woman’) (1860) by the female Cuban writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda.36 In these essays, Gómez de Avellaneda frankly addressed a social and cultural reality: pejorative consideration of, and obstacles to, women’s authority in matters of government, religion, patriotism and the arts and sciences, on the grounds of biological difference.37 Most strikingly, from the perspective of universalism and its history, Gómez de Avellaneda shows how to construe a form of (supposedly) clear particularity (women’s capacity for sentiment, ‘sentimiento’) as the very grounds of sameness: identical involvement in all aspects of human life. If, she argues, ‘great intellectual power’ required not just reasoning but the ‘poder del corazón’ (power of the heart), women’s sentiment would be the basis of success in vast areas of human activity, including those from which they were habitually excluded. This is true of the whole of the ‘anales de la humanidad’ (annals of humanity) (293). Within Catholicism, the gendered affective force of the maternal Virgin Mary and of the redeemed sexual sinner Mary Magdalen were together the very synthesis of woman (290), and, by 44



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extension, the basis upon which women could take the lead in all human affairs, including ‘toda la autoridad civil y política’ (all civil and political authority) (299). If we put the implications of ‘La Mujer’ at their starkest, Avellaneda is asserting that difference is not something utterly distinct from universality, but rather that the one may seamlessly dilate into the other. In turn, Avellaneda celebrates Spain’s national heroines patriotically amid a myriad of beloved examples from elsewhere across place and time. Spain will take its place in the history of the world, not primarily through what separates it from the rest, but through its expansive expression of femininity, and thence of universally shared human virtue. Avellaneda’s section on government and politics pointedly begins its culmination with the words ‘deteneos algunos minutos contemplando con legítimo orgulllo nacional la magnífica figura de Isabel la Católica’ (dwell some minutes as you contemplated with legitimate national pride the magnificent figure of Isabel the Catholic) (300). Such engagement with specific realities and with difference belies the notion that universality was simply monolithic or flattening – that it always and solely ignored or suppressed real inequalities or variations. There was a range of different universalities for diverse and distinct ends; this is something Melba Cuddy-Keane and her collaborators have similarly noted in their study of keywords in Modernism.38 There were, for example, universal units of measurement derived from the nature of numbers, universal medical diagnoses deduced from biology or phenomenology, universal behavioural tendencies noted in anthropology and history. It is an implicit assumption of nineteenth-century activity and thought that these several universals coexist and complement one another. Some people, like Sanz del Río in his Ideal de la humanidad para la vida,39 tried to unify them all in a grand synthesis. But many, practically speaking, did not, and even the notion of a synthesis was often highly nuanced. The secretary of the Royal Academy of Medicine, Matías Nieto y Serrano, warned in 1860 that no synthesis of knowledge could ever produce, create, or delimit the parts of which it was composed in the absence of the particular, independent endeavours that made up those parts.40 Multiplicity is manifest elsewhere too in universalism. To say that a specific group – such as a nation – had contributed something universal to humanity, was precisely not to say that the vision or innovation exhausted all human possibility nor that other cultures might not offer up different universal insights. In En torno al casticismo – whose poetics I examine at length at the end of this chapter – Unamuno explores how the rise and fall of imperial Spain resonated as eternal truth in the death of Don Quixote. Don Alonso Quijano’s return to sanity marks an end to Castile’s untrammelled wilfulness, its oppressive imperial intent, while recognizing all that is good in such unhindered longing (LXXVII.v). This is one gift to the world, one 45



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recognition of something deeply human. Italy’s Dante offers something else: a sensual cult of the heart wed to ancient wisdom (LXXVII.iii). Unamuno calls such insights the sediment of eternal truths from the rivers of humanity (LXXIV.iii). In some spheres of activity, the universal itself was presented as one way of looking at the world alongside others, rather than as an outlook that subsumed everything else. Like many other historians throughout the century, Alfonso Moreno Espinosa taught in 1871 that history could be viewed in a range of different ways. Universal history is one of these; but so are general and particular history.41 Ortega y Rubio listed many more – including municipal history, biographical history, history of science, history of art and so forth – varying according to the subject and object of the particular study.42 Again, the deciding factor was the purpose and objective served by adopting one or other perspective.

Choice, judgement and selection

Choice and judgement are central to exercising such preferences. They are equally fundamental to many versions of the universal laws said to govern human society. Universal law in this context often meant the fundamental nature and conditions of making a choice. Thus, Ortega y Rubio argued that the absolute principle of all human history was that an agent/subject existed in relation to space, time and movement.43 Laws of this kind did not determine the outcome of human decisions: the door was open to plural possible outcomes. The universal was neither straightforwardly identical to the ‘given’ – something predetermined and unchanging – nor was it just the result of a free choice. Often it took shape as a second nature, by which I mean a reasonable or predictable human practice in light of needs, circumstances and physical laws. Thus, in writing of shorthand and its universal history in 1879, Pedro Garriga Marill observed that, ‘El hombre va desplegando los recursos de su inventiva, a medida que la necesidad le acosa y obliga. Al idear la escritura ordinaria para detener y conservar la palabra fugitiva, sintió además la necesidad de que ambas dos, palabra y escritura, corriesen paralelamente, y entonces debía de arbitrar, y en efecto, arbitró, la Taquigrafía’ (Man proceeds to unfurl the resources of his inventiveness in tandem with necessity pressuring and obliging him so to do. Once he had thought up ordinary forms of writing so as to keep hold of and preserve the fleeting word, he felt the need too for both, word and writing, to run in parallel, and then he must have hit upon, indeed he did hit upon, shorthand). This Garriga Marill called a natural necessity.44 The vast universal mythology produced by Juan Bautista Carrasco (1865) shows how such needs could at once be universally shared and produce distinct contingent outcomes. So, 46



How to be universal

for example, all human beings break up time into units for practical purposes, but the way they do so varies vastly from culture to culture. Carrasco delights in exhibiting the many different systems that societies have produced.45 Even when people invoked a law of progress, as the Museo Universal did in its opening issue, they often meant only that human interactions and actions over centuries would, on balance, lead to betterment – a not unreasonable gamble. The element of contingency involved is evident: the journal acknowledges fateful falls and cruel disappointments in history, and it makes clear that progress can only be made if talented human beings choose to contribute: ‘esta germinación, como lenta, necesita de poderosos auxiliares’ (that germination, being slow, requires powerful assistance).46 Success and failure, after all, had both been Spain’s fate over time, as the Museo Universal’s prospect recalled. So, universality entailed both judgements about what choices might be made, as well as assessments of what human beings would most likely do. Selectivity went hand in hand with this. Universality involved opting for one decision over another, or attending to one thing rather than to something else. In many areas of activity, universality implied neither inclusiveness nor exhaustive coverage. In the same spirit as many other writers, Alfonso Moreno Espinosa tells us that universal history deals only with the things that interest all humanity.47 Because of its evaluative character – and not because it was by definition monolithic or self-deceiving – the universal could very easily become the servant of prejudice and exclusion. It was all too casually equated with things European, as it often was by Unamuno. At best, this was due to deep ignorance and wild error. At worst – and all too often – the cause was primitive hostility to those who seemed different, and an equally primitive sense of one’s own superiority. Disgracefully, Ortega y Rubio claimed that only white people truly had a history.48 On the one hand, we can recognize here the historic, and by now amply documented, negative effects of some nineteenth-century universalism. On the other, we may note that the pursuit of universality, by its very nature, rested on the assumption of risk for good and ill, precisely because it entailed evaluation. Likewise, risk was constitutive of universality. So therefore were ethical responsibility, sensibility and accountability. As the Catholic writer Mariano Laita y Moya put it in 1887, universal history can give us no (ethical) judgements if human  beings are not responsible for, and assessed according to, their own actions.49 These thoughts retain significant creative potential. Universalism supposed that human beings absolutely need to make judgements, to select and to prioritize. Moreover, evaluations of human conduct and achievements were seen – at least potentially – as statements of fact about the world. Neither of these suppositions is straightforwardly implausible. For example, the ­philosopher 47



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Hilary Putnam remarks in The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (2002) that the judgment that a particular person is kind or cruel, that a person is impertinent or refreshingly spontaneous, or that a child is ‘having problems’ or ‘discovering her identity’ – there are endlessly many examples and endlessly many sorts of example – are all judgements of value in the sense under discussion. I maintain that such judgements are in practice regarded as true or false and should so be regarded.50

This kind of standpoint – and the use of selectivity and evaluation – were important not least as a means to highlight what really mattered about an otherwise marginalized culture and society, that of Spain. When, in En torno al casticismo, Unamuno urges that Spain is still to be discovered (LXXVIII), when he says that to know oneself one must know one’s own history (LXXV), he means that we are capable of discerning and apprehending in a given culture its universal significance, and of doing so without the quixotic requirement to compare it to every other culture. In so doing, he suggests, we can indeed differentiate things of universal quality from those of lesser value: for example, we may evaluate as of positive universal significance the poet and thinker Fray Luis de León and yet object to the Inquisition. Such a path steers clear of a subjective relativism that makes nothing more worthwhile than anything else, that truly does flatten out all human activity.

Mutation and metamorphosis

Selectivity endowed universality with a shape-shifting quality, with an inherent mutability – this is most obviously visible in atlases of universal history, such as the one published by Juan de la G. Artero in 1896. Images of one particular place and time come to the fore, only to be supplanted in successive pages by others, according to their significance in the development of the world. Now India is seen in the Age of the Arians, now we switch to Labrador in the Norman explorations; now we view Africa but see only the Phoenician lands in detail; now eleventh-century Europe appears with Iberia slipping out of sight.51 The practical and pedagogical aims of universalism reinforce the effect as authors factor in the needs and abilities of their readership. In elementary textbooks, universal history broke into staccato successions of questions and answers. The sequence was dictated by the author’s assessment of what constitutes core knowledge. Teodoró Baró’s 1880 history course has a question and answer about Napoleon’s exile before one about the War of the Spanish Succession, one about Felipe V’s abdication before others about the substance of his reign; it jumps from Felipe V’s punishment of the Catalans to the institution of the Salic Law.52 The primacy of value judgements took 48



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precedence even over chronological order. In the most subtle instances, chronology is not quite kept to, or is revisited from multiple simultaneous angles. In his basic history course of 1871, Juan Casañ y Alegre favoured tracing the rise and fall of each people in turn, feeling this was more easily memorized.53 More dramatically, chronology’s status could be explicitly ambiguous, not least in the most overtly Catholic publications. There all history is seen from the fixed vantage point of Christ’s death and resurrection in the first century. Serrano y Díez remarks that Calvary is the culminating point of history, and that from the summit of that bloody mountain one can observe all the great events of humanity around about.54 On occasion, authors found universality in patterns of comparison and analogy that traversed boundaries of place and time. This is the case in Paterno’s account of the Tagalog family in universal history. Habitually, an observation about a specific context (the Philippines, late nineteenth century) opens out into long series of sentences and paragraphs, meandering through geography and history, juxtaposing countries and eras, held together by similarity and variation, before returning once more to the initial focus. Considering dowry customs, for example, he starts in the Philippines and ventures out across his paragraphs into modern Spain, ancient Egypt, and medieval Scandinavia.55 Science reinforced the equation between the universal and metamorphosis. In some eyes, all natural history was governed by its own patterns of similitude and variation, and formed an artwork whose unity consisted in its endless transformations. Rafael García y Álvarez, a distinguished teacher in Granada, told his readers in 1867 that ‘La teoría de los análogos y homólogos ha dado lugar también a la de la unidad de composición, no sólo de los diferentes animales, sino de los distintos órganos de cada uno de ellos, conduciendo algunos naturalistas a la de la trasformación y variabilidad de las especies’ (The theory of analogies and homologies has in turn given rise to that of the unity of composition, not only of different animals, but of the various organs of each one of them, leading some naturalists to the theory of the transformation and variability of species).56 With the discoveries of organic chemistry, the entire material universe could be imagined this way. Vividly in 1870, two authors, Enrique Serrano and Salvador Calderón, described the whole of the universe and all life as a painting in which everything resembled all else, such that each part was the centre point for every other: ‘eslabones relativamente semejantes del gran cuadro en que todo es centro respecto de lo más accesorio y accidental con relación a lo más elevado’ (relatively similar links in the great picture in which everything is a centre with respect to what is most secondary and accidental in relation to what is most elevated).57

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Universality as poetry

In the eyes of many, to be universal was to mutate across place and time, to shift through analogy, to bring fragmented visions in and out of view, to take shape around value and sensibility. By extension, the universal was, at times, conceived as poetry. We can see this in El drama universal (The universal drama) (1853), an epic in verse by the then celebrated poet Ramón de Campoamor. Disconcertingly, what is offered as a universal epic appears at first to be a love story that is confined in place and time – a particular context – and limited by mortality – a time period. Honorio longs for the devout Soledad, who is promised to his brother Palanciano; when the latter does not return because he has been imprisoned, Soledad takes to a nunnery where she dies after Honorio fails to seduce her; Honorio in turn, filled with sinful lust, kills himself. The vast poem seems to end abruptly, having hardly begun: fewer than forty pages in, Campoamor informs us that ‘Asi dio fin, tan triste y tan oscura, / Esta historia, de amor y ansias llena’ (So came to an end? so sad and so dark, this tale full of love and desires).58 But from there the epic bursts out of chronological and geographical limits, under the watchful gaze and occasional intervention of Jesus the Mage, the mysterious naked man of Mark 15:51–2, to whom is attributed a ‘fantastical ubiquity’ (‘ubicuidad fantástica’), a capacity to range at will across all time (20). Honorio’s spectre roams tormented beyond his physical death, and at one stage takes over another mortal body only to die once more, returning again to ghosthood; Soledad is depicted in the heavens; the protagonists wander allegorical planets of the afterlife where historical events are conjured up; they visit the time of Christ’s death and head on to the Last Judgement. Jesus the Mage shows us explicitly that poetry is the force bringing together the vast multiplicity of episodes in time and place to form a drama of universal meaning. Such is the cunning of the poetic connections, that their full significance is apparent only in retrospect as the story ends: Jesus the Mage there declaims, ‘Mira el por qué y el cómo embelesado, / Hacia ti y Soledad tendí mi vuelo; / Poema que, en tierra comenzado, / Acaba al fin,cantándose en el cielo’. (Behold the reason for and the manner in which, spellbound, I took flight towards you and Soledad; this Poem, begun on earth, ends up finally being sung in heaven) (367). In saying this, he repeats words he had uttered early in the epic, completing a system of verbal echoes that runs through the work. Campoamor’s appearance as the poet in the course of the poem itself, and his comments on how the tale resonates with his own feelings (71), underline the point: to write poetry is to seek out universally significant connections and vice-versa. To do so requires the imagination to travel beyond the constraints of any specific context, and out of the boundaries of any individual physical body. The entire structure of Campoamor’s epic exemplifies poetry’s capacity 50



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to achieve precisely that. But to journey beyond and out of these things is not just a matter of discarding them. The central trope of El drama universal is transmigration, transmutation. Honorio, dying, transforms into Soledad’s gravestone from which he subsequently bursts forth; later, he will inhabit a soaring eagle and a young man. In a dramatic episode, he seeks to occupy the corpse of the Holy Roman Emperor and Spanish King Charles V, only to be violently rebuffed. At this, all the body parts of the dead arise and chase around the continents of the globe, migrating across the confines of place and beyond those of their demise (52–61). In this domain of the poetic imagination and poetic language, opposites merge and fuse, liberated from their defining limits but not entirely alienated from what they were: ‘La carne se iba en mármol confundiendo / Y algo de carne el mármol se volvía’ (Flesh gradually blended into marble, and the marble turned to something of flesh) (38). Above all, Campoamor depicts such transmigration as the effect of feeling: ‘el sentimiento tiende a la metempsicosis’ (sentiment tends to metempsychosis) (38). It is longing and desire that are expressed through poetry in the joining and unjoining of things, the seeping through and out of confines. Possession and dispossession, the owning or inhabiting of something other than ourselves, are what are at stake in universality. For this reason, in the poem, two rival universals mirror one another, and ultimately must join together. The one – depicted as Pagan, and linked to Pythagorean belief in transmigration (36) – consists in the wish to control and possess others according to one’s desires whatever the obstacle: Honorio is the occupier, the colonizer of others, lustful when his affections are unrequited. He refuses to acknowledge rejection by Soledad and yearns for Charles V’s ‘universal poder’ (universal power) (54). Within his transmigrations, what we see is his wilfulness: Jesus the Mage, agreeing to obey his wishes, remarks: ‘Tu gusto, aun transmigrando, será el mío’ (Even transmigrating, your wish will be mine) (86). This desire is both an urge to make unlimited connections, and a universal human torment shared by the poet himself: Honorio is always frustrated when he seeks to resolve his love for Soledad this way. The other universal – presented as Christian in origin – is a having and holding that is free of such frustration and oppression (355–6). This is what Soledad offers to Honorio at the end, reconciling him with herself and with Palanciano. But it is also to be seen in the very transmigration of the poem itself through its own episodes from beginning to providential end. Both universals come together as the expression of the desires of specific persons and communities, as the manner in which a love triangle ultimately transforms into a kind of togetherness. The point of the transmigration of either sort is not the loss of the protagonists’ particular personhood, but rather its expression and realization as universality. For the same reason, the ‘universal drama’ – as presented here to Spaniards – is more often than not focused on events and 51



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characters of importance to Spain from Charles V to Germán de Osorio to Queen Elizabeth I of England. Its longing for universality arises from, and is expressed through, a particular community. In poetic universality, an intimacy is effected between what would otherwise have a confined context in place and time, and what is free of all such limits. At the end of the century, in his En torno al casticisimo (1895), Unamuno undertook once more the task of realizing that marriage through poetics, of thereby finding Spain’s contribution to, and capacity to participate in, universal humanity. Speaking of the protagonist of the Quixote, he exclaims: ‘de puro español llegó a una como renuncia de su españolismo, llegó al espíritu universal, al hombre que duerme dentro de todos nosotros’ (from being a pure Spaniard he came to something like a renunciation of his Spanishness, he came to the universal spirit, to the man who sleeps within us all) (LXXIV). Unamuno holds to no intellectual system or standpoint prior to his own quest for the universal. Rather, his writing transmigrates through En torno following what he calls ‘ritmo’ and ‘ondulación’ (rhythm and undulation) (LXXIV.ii), ‘amontonar metáforas’ (a piling up of metaphors) (LXXVIII.v), ‘retórica’ (rhetoric) (LXXIV, prologue), ‘divagaciones deshilvanadas’ (disjointed meanderings) (LXXVIII.vi).59 In Alex Longhurst’s phrase, Unamuno treats language as ‘a protean and malleable material’.60 In this way, the very words Unamuno uses are both drawn from specific contexts, and freed from them. Systems of thought – psychology, sociology, transcendental philosophy, biology, Christian theology – appear only as instances of this rhythmic swaying, coming and going in the text.61 Characteristically, at one point, Unamuno bookends a pile of mixed metaphors from disparate domains between an erudite reference to British psychology and an allusion to Father Angelo Secchi’s view of physics: Los islotes que aparecen en la conciencia y se separan ó aproximan más, uniéndose á las veces, á medida que el nivel de ella baja ó sube, se enlazan allí, en el fondo del mar mental, en un suelo continuo. Son voces que surgen del rumor del coro, son las melodías de una sinfonía eterna. Figuraos astros rodeados de una extensa atmósfera etérea cada uno, que se acercan en sus movimientos orbitales, y fundiéndose sus atmósferas forman una sola que los envuelve y mantiene unidos y concertados, siendo la razón de su atracción mutua. (LXXV.v) (The islets that appear in consciousness and move further apart or together, sometimes joining up, while the level of the latter falls or rises, intertwine there, in the depths of the mental sea, on a continuous stretch of ground. They are voices that surge up out of the sound of the chorus, they are melodies of an eternal symphony. Imagine stars, every one of them surrounded by an extensive ethereal atmosphere, which grow closer to each other in their orbital movements, and fusing their atmospheres form just one which envelops them and keeps them in unity and concord, being the reason for their mutual attraction.)

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Lurching about in this fashion, Unamuno seeks to buffet the reader through contradictions – the ‘procedimiento rítmico de contradicciones’ (rhythmic process of contradictions), flipping his own arguments from side to side.62 He tells us both that Castile is the true Spain, then that the country’s diverse regionalism is making Castile truly Spanish (LXXV.i). In the second essay, he explains Spanish sensibility on historical grounds, before starting again and doing so on the basis of geography. The outlook Unamuno engenders does not quite have sharp contours, just as it is not quite rooted to a context – it has the air of something defined by boundaries while at the same time not so being. He speaks of ‘esta idea que flota en mi mente sin contornos definidos’ (this idea floating in my mind without clear edges) (LXXVIII.v). To write in this way is to conjure away three spectres. The first is the notion that things are understood only when situated in a confined place and time. Unamuno mocks this ‘pobre historia paleontológica’ (poor paleontological history) (LXXVI.i). It fails to see what resonates beyond historical contexts, digging around instead for ‘certificados históricos’ (historical certificates) (LXXIV, prologue), as it does for the ‘huesos que admiran los osteólogos y paleontólogos en los dramas sarmentosos de Calderón’ (bones admired by osteologists and paleontologists in Calderón’s gnarled plays) (LXXVI.i).63 In its most reactionary form, it closes the doors of one place and time – modernday Spain – to the world beyond, screaming that it will lose its self (LXXIV.i). The second is the opposite: the irrelevance of places and times, the wish to do away with specific contexts, which Unamuno grotesquely evokes as a longing to be conquered (LXXIV.i). The third is the belief that, while there are entities bounded in their own contexts, they are also interconnected. Unamuno is critical of those who carve history into discrete sections and then attempt, contrariwise, to join up those pieces. He observes how the urge to re-connect time periods depends on, is unimaginable without, the obsession with separating them. Scathingly he comments on the efforts of politicians after the 1868 Revolution to make connections between Spain’s present and past: Los que viven en el mundo, en la historia, atados al ‘presente momento histórico’, peloteados por las olas en la superficie del mar donde se agitan naufragio […] creen que puede interrumpirse y reanudarse la vida. Se ha hablado mucho de una reanudación de la historia de España. (LXXIV.iii) (Those who live in the world, in history, tied to the ‘present historical moment’, tossed by the waves on the surface of the sea where shipwrecks are stirred […] believe that life can be interrupted and joined back up. People have spoken a great deal about joining Spain’s history back up)

Unamuno wants us to attend instead to what does the journeying through place and time, what persists and endures, and how it does so. ‘No reanudaron en realidad nada’, he remarks, ‘porque nada se había roto. Una ola no es otra 53



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agua que otra, es la misma ondulación que corre por el mismo mar’ (In reality they joined nothing back up, for nothing had broken. A wave is not some other water than any other, it is the same undulation running through the same sea) (LXXIV.iii). This is what is truly classical, what a given history and location proffers to all humanity: ‘hay un arte eterno y universal, un arte clásico, un arte sobrio en color local y temporal, un arte que sobrevivirá al olvido de los costumbristas todos. Es un arte que toma el ahora y el aquí como puntos de apoyo’ (there is an eternal and universal art, a classical art, an art sober in its use of colour from its place and time, an art that will survive the oblivion awaiting those who describe customs and usages. It is an art that takes the now and here as its supports) (LXXIV.ii). By extension, in its universalism, Unamuno’s writing offers an alternative to three tendencies of our own time, broadly sketched: transnationalism; reception theory; and the injunction always to locate things in place and time, Fredric Jameson’s influential war-cry: ‘Always historicize!’64 The latter requires no further explanation, and Unamuno would clearly reject it. Transnationalism – if the word is to mean anything at all and when it is not employed laxly – signifies the existence of bounded nations whose limits are at the same time traversed.65 This supposes a distinction – however much it might be problematized or hybridized – which Unamuno finds to be at odds with true universality. Reception theory takes all things to mean what any given place and time, a specific context, sees in them. The art historian Christopher S. Wood notes that this entails ‘the inextricability of a […] text from a present-tense reading situation’. Wood goes on to wonder if such an approach can really account for what makes something classical. He recalls instead Warburg’s evocation of something potent transmitted across geography and history.66 In En torno, Unamuno voices a like preoccupation and extends it well beyond the peculiarities of classical antiquity. Things can attain true universality, and when they do so, they bind their originating context to all humanity for future times.

Universality revisited

Many nineteenth-century Spanish subjects longed to be universal. It was a way for a people – fallen from its perch and shoved to the margins – to participate in humanity’s grand design. It was a practical action, a staking out of a place in the sun. It was also in some ways simply a fact about their lives: many Spaniards were dedicated to supranational movements and institutions with universal pretensions, or simply to common concerns of humanity. Powerful ideological preoccupations of our time have prevented serious, positive consideration of their efforts. Some such anxieties are well founded: supposed universal judgements often expressed prejudice. But the censure rests on 54



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something more – or perhaps, better said, something less – than good moral sense. It arises because, always historicizing, critics see in universalism only local interests dressed in finery. The best one could really hope for, in their eyes, is something that criss-crosses the particular. In a way this is quite right: universalism is their opponent, it is what their opening gambit seeks to deny. Conversely, efforts to be universal are redolent with rich possibilities beyond their critics’ worldview. To be universal was to engage with the particular, bringing forth fundamental sense, feeling and action through the specific. It was to recognize that we are creatures of value, choice and judgement, and that these things are also fundamental realities. It was to be a shape-shifter, multiple, fragmenting and reconstituting. It was to accept risk as constitutive of who we are. It was to mutate and experience mutation among endlessly similar entities. It was to embrace poetry at the heart of ourselves, transmigrating, rhythmically swaying through place and time. Above all, it was how particular locations fused with all humanity. These were powerful proposals for how to be in the nineteenth century. More than that, they are resonant suggestions still of how to express Spain’s place – or the place of any peripheral people – in the world.

Notes

 1 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (London: Taylor & Francis, 2005), 422.  2 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 247, 249.  3 For a clear statement of such suspicions, see Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/ Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), x–xi.  4 Stuart Davis, Writing and Heritage in Contemporary Spain: The Imaginary Museum of Literature (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2012), 114 (citing Duncan and Wallach).  5 Antonio Monegal, ‘A Landscape of Relations: Peninsular Multiculturalism and the Avatars of Comparative Literature’, in Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History, and National Identity, ed. Bradley S. Epps and Luis Fernández Cifuentes (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2005), 246.  6 Slavoj Žižek, In Defence of Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008), 179–81, 413–5; Alain Badiou, Being and Event (London: Continuum, 2005), 338–43; David Vilaseca, Hindsight and the Real: Subjectivity in Gay Hispanic Autobiography (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), 19–25; Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs, 310.  7 Donald Wehrs and David Haney, Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature: Ethics and Otherness From Romanticism Through Realism (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2009), 24.  8 Bradley Stephens, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty (London: MHRA, 2011), 10–12 (the quotation is on p. 12).  9 For a more sceptical take on Levinas, see Christopher Norris’s remarks in Life. after.Theory, ed. Michael Payne and John Schad (London: Continuum, 2003), 129.

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10 This is true of a whole range of very different interpretations of the century: Derek Flitter, Spanish Romantic Literary Theory and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Jo Labanyi, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Andrew Ginger, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012). 11 Elisa Martí-López, Borrowed Words: Translation, Imitation, and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Novel in Spain (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002). See also the special issue of Journal of Iberian & Latin American Studies 13:2–3 (2007): Recalcitrant Modernities: Spain, Cultural Difference and the Location of Modernism, ed. Elena Delgado, Jordana Mendelson and Oscar Vázquez. 12 For example, Susan Manning, Poetics of Character: Transatlantic Encounters 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xi–xii. 13 Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 67. 14 David Cannadine, The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences (London: Penguin, 2013), Kindle edition, loc. 4716. 15 The title of a recent, major study of Krausism in Spain underlines how the emphasis tends to stray to nation building even where general philosophical ambitions are carefully considered: Gonzalo Capellán de Miguel, La España armónica: El proyecto del krausismo español para una sociedad en conflicto (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2006). 16 Julián Sanz del Río, C.Cr. Krause, Ideal de la humanidad para la vida (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Galiano, 1860), 3,12. 17 El Museo Universal, Year I, no. 1, 15 January 1857, 1–2. 18 Francisco Pi i Margall, Las nacionalidades (Madrid: Eduardo Martínez, Sucesor de Escribano, 1877), 247. 19 Pi i Margall, Las nacionalidades, 114. 20 Pedro Alejandro Paterno, La familia tagálog en la historia universal (Madrid: Imprenta de los Sucesores de Cuesta, 1892), 61–81. 21 Vicente Puyals de la Bastida, Historia de la numeración con novedades de grande importancia universal (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Minuesa, 1875), 12–14. 22 Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (London: Penguin, 2010), xiii–xv. 23 Nicolás María Serrano y Díez, Compendio de historia universal, segunda edición (Havana: Imprenta de la Correspondencia de Cuba, 1885), 17. 24 Juan Ortega y Rubio, Compendio de historia universal, tercera edición (Valladolid: Imprenta de Hijos de J. Pastor, 1862) (Prólogo a la primera edición, unpaginated). 25 See Raymond Carr, Spain: 1808–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 196–7, 202–4, 244, 255. 26 Francisco Méndez Álvaro and Matías Nieto Serrano, Prontuario universal de ciencias médicas, o sea compendio de todas las materias que abraza la enseñanza médica en las Universidades de España (Madrid: Imprenta de Vicente de Lalama, 1847) (this is the first volume issued). 27 Ildefonso Cerdá, Teoría general de la urbanización, y aplicación de sus principios y doctrinas a la reforma y ensanche de Barcelona (Madrid: [n.pub.], 1867), I: 39, 41.

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28 Pascual Madoz Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar (Madrid: Imprenta de P. Madoz & L. Sagasti, 1846), xi. 29 Constitución política de la Monarquía Española (Valladolid: Editorial Maxtor, 2001), 85, 45. 30 Pedro Mata, Hipócrates y las escuelas hipocráticas: Discurso pronunciado en la solemne apertura de las sesiones del año de 1859 en la Real Academia de Medicina de Madrid por el Doctor Don Pedro Mata socio de número de la misma (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Rojas, 1859), 7, 26. 31 Alejandro Paterno, La familia tagálog en la historia universal (Madrid: Imprenta de los Sucesores de Cuesta, 1892), 138. 32 Narcisco Monturiol, Memoria sobre la navegación submarina por el inventor del Ictíneo o Barco Pez (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Narciso Ramírez, 1860), 53. 33 Miguel de Unamuno, En torno al casticismo: https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/ En_torno_al_casticismo, sections LXXIV.i; LXXVIII (accessed 28 November 2014). I use the online digital resource as it reproduces the original text from the periodical press of 1895. The text appeared in five sections over several months in La España Moderna: LXXIV (February 1895), 17–40; LXXV (March 1895), 57–82; LXXVI (April 1895), 27–58; LXXVII (May 1895), 29–52; LXXVIII (June 1895), 26–45. 34 Kwame Anthony Appiah The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 256. 35 Pi i Margall, Las nacionalidades, 15, 88–9, 118, 294. 36 On Avellaneda’s feminism, see, for example, Brígida Pastor, Fashioning Feminism in Cuba and Beyond: The Prose of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). For a clear account of Avellaneda’s arguments, see Evelyn Picón Garfield, Poder y sexualidad: El discurso de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 41–4. For a more recent account of Avellaneda’s criticism of the political status of women within the Spanish liberal regime, and her assertion of their capacity to govern within the context of contemporaneous debates, see: Mónica Burguera Lopez, ‘“Al Ángel Regio” Respetabilidad femenina y monarquía constitucional en la España posrevolucionaria’, in Culturas políticas monárquicas en la España liberal, ed. Encarna García Monerris, Monica Moreno Seco and Juan I. Marcuello Benedicto (Valencia: Publicaciones de la Universitat de València, 2013 [digital edn, no pagination]). There is a growing bibliography on the writer; the focus in this chapter is solely on her mode of argument in relation to universalisms. 37 Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, ‘La Mujer’, in Obras literarias de la Señora Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Tomo V (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, 1871), 283–306. 38 Melba Cuddy-Keane, Adam Hammond and Alexandra Peat, Modernism: Keywords (Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell, 2014), 231. 39 Sanz del Río, Ideal de la humanidad, 12. 40 Matías Nieto y Serrano, Ensayo de medicina general, o sea de filosofía médica (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel de Rojas, 1860), 13.

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41 Alfonso Moreno Espinosa, Cartilla de historia universal para uso de los niños (Cadiz: Imprenta de la Revista Médica, 1871), 4. 42 Ortega y Rubio, Compendio de historia universal, 12. 43 Ortega y Rubio, Compendio de historia universal, 7–11. 44 Pedro Garriga Marill, Taquigrafía y su historia universal, cuarta edición (Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1879), 9–10. 45 Juan Bautista Carrasco, Mitología universal, historia y esplicación de las ideas religiosas y teológicas de todos los siglos (Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, 1865), 3–33. 46 El Museo Universal, Year I, No. I, 15 January, 1857, 1–2 47 Moreno Espinosa, Cartilla de historia universal para uso de los niños, 3. 48 Ortega y Rubio, Compendio de historia universal, 15. 49 Mariano Laita y Moya Compendio de historia universal (Bilbao: Tipografía de Agustín Emperaile, 1887), 5. 50 Hilary Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 113. For an example of facts as values in nineteenth-century Spanish literature, see Andrew Ginger, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Popular Book as Multiple Media Object’, in Pruebas de imprenta: Estudios sobre la cultura editorial del libro en la España moderna y contemporánea, ed. Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2013), 163–76. 51 Juan de la G. Artero, Atlas de historia universal (Granada: Imprenta de D.F. de los Reyes, 1896). 52 Teodoró Baró, Compendio de historia universal y particular de España, segunda edición (Barcelona: Librería de Juan y Antonio Bastiños, 1880), 201–3. 53 Juan Casañ y Alegre, Curso elemental razonado de historia universal (Valencia: Imprenta de J. Domenech, 1871), x. 54 Serrano y Díez, Compendio de historia universal, 11. 55 Paterno, La familia tagálog, 23–7. 56 Rafael García y Álvarez Nociones de historia natural (Granada: Imprenta de D. Francisco Ventura y Sabatal, 1867), 208. 57 Enrique Serrano and Salvador Calderón, Total organización de la materia (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Tello, 1870), 54. 58 Ramón de Campoamor, El drama universal (Lima: Benito Gil, 1969), 39. 59 For a recent revisiting of the role of analogy and rhetoric in our comprehension of (literary) history, drawing inspiration from nineteenth- and eighteenth-century culture see: Manning, Poetics of Character: Transatlantic Encounters, 1700–1900, xii–xiii. 60 Alex Longhurst, Unamuno’s Theory of the Novel (London: MHRA/Legenda, 2014), 76. 61 Iris Zavala has spoken of how Unamuno’s texts playfully recodify a whole cultural universe into a chorus of diverse voices: Unamuno y el pensamiento dialógico (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991), 60–1. 62 Alison Sinclair echoes many critics when she comments on Unamuno’s love of the creative force of contradiction and his resistance to categorization in Uncovering

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the Mind: Unamuno, the Unknown, and the Vicissitudes of Self (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 13–4, 227. 63 Alex Longhurst remarks on Unamuno’s hostility to ‘academic criticism’ and his preference for ‘creative engagement’. See Unamuno’s Theory of the Novel, 201. He similarly notes how Unamuno closes the distinction between poet and philosopher, 150–1. 64 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1981), 9. 65 Steven Vertovec points to this dual character of socio-cultural transnationalism in Transnationalism (London: Routledge, 2009), 52–3 (see also his comments on the experience of life ‘here’ and ‘there’ among migrants 67–8). In an example of the slippage in the use of the term transnational, Vertovec at one point considers universalism as one of its possible outcomes (155). There is a useful discussion of the term’s definition in Transbordering Latin America: Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (There), ed. Clara Irazábal (London: Routledge, 2014), 2–4. 66 Christopher S. Wood, ‘Envoi: Reception of the Classics’, in Reception of the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition, ed. William Brockliss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 163–73 (163, 171–2).

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) Artero, Juan de la G., Atlas de historia universal (Granada: Imprenta de D.F. de los Reyes, 1896) Badiou, Alain, Being and Event (London: Continuum, 2005) Baró, Teodoró, Compendio de historia universal y particular de España, segunda edición (Barcelona: Librería de Juan y Antonio Bastiños, 1880) Bhabha, Homi, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) Burguera Lopez, Mónica, ‘“Al Ángel Regio” Respetabilidad femenina y monarquía constitucional en la España posrevolucionaria’, in Culturas políticas monárquicas en la España liberal, ed. Encarna García Monerris, Monica Moreno Seco and Juan I. Marcuello Benedicto (Valencia: Publicaciones de la Universitat de València, 2013 [digital edn, no pagination]) Calderón, Salvador, and Enrique Serrano, Total organización de la materia (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Tello, 1870) Campoamor, Ramón de, El drama universal (Lima: Benito Gil, 1969) Cannadine, David, The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Differences (London: Penguin, 2013) Capellán de Miguel, Gonzalo, La España armónica: El proyecto del krausismo español para una sociedad en conflicto (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2006) Carr, Raymond, Spain: 1808–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) Carrasco, Juan Bautista, Mitología universal, historia y esplicación de las ideas religiosas y teológicas de todos los siglos (Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig, 1865)

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Casañ y Alegre, Juan, Curso elemental razonado de historia universal (Valencia: Imprenta de J. Domenech, 1871) Cerdá, Ildefonso, Teoría general de la urbanización, y aplicación de sus principios y doctrinas a la reforma y ensanche de Barcelona (Madrid: [n. pub.], 1867) Constitución política de la Monarquía Española (Valladolid: Editorial Maxtor, 2001) Cuddy-Keane, Melba, Adam Hammond and Alexandra Peat, Modernism: Keywords (Oxford: Wiley/Blackwell, 2014) Davis, Stuart, Writing and Heritage in Contemporary Spain: The Imaginary Museum of Literature (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2012) Delgado, Elena, Jordana Mendelson, and Oscar Vázquez (eds), Recalcitrant Modernities: Spain, Cultural Difference and the Location of Modernism. Special edition of Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 13:2–3 (2007). Foucault, Michel, The Order of Things (London: Taylor & Francis, 2005) Flitter, Derek, Spanish Romantic Literary Theory and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) García y Álvarez, Rafael, Nociones de historia natural (Granada: Imprenta de D. Francisco Ventura y Sabatal, 1867) Garriga Marill, Pedro, Taquigrafía y su historia universal, cuarta edición (Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1879) Ginger, Andrew, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012) —, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Popular Book as Multiple Media Object’, in Pruebas de  imprenta: Estudios sobre la cultura editorial del libro en la España moderna y contemporánea, ed. Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2013), 163–76. Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis, ‘La Mujer’, in Obras literarias de la Señora Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Tomo V (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipia de M. Rivadeneyra, 1871), 283–306 Haney, David, and Donald Wehrs, Levinas and Nineteenth-Century Literature: Ethics and Otherness From Romanticism Through Realism (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2009) Irazábal, Clara (ed.), Transbordering Latin America: Liminal Places, Cultures, and Powers (There) (London: Routledge, 2014) Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1981) Labanyi, Jo, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Laita y Moya, Mariano, Compendio de historia universal (Bilbao: Tipografía de Agustín Emperaile, 1887) Longhurst, Alex, Unamuno’s Theory of the Novel (London: MHRA/Legenda, 2014) Madoz, Pascual, Diccionario geográfico-estadístico-histórico de España y sus posesiones de Ultramar (Madrid: Imprenta de P. Madoz & L. Sagasti, 1846) Manning, Susan, Poetics of Character: Transatlantic Encounters 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

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Martí-López, Elisa, Borrowed Words: Translation, Imitation, and the Making of the Nineteenth-Century Novel in Spain (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2002) Mata, Pedro, Hipócrates y las escuelas hipocráticas: Discurso pronunciado en la solemne apertura de las sesiones del año de 1859 en la Real Academia de Medicina de Madrid por el Doctor Don Pedro Mata socio de número de la misma (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Rojas, 1859) Méndez Álvaro, Francisco, and Matías Nieto Serrano, Prontuario universal de ciencias médicas, o sea compendio de todas las materias que abraza la enseñanza médica en las Universidades de España (Madrid: Imprenta de Vicente de Lalama, 1847) Mignolo, Walter D., Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) Monegal, Antonio, ‘A Landscape of Relations: Peninsular Multiculturalism and the Avatars of Comparative Literature’, in Spain Beyond Spain: Modernity, Literary History, and National Identity, ed. Bradley S. Epps and Luis Fernández Cifuentes (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2005), 231–49 Monturiol, Narcisco, Memoria sobre la navegación submarina por el inventor del Ictíneo o Barco Pez (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Narciso Ramírez) Moreno Espinosa, Alfonso, Cartilla de historia universal para uso de los niños (Cadiz: Imprenta de la Revista Médica, 1871) Nieto y Serrano, Matías, Ensayo de medicina general, o sea de filosofía médica (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel de Rojas, 1860) Nussbaum, Martha, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defence of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) Ortega y Rubio, Juan, Compendio de historia universal, tercera edición (Valladolid: Imprenta de Hijos de J. Pastor, 1862) Pastor, Brígida, Fashioning Feminism in Cuba and Beyond: The Prose of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (New York: Peter Lang, 2003) Paterno, Alejandro, La familia tagálog en la historia universal (Madrid: Imprenta de los Sucesores de Cuesta, 1892) Payne, Michael, and John Schad (eds), Life.after.Theory (London: Continuum, 2003) Picón Garfield, Evelyn, Poder y sexualidad: El discurso de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993) Pi i Margall, Francisco, Las nacionalidades (Madrid: Eduardo Martínez, Sucesor de Escribano, 1877) Putnam, Hilary, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) Puyals de la Bastida, Vicente, Historia de la numeración con novedades de grande importancia universal (Madrid: Imprenta de M. Minuesa, 1875) Sanz del Río, Julián, C.Cr. Krause, Ideal de la humanidad para la vida (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Galiano, 1860) Sen, Amartya, The Idea of Justice (London: Penguin, 2010) Serrano y Díez, Nicolás María, Compendio de historia universal, segunda edición (Havana: Imprenta de la Correspondencia de Cuba, 1885)

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Sinclair, Alison, Uncovering the Mind: Unamuno, the Unknown, and the Vicissitudes of Self (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001) Stephens, Bradley, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty (London: MHRA, 2011) Unamuno, Miguel de, En torno al casticismo: https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/En_ torno_al_casticismo (accessed 28 November 2014) Vilaseca, David, Hindsight and the Real: Subjectivity in Gay Hispanic Autobiography (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003) Vertovec, Steven, Transnationalism (London: Routledge, 2009) Wood, Christopher S., ‘Envoi: Reception of the Classics’, in Reception of the Classics: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Classical Tradition, ed. William Brockliss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 163–73 Zavala, Iris, Unamuno y el pensamiento dialógico (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1991) Žižek, Slavoj, In Defence of Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008)

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How to tell time Geraldine Lawless

Numerous nineteenth-century Spanish works of literature attest to their authors’ concern with how to depict and address temporality, with how to tell time. These concerns were about the relationship between past, present and future and hinged on experiences of continuity and rupture, similarity and difference, circularity and linearity. This chapter reviews some key temporal dilemmas faced by a range of nineteenth-century Spanish writers and explores how they employed a series of narrative and rhetorical techniques to articulate the consequent complexities. Several significant studies have developed conceptual and historical frameworks for understanding the changes in people’s understanding of time in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reinhart Koselleck’s influential model, set out in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (1979), traces the end of historia magistra vitae (history conceived as teacher, through exemplum and analogy) and the rise of a future-oriented model of time.1 Like many others, he highlighted the connection between understanding the past in terms of historical difference and envisaging the future as a world of unimaginable difference.2 Koselleck’s work provides a common and useful point of reference for scholars trying to establish the specifically modern understanding of temporality. In another highly influential study, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space (1977), Wolfgang Schivelbusch looked at the relationship between technological change and experiences of time, to show how the spread of the railway network affected the relationships between time and space.3 Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space (1983) examined the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, expanding temporal categories beyond past, present and future in an examination of a disjuncture between public and private time.4 While studies such as those by Schivelbusch and Kern offer invaluable insights into the changes in the perception and experience of the nineteenth century, their focus on the uniqueness and specificity of these experiences can sometimes be co-opted in 63



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a way that underplays the extent to which multiple temporalities coexisted and overlapped in a given context, sometimes even on a single page. It is the ambivalent, contradictory, multifaceted, even paradoxical understandings of time that this chapter focuses on.

The unique present

Certainly, nineteenth-century Spanish authors repeatedly conveyed their sense of belonging to a unique moment in time. The hero, or anti-hero, of the Galician novelist and poet Rosalía de Castro’s novel El caballero de las botas azules (The knight of the blue boots) (1867) is ‘un héroe de nuestros tiempos’ (a hero of our times).5 In her novel La Tribuna (The Tribune of the People) (1885) Emilia Pardo Bazán, a Galician author famous for – among other things – her leading role in the debates on Naturalism in Spain, describes the man who seduces the heroine as ‘un hijo, no de este siglo, sino de su último tercio, lo cual es más característico y peculiar’ (a son not of this whole century, but of only the last third, which is more characteristic and peculiar).6 According to El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo (Protestantism compared with Catholicism) (1842) by the religious thinker Jaime Balmes, the modern period could be distinguished from the ancient worlds of Carthage, Rome, Athens and Lacedaemon by the rapid and almost synchronous communication of ideas among different societies: Tal es el estado de las sociedades modernas, de tres siglos á esta parte, que todos los hechos que en ellas se verifiquen, han de tomar un carácter de generalidad, y, por tanto, de gravedad, que los ha de distinguir de los mismos hechos, verificados, empero, en otras épocas en que era diferente el estado de las sociedades.7 (Such is the state of modern societies, from three centuries ago to the present, that all the events that take place in them must assume a general nature, and therefore an importance, that distinguishes them from the same events as they took place in other epochs in which the state of societies was different.)

Balmes draws on a model of time that traces change and movement through time, through different phases of civilization. Furthermore, he endorses the development of a methodology to study such changes, ‘estudios que tienen por objeto el hombre y la sociedad ’ (studies that have for their object man and society) are for Balmes ‘un bien sumamente precioso para la ciencia’ (an extremely precious benefit for science and knowledge).8 In The German Historicist Tradition (2011), Frederick Beiser identifies three defining principles: change or ‘the omnipresence of historical change’; individuality or ‘the insistence that the individuality of things […] is as much an object of science as their universality’, and holism or the claim that ‘the whole is prior to its parts and irreducible to them’.9 In the passages quoted 64



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above, Balmes’s historicism meets Beiser’s criteria, as does his exhortation to his readers not to judge men ‘fuera de su lugar y tiempo’ (outwith their place and time).10 Nevertheless, his sense of living in a modern period distinct from any other coexisted happily on the page with the notion that legitimacy was established according to the ability to endure unchanged by history or by time. Defending the Catholic Church from the French historian, Guizot, Balmes claimed that the Church’s stationary, unchanging character was its defining virtue: ‘van ya más de 18 siglos que á la Iglesia se la puede llamar estacionaria en sus dogmas; y ésta es una prueba inequívoca de que ella sola está en posesión de la verdad’ (it is more than eighteen centuries since the Church can be called stationary in its dogmas; and this is an unequivocal proof that only she is in possession of the truth).11

Multiple temporalities

Balmes reserves a separate temporality for the Catholic Church, and this allows him to move comfortably between temporal and atemporal systems, between different forms of knowledge and different judgement criteria. Balmes work was translated into several European languages, and his international audience picked up on his claims about the immutability of Catholicism. ‘As M. Balmes delights to throw around Catholicism the garb of antiquity in order to render it respectable,’ wrote one Napoleon Roussell in 1855, ‘so he likes to keep Protestantism in the cradle, that he may taunt it with the faults of its infancy.’12 What is interesting about Balmes is not so much the historicist elements of his thinking – which by the 1840s was hardly novel – but his selective and strategic approach to temporality. Yet pluralistic understandings and usages of time were not so very uncommon. This does not mean that the writers and thinkers of the 1800s were oblivious to the inconsistencies of their work; rather, they were capable of self-consciously maintaining multiple and sometimes contradictory perspectives simultaneously. Instead of attempting to resolve contradictions or take sides, they deployed different systems of thinking about time in accordance with their particular rhetorical or discursive needs. In ‘Antes, ahora y después’ (Before, now and after) (1837) by Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, author of numerous of sketches of daily life published in the periodical press, several temporal models overlap and intertwine, making this text more complex than a first reading suggests. The narrator introduces himself as a ‘filósofo-observador’ (philosopher-observer).13 Balmes praised the study of man and society; in a similar vein, Mesonero Romanos’s narrator claims to be uniquely competent to ‘apreciar […] el espectáculo que delante se (le) presenta; […] adivinar sus causas, medir sus efectos, calcular sus consecuencias’ (appreciate … the spectacle that presents itself before him … 65



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perceive its causes, measure its effects, calculate its consequences).14 Thus, he can confidently claim that the object of his inquiry in this sketch, womankind, through her influence on men during their formative years, determines ‘el futuro desarrollo de la sociedad’ (the future development of society).15 In what follows – a description of the defining events in the lives of three generations of Spanish women – he attributes failures to both absolutism and liberalism: the character of the eldest woman has been shaped by an excessively authoritarian upbringing while her husband’s sudden and premature death recalls the collapse of the antiguo régimen; her daughter and granddaughter in contrast, have been ruined by freedoms enjoyed under the liberal regime. The political narrative suggests a linear development from absolutism to liberalism, even if this progressive view of history is qualified by ambivalence. However, far from highlighting differences between past, present and future, the stated moral of the story draws attention to the repetitive nature of female behaviour: ‘no hay que dudarlo, lo que fue antes, y lo que es ahora, eso mismo será después’ (there is no doubt, what was before, and what is now, that is what will be after).16 The jovial ‘filósofo-observador’ thus identifies both change and repetition, the linear and the cyclical, as the principles governing collective human experiences of time: politics is linear, human nature, or rather female nature, is bound to an unchanging cycle.

Modernity and progress

Koselleck’s influential Futures Past, where he identified and documented the decline of historia magistra vitae, has informed much writing on the subject of Modernity.17 In the words of his student Niklas Olsen, ‘as a new future was set free, a future that was expected to be radically different from the past and to run along a progressive and singular model, history, as the lessons of the past, lost its position as the teacher of life’.18 Thus it is tempting to read lines such as the following from the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity (2000) as stemming – if not directly – from Koselleck’s work: ‘The history of time began with modernity. Indeed, modernity is, apart from anything else, perhaps even more than anything else, the history of time: modernity is the time when time has a history.’19 In the new understanding of time that emerged during the eighteenth century and after – Koselleck’s thesis runs – the present was considered as a unique and unrepeatable set of circumstances. One, though by no means the only, rendition of this new worldview was the doctrine of Progress, which required an understanding of history that encompassed the future. Thus, J.B. Bury, author of The Idea of Progress (1920), included a chapter on Louis Sébastien Mercier’s L’An 2440 (The year 2440). According to Bury, ‘when, in 1770 Sébastien Mercier described what human civilization would be like in A.D. 2440, it was a telling sign of the 66



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power which the idea of Progress was beginning to exercise’.20 In his book, The History of the Idea of Progress (1980), Robert Nisbet argues that: ‘During the period 1750–1900 the idea of progress reached its zenith in the Western mind in popular as well as scholarly circles.’21 Writing in 1977 in a foreword to the collection Progress and Its Discontents, Joel Colton defined progress as a belief that ‘each generation could look forward to a richer, happier, fuller and more peaceful life for itself and its posterity’.22 As the title of that collection suggests, however, such unqualified optimism was far from ubiquitous. In Spain as elsewhere in Europe and America (north and south), authors increasingly used the future as a setting for their fictions.23 Some of these line up neatly with the doctrine of Progress. In De hoy al final del siglo (From now to the end of the century) by the costumbrista (literature of types) novelist Francisco Álvarez Durán, for example, a mysterious personification of the nineteenth century gives the narrator a stereoscope that uses moving images with sound to show two things that would be achieved by 1899, almost 30 years in the future: controllable flight and perpetual motion. These are added to the already considerable achievements of the century: phosphorous matches, photography, the telegraph, submarines. Changes are considered positive and incremental and slot into a linear model of time.24 Just as De hoy al final del siglo uses a viewing device to portray the future, so too does the anonymously published El anteojo mágico, ó La vision de los dos palacios en el bosque: Alegoría profético-descriptiva de la actual situacion de España (1820) (The magic spyglass, or, The vision of the two palaces in the wood: propheticdescriptive allegory of Spain’s present situation). The work is less emphatic in its affirmation of progress, though it is still optimistic. Two allegorical palaces represent Spain’s two possible futures: ‘en el uno se leía Constitucion, libertad, patriotismo, sabiduría; y en el otro despotismo, esclavitud, ignorancia, fanatismo’ (in one, Constitution, liberty, patriotism, wisdom could be read; and in the other, despotism, slavery, ignorance, fanaticism). At the end of the short work ‘se tragó el criminal palacio, desapareciendo con él para siempre la opresion, la arbitrariedad, el fanatismo, la ignorancia’ (the criminal palace was swallowed, disappearing with it forever oppression, arbitrariness, fanaticism, ignorance).25 Clearly, then, some texts were unambiguous and enthusiastic in their approach to specific future-oriented political projects and organized their ideas according to the doctrine of Progress. Nevertheless, Paul Alkon, author of The Origins of Futuristic Fiction (1987) has rightly warned scholars of futuristic fiction against reading the genre solely as a corollary of the idea of progress. In fact, he argues, ‘In the first half of the nineteenth century, there is a proliferation of tales that seem to have little in common beyond their resort to future time’.26 We should not succumb to the temptation of classifying them according to their attitudes to the idea of progress, reducing them to advocates or sceptics. Much of the f­uturistic 67



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fiction published in Spain in the nineteenth century bears out Alkon’s warning by adopting sceptical and complex attitudes towards change, rather than endorsing simplistic views of the for-or-against variety. I have argued elsewhere that ‘Madrid en el siglo XXI’ (Madrid in the twenty-first century) (1847) by Antonio Neira de Mosquera, Ayer, hoy y mañana (Yesterday, today and tomorrow) (1863–64) by Antonio Flores, ‘Cuento futuro’ (Future story) (1886) by Leopoldo Alas (Clarín), and a series of novels by Juan Bautista Amorós (Silverio Lanza) set in the fictional country of Atargea (1889–93), all resist neat categorization.27 As the preceding discussion of Balmes’s El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo and Mesonero Romanos’s ‘Antes, ahora y después’ shows, multiple temporalities could coexist and interact to form a complex scaffolding for different types of propositions and arguments. There was nevertheless a widespread sense, first, that there was something unique and unprecedented about life as it was being experienced in the nineteenth century and, second, that tradition and repetition had been replaced by novelty and change as the dominant principles informing human understanding of time. The evidence to support Koselleck’s identification of a decline in historia magistra vitae – with ‘its instruments (parallelism and analogy), and its principle (imitation)’28 – is plentiful. The past became a foreign country whose rules and practices were only of contemporary relevance in so far as they indicated the direction and contours of change. Precedent not only no longer conferred legitimacy, it obstructed progress, and similarity and repetition represented failure, as shown in the following quotations from, first, Cuestión pontificia (The pontifical question) (1855) by the republican historian Roque Barcia and second, La reacción y la revolución (Reaction and revolution) (1854) by the federalist politician and historian, Francisco Pi y Margall: Erigir la sancion del tiempo en derecho de la rutina, equivale vigorosamente a hacer imposible el progreso humano.29 (Proclaiming the sanction of time as a defence of routine, forcefully equates to making human progress impossible.) Me importa poco que la monarquía venga rodeada de esplendor y apoyada por una larga y muy brillante historia: si la historia la legitima en lo pasado, no puede legitimarla en lo presente.30 (I care little that the monarchy has been surrounded by splendour and supported by a long and very brilliant history: if history legitimized it in the past, it cannot legitimize it in the present.)

Modesto Lafuente – ‘the first national historian of modern Spain and the real founder of modern Spanish historiography’31 – in his prologue to volume one of the first edition of the Historia general de España (General history of Spain) 68



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(1850–67) articulated precisely this shift. Although history continues to teach, it does not do so through exemplum and anecdote: ‘para que la historia haga efectivo el título de maestra con que la definió Cicerón, para que sus lecciones puedan ser provechosas á la humanidad … necesita salir de la esfera de una vasta colección de hechos’ (in order for history to make the title of teacher, with which Cicero defined it, a reality, in order for its lessons to be useful to humanity … it must go beyond the realm of a vast collection of facts).32 These ‘arsenales de noticias’ (arsenals of news) were insufficiently interpretative, insufficiently analytical and insufficiently philosophical.33 Lafuente articulates his role in terms that recall Mesonero Romanos’s ‘filósofo-observador’, though on a much grander scale. Although the unprecedented nature of contemporary society was a point made repeatedly, not all historical events were judged to be equally important. Progress tended to assume an ahistorical or transhistorical form, particularly when changes in social structures during the transition from past to present and on into the future were expressed in terms of set laws that were true for all times and all places, like the laws governing the natural world. In these cases, the local and the specific became almost incidental. Lafuente’s ‘Discurso preliminar’ (Preliminary discourse) in the Historia general de España, for example, sets out to examine the genesis, evolution and tenacity of the Spanish nation. This is combined with an affirmation of ‘la progresiva perfectabilidad de la sociedad humana’ (the progressive improvement of human society).34 While evidence of progress is found in the differences between any given period and its predecessor, the broad narrative is more important to Lafuente’s argument than individual events. The sack of Rome or the terror of the French Revolution may appear to controvert the doctrine of Progress, but these are mere momentary lapses, flaws in human understanding rather than a failure of the laws of history: ‘nos lo enseña la historia de todos los siglos … la humanidad no deja de ir progresando siempre, aunque á veces parece retroceder’ (the history of all centuries teaches us this … humanity never stops progressing, although sometimes it seems to go backwards).35 Pi y Margall, equally set on demonstrating that ‘la ley de la historia es el progreso’ (the law of history is progress),36 made similar claims about events in history that, on the surface, seemed to give the lie to future-oriented trajectories: Comienzo por interrogar la conciencia de cuantos han leido en la historia de los siglos: ¿Qué gran calamidad, qué desastre han encontrado que no haya contribuido poderosamente á acelerar el desarollo de la especie humana?37 (I begin by interrogating the conscience of all those who have read in the history of the centuries: what great calamity, what disaster have they found that has not powerfully contributed to the acceleration of the development of the human species?)

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Measurements and timescales

In both these examples, time is measured on a scale that corresponds to the rise and fall of nations in relation to the development of humanity more generally. Viewed thus, the local, the personal and the individual event are secondary. There were, however, other scales by which to measure the passage of time, and writers frequently mixed their gauges. A striking example of this occurs in a work by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, author of short stories and novellas, ‘La comendadora’, published in El Museo Universal on 11 April 1868.38 The story is set in the ancien régime and begins with a picture of perpetual renewal: Hará cosa de un siglo que cierta mañana de marzo, a eso de las once, el sol, tan alegre y amoroso en aquel tiempo como hoy que principia la primavera de 1868, y como lo verán nuestros biznietos dentro de otro siglo (si para entonces no se ha acabado el mundo)39 (It must be about a century ago one March morning, at around 11 o’clock, the sun, as happy and affectionate then as today at the beginning of the spring of 1868 and as our great-grandchildren will see it within another century (if by then the world has not come to an end)).

In this passage, the reader’s experience of time stretching out in both directions in endless cycles of seasonal and generational renewal is interrupted by a parenthetical aside in which time is measured on an entirely different scale. The movement from human to terrestrial time shatters illusions of permanence just as it trivializes the end of human life. The disconcerting effect is achieved by the speed with which Alarcón moves from a spring morning to the end of the world and by the abrupt transition from endlessly repetitive cycles to a linear model of time taken to its dramatic conclusion. Even H.G. Wells’s time traveller paused a few times on his journey to the end of the world. Fernando Garrido, the author, politician and painter, also swapped his measurement rods when it suited his needs. La humanidad y sus progresos (Humanity and its advances) (1867) narrates historical events in order to ‘afirmar en los ánimos el convencimiento de la fatalidad del progreso para la humanidad’ (affirm in people’s spirits the conviction that progress is the destiny of humankind).40 Nevertheless, Garrido recognizes that Progress does not include everyone; it may be the destiny of humankind, yet it is possible that ‘no todos sus miembros sean capaces de comprenderlo ni de realizarlo, y de que caigan desfallecidos en la mitad del camino por falta de fuerzas los que dirigieron la marcha hasta cierto límite’ (not all its members may be capable of understanding it or fulfilling it, and that those who led the march up to a certain limit may fall, collapsing halfway along the road due to a lack 70



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of strength).41 The specific problem for Garrido was that Spain’s uneasy relationship with modernity meant that it was lining up to be just one such unfortunate casualty. He argued his way out from beneath these spectres of decline by attributing free will to nations; those clever enough to work out the laws governing history could take pre-emptive measures. Then, he made an explicit appeal to the differences between timescales. At one extreme, individuals grew old and died. At another, stars and planets did the same. Humanity’s collective timescale lay somewhere between. Thus, the human race would face extinction at some point, but ‘no hay el menor fundamento para suponer que la humanidad ha salido todavía de la infancia’ (there is not the smallest foundation for thinking that humanity has yet emerged from infancy).42 Between the life-cycle of the individual and the end of the world, nations that could exercise some control over the future would get along just fine. Consequently, any suggestion of Spain’s irreversible decline could be waved aside.

Literary genres

As well as shifting between timescales like so many discursive gears, nineteenth-century authors mingled literary genres to manipulate their expression of temporal experience. Antonio Flores’s seven-volume tour de force, Ayer, hoy y mañana blends costumbrismo (the literature of types) with the newly emerging genre of futuristic fiction and with the folletín (serial publication).43 The work attacks the credibility of costumbrista typologies by juxtaposing techniques used to capture local colour and convey authenticity with detailed descriptions of a future society which cannot but be hypothetical. The inclusion of the future in the three-part structure of past, present and future gives the lie to its taxonomic and encyclopedic claims to veracity. Flores was not the only author to use genre combinations to represent multiple temporalities. Though Alarcón’s El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) (1874) is not usually placed under the rubric of the historical novel, it displays many of the key features of this genre: it is set in the past, indeed in the same year (1805) as the first episodio nacional (national episode), Trafalgar (Trafalgar) (1873), by Benito Pérez Galdós, the prolific author of Realist novels and historical fiction set in the recent past, and was published around the same time. Alarcón’s work, like that of Galdós, is clearly concerned with debates about the scope for the historical novel to bring the past alive to its readers. As well as being a work of historical fiction, Alarcón’s novella is an adaptation of a folktale. Juxtaposing a genre that thrives on endless repetition (the folktale) with one that appeals to a unique historical moment (the historical novel) forces the reader to flit between two temporalities. The prologue frames the work within an oral tradition that was near extinction by the time the 71



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a­ uthor-narrator put pen to paper. Sitting by the fireside, Tío Repela repeated aloud, possibly for the last time, a tale that had already been told numberless times: Andando los años, hemos oído muchas y muy diversas versiones de aquella misma aventura de El Molinero y la Corregidora, siempre de labios de graciosos de aldea y de cortijo, por el orden del ya difunto Repela, y además la hemos leído en letras de molde en diferentes Romances de ciego y hasta en el famoso Romancero del inolvidable D. Agustín Durán.44 (Over the years we have heard many and diverse versions of the tale of The Miller and the Corregidor’s Wife, always from the lips of village or farmyard wits of the same ilk as the late Repela, and we have also seen it in print in various ‘Ballads of Blind Singers’ and even in the unforgettable D. Agustin Duran’s famous Collection of Ballads.)

The prologue invokes a time of endless repetition, while simultaneously inscribing it with obsolescence. Similarly, the work is populated with stock characters who should not be quite so susceptible to the vagaries of time and place – a lustful official and his sidekick, a benevolent and abstemious bishop, a faithful but much-maligned wife, a chorus of loyal servants – yet despite these timeless characters and the repetitive nature of the oral tradition, the first line of the novella situates it firmly in 1805 at the start of the nineteenth century, ‘después del de 4 y antes del de 8’ (after 1804 and before 1808).45 This inclusion of a specific year, and one that immediately preceded the upheavals commonly used to mark the beginning of the modern period in Spain, contradicts the prologue, which would have us see a tale whose origins have been lost in the mists of time.46 Again, a particular model of time is simultaneously, and self-consciously, invoked and repealed. Despite the numerous historical novels published in Spain in the first half of the nineteenth century – Mariano José de Larra’s El doncel de don Enrique el Doliente (Don Enrique the Sorrowful’s page) (1834), José de Espronceda’s Sancho Saldaña, o El castellano de Cuéllar (Sancho Saldaña, or The Castilian from Cuellar) (1834), Ramón López Soler’s Los bandos de Castilla (The factions of Castile) (1830), or Enrique Gil y Carrasco’s El señor de Bembibre (The Lord of Bembibre) (1844) – it has been said that it only emerged in Spain in any substantive sense with Galdós’s Episodios nacionales and the novel of the recent past;47 earlier attempts were too derivative, depending too heavily on Walter Scott to excite any interest. As in Alarcón’s El sombrero de tres picos, or even Flores’s Ayer, hoy y mañana, in Galdós’s national-historical series the setting is the relatively recent past. And again, generic miscellany and playful narrative feature prominently. Martin-Márquez, in a detailed discussion of Aita Tettauen (The War of Tetuán) (1905) and Carlos VI en la Rápita (Carlos VI in La Rápita) (1905) shows how this pair of episodios attacks narratives 72



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of civilization and backwardness through a playful and ironic use of narrative perspective in describing the Moroccan campaign of 1859–60 and the subsequent Carlist escapades in Catalonia.48 Later Galdós would problematize the historical novel even further. La Primera República (The First Republic) (1911), the episodio that deals with the period of Spanish history during which Alarcón was writing El sombrero de tres picos, takes its picaresque narrator Tito Liviano on a subterranean journey of magic, myth and fantasy from the centre of Madrid to the Cantonalist revolts of Cartagena. The narrator is instructed to ‘(borrar) de su mente … las palabras tarde y temprano, que aquí no existe esa forma de apreciar el tiempo’ (delete from his mind … the words early and late, as here that form of appreciating time does not exist).49 When the travellers emerge from the allegorical bowels of the earth, in a passage that disposes of any remaining shred of historiographical gravitas (and possibly also pokes fun at scientific romances such as Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864)), Tito is ironically hailed as an ‘ilustre historiador’ (illustrious historian) and ‘el erudito más concienzudo que cuenta en su seno la Academia de la Historia’ (the most conscientious scholar that the Academy of History numbers within its ranks).50 According to Jerome de Groot, the historical novel has always been ‘obsessed with pointing out its own partiality, with introducing other voices and undermining its authority’.51 And Pilar Hualde Pascual’s recent discussion of López Soler’s Las ruinas de Persépolis (The ruins of Persepolis) (1832) makes it clear that one of Walter Scott’s earliest Spanish translators and emulators was perfectly aware of these strategies.52 There is nothing particularly postmodern about metafiction and pastiche; both were used extensively in nineteenth-century fictional considerations of the historical moment. One of the questions these devices helped to pose was whether or not it was possible for the nineteenth-century mind to understand, for example, a medieval worldview, or if in fact the differences in the mores and customs, the mass of details that made up daily life, precluded any such understanding. Alarcón nods to these debates and to Spain’s supposedly anomalous position in the linear trajectory of European history on the first page of El sombrero de tres picos where he notes ‘la singularidad de nuestra patria en aquellos tiempos’ (the singularity of our native land in those times).53 The heading of the second chapter draws attention to the changes that have occurred since the time in which the events took place: ‘De cómo vivía entonces la gente’ (How people lived then).54 Later, a sinister knock in the middle of the night prompts the main protagonists, the miller and his wife, to ask each other how they would respond if circumstances were different: ‘como entonces yo sería otro y no el que soy ahora, no puedo figurarme lo que pensaría’ (If I were not the same person as I am now I couldn’t possibly say what I would think).55 This leaves 73



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the reader in something of a quandary: if it is impossible to understand how someone else thinks, then how can we understand the thoughts and actions of the characters in the book? The then and now of the story, the time of the narrative, the time of narration and the moment of reading would be immiscible, the whole premise of the novella preposterous.

Using multiple temporalities

James D. Fernández’s study of El sombrero de tres picos argued that: nostalgia for the past, though it does appear, is quickly eroded by irony; the text’s irony is often tinged with nostalgia. This very wavering, though, was by no means peculiar to Alarcón and constitutes an important part of the ideological context of the moment: ambivalence was everywhere to be found in 1874.56

Fernández quotes Alarcón and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, a Spanish poet and story-writer active in the 1850s and 1860s, as evidence of a self-conscious compartmentalization of attitudes to nostalgia and progress: as poets, these writers were nostalgic while as political men, they valued progress. Pereda’s short piece ‘El fin de una raza’ (The end of a race) (1880) references a similar distinction when he laments the loss of traditional and occupation-specific clothing in favour of fashionable clothes that do not betray class or profession: Sobre los restantes del gremio ha pasado ya el prosaico rasero que nivela y confunde y amontona clases, lenguas y aspiraciones. La filosofía lo aplaude y lo ensalza como una conquista. Hace bien, si tiene razón; pero yo lo deploro, porque el arte lo llora.57 (The prosaic rod that levels and confuses and lumps together classes, tongues and aspirations, has already run over the rest of the gang. Philosophy applauds this and acclaims it as a conquest. It does well, if it is right; but I deplore it, because art laments it.)

What is significant about this passage – and about Fernández’s reading of Alarcón and Bécquer – is that it underlines the ways in which nineteenthcentury writers conceived of time as paradoxical, contradictory and amenable to manipulation. Alarcón and his contemporaries were aware of these contradictions; they were not the victims of intellectual blindness nor dupes of modernity. Nor, however, were they the dissembling victors in a competitive race to the vanguard of progress. In Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (1983), Johannes Fabian discusses another usage of multiple temporalities. He argues that twentieth-century anthropologists and ethnographers employ two contradictory modes of time in their research: their fieldwork demands that they think of themselves as coexisting with another culture, while when they 74



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communicate their findings to their scholarly peers back home, it is ‘from a position which denies coevalness to the object of inquiry’.58 Fabian calls this allochronism. He links it to a secularization and spatialization of time that occurred in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: travelling in space became, if not quite synonymous, at least closely associated with travelling in time: It was Degérando who expressed the temporalizing ethos of an emerging anthropology in this concise and programmatic formula: ‘The philosophical traveller, sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact travelling in time; he is exploring the past; every step he makes is the passage of an age’.59

Pardo Bazán’s typology of Spanish women, published first in 1889 in The Fortnightly Review and later revised and translated for La España Moderna (Modern Spain), provides an example of this temporal othering. ‘In Spain,’ she says, schematically listing the characteristics of women from the different Spanish regions, ‘the common people more than any other class preserve the national character and the fundamental ideas and feelings consecrated by tradition.’60 Once they enter the modern world of education, constitutions and liberalism, their character will be lost. Madrid’s chula (lower-class woman from Madrid), for example, is ‘a survival of the past, a relic of old Spain’; ‘if she were capable of education … she would no longer be a chula’. The women of the Basque provinces are ‘one more sacrifice that the new Spain has been obliged to offer up on the altar of constitutional liberty’.61 Pardo Bazán, publishing in English – to begin with at least – and addressing a non-Spanish audience, sets herself apart from her subjects; they live in the past, she in the present. Even more significantly, if Spanish lower-class women do catch up, their defining characteristics will be obliterated in the process and they will no longer be themselves. Pardo Bazán was repeating a familiar idea: that these women were the unwitting custodians of an atavistic Spanish identity that was being eclipsed by the modern age. Thus, in 1843, the dramatist and writer Manuel Bretón de los Herreros in a costumbrista sketch in the collection Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Spaniards painted by themselves) (1843) had already lamented the decline of Spanish women, and the Spanish pueblo more generally. ‘Hoy dia’ he tells us, ‘no son nuestras Castañeras sombra de lo que fueron … aquella fuerza varonil … pertenece a la historia’ (Today … our [female] chestnut sellers are not a shadow of what they were … that masculine strength … belongs to history).62 In La conquista del reino de Maya por el último conquistador español Pío Cid (The conquest of the kingdom of Maya by the last Spanish conquistador Pío Cid) (1897), the novelist, essayist and diplomat, Ángel Ganivet parodies precisely the sort of duplicitous temporality that Fabian attacks and that Pardo Bazán and Bretón de los Herreros exemplify. Ganivet’s specific target 75



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was the narrative of progress adopted in colonial projects, but the work was written against the backdrop of the loss of the majority of Spain’s colonies in the 1820s and 1830s, combined with the more pressing concerns of a tense situation in Cuba, and increasingly bellicose relations with the United States. The eponymous Pío Cid – whose name and title make obvious reference to the medieval epic, the Cantar de mío Cid (Song of the Cid) as well as to the Spanish conquistadors – travels to an imaginary African country,63 immediately assumes the throne, and modernizes it through the introduction of Western practices such as money, alcohol and slavery, before returning to Madrid penniless and destitute.64 Nineteenth-century concerns about Spain’s position in the geographies of time, however, make this a particularly complex text, as Martin-Márquez’s extensive discussion demonstrates.65 By arriving late and rehashing the putative successes of modernity, the kingdom of Maya – and by extension Spain and its ‘last conquistador’ – was in fact failing. Whereas repetition had previously conferred meaning and ­legitimacy, the narratives of Progress turned repetition into a mark of failure. In the words of Cairns Craig, the historian and critic of Scottish literature: For the most advanced there is no repetition, and everything is unique; their experience prefigures what everyone else will experience as a repetition, a postfiguration of an already accomplished narrative. For the rest, narrative is not the dramatic recuperation of a past type but simply the re-enactment of events whose significance has already been exhausted.66

The future and the new

In some analyses, these shifting sands of repetition and novelty define the modern age. In the 1930s, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga proposed that the unique distinguishing feature of the crisis-consciousness typified in Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918) was the unidirectional nature of time; the return to a perfect past was no longer an option and consequently crises had to be worked through to a new and creative solution, rather than unpicked and factory settings restored.67 The political philosopher David Carvounas similarly reads early twenty-first-century approaches to temporality as reaching a crisis point. In modernity: the dominance of the past over the present and future [... gave ...] temporality its general coherence. Once the past could no longer perform this role, a new way to coordinate the modes of time became imperative. And it was to the future that modernity turned for this subtle yet demanding task.68

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, this futureoriented temporality was disrupted again as novelty became the norm: 76



How to tell time As we look upon ideas of progress, upon philosophies of history, and upon future-oriented utopias with a jaundiced eye, we lose that which gave the modern present a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and a sense of destiny. As a result our present is becoming directionless, purposeless, and ever more dangerous. Temporality is being disrupted once again.69

Because of the pace of change, ‘accelerated innovation and the quick rise and even quicker decay of fads, fashions and technologies produce a momentum of change that appears as if static’, the future ceases to hold any novelty and becomes merely more of the same: ‘the new is no longer new and the futureoriented temporality with which it was once entwined is eroded instead of reinforced’.70 This, Carvounas claims, is a specifically twentieth-century crisis. Problems with this account arise not only from the complex and qualified nostalgia of El sombrero de tres picos, but from the fact that novelty had become passé long before the arrival of Carvounas’s crisis. Ganivet’s La conquista del reino de Maya illustrates how novelty and innovation were viewed with suspicion. Yet even before the fin de siglo, indeed before the 1868 Revolution, novelty fatigue was evident. Thus, the narrator of tomorrow’s world in Flores’s Ayer, hoy y mañana comments that ‘es difícil encontrar nada nuevo … la moda es una gran coleccion de antifaces que alternativamente se van poniendo los siglos para coquetear con la humanidad’ (it is difficult to find anything new … fashion is a great collection of masks that the centuries place on themselves to flirt with humanity).71 Another example appears in Rosalía de Castro’s self-reflexive novel El caballero de las botas azules. The novel is concerned with the relationship between past, present and future and particularly with the way this plays out on the stage of literary experiment, originality and tradition. Castro uses a Faustian prologue to frame the work and guide her readers, a dialogue between ‘Un hombre y una musa’ (A man and a muse).72 The man – an indiano (an emigrant to South America who returned to Spain having made his fortune) and government minister – is disillusioned with worldly success and makes a bid for immortality by appealing to the Muse for poetic inspiration: ‘quiero que la fama lleve mi nombre de pueblo en pueblo, de nación en nación y que no cesen de repetirlo las generaciones venideras, en el transcurso de muchos siglos’ (I want fame to carry my name from people to people, from nation to nation and for future generations never to cease repeating it, over the course of many centuries).73 The Muse’s reply highlights the inconsistency of the aspiring writer’s request: he wants to replace the old art forms with something new, but he also craves posthumous fame. He wants to both break from and be inscribed within tradition. The man mounts a defence, which the Muse easily demolishes: Hombre. Gustar de lo nuevo no es despreciar lo viejo. Musa. No se desprecia, pero se olvida, no llena ya las exigencias de las descontentadizas criaturas … no basta a satisfacerles.74

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To like the new is not to despise the old. It is not despised, but forgotten, it no longer meets the demands of hard-to-please kids … it is not enough to satisfy them.)

The Muse has been around since the time of Cain, but she is called Novedad (Novelty); she advises the poet to break with tradition and also reminds him of his despair when, clutching at inspiration, he finds that ‘¡Nada nuevo te restaba ya!’ (Nothing new was left to you any more).75 This combination enacts the disappearance of the past as a model that can structure the present but also questions the value of looking to the future for something new and, indeed, the value of novelty itself. Throughout the rest of the novel, men and women of all classes repeatedly fall victim to fashions, both literary and sartorial, while the eponymous hero reveals, time after time, the worthlessness of novelty.

Writing literary history

Castro and also Flores, neither of whom figure large in the canons of nineteenth-century fiction, present the literary historian with a problem. Their works suggest that the crisis of late modernity identified by theorists such as Carvounas was not quite so late after all. Literary criticism and literary history that deals with the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Spain is often snagged thus. When examining metafictional experiment in El caballero de las botas azules, critics have sometimes felt the need to project it onto the early twentieth century and beyond for a critical and explanatory framework.76 Catherine Davies in her study of Spanish women writers (1998) notes that the ‘poet Rosalía de Castro (1837–85) was ignored until she was rediscovered posthumously as the Spanish “precursor” of Modernismo’.77 Criticism of Ganivet’s work has been overwhelmingly informed by his putative status as precursor.78 As José Luis Abellán has pointed out, this is partly because the members of the so-called Generation of 1898 described him as such.79 But it is also because his fiction displays characteristics that we are more used to associating with the twentieth century. Thus, for Matthew Marr writing in 2001, Los trabajos del infatigable creador Pío Cid (The labours of the indefatigable creator Pio Cid) (1898) ‘evinces the hallmarks of a thoroughly twentieth-century text’.80 Although for different reasons, Juan Bautista Amorós (better known by his pseudonym Silverio Lanza) is also considered in terms of his status as precursor. In 1985, Miguel Ángel Lozano Marco observed that a ‘constante en la valoración de la obra de Lanza es la de su condición de precursor, calificativo que, junto con el de raro, se le viene aplicando de forma reiterada’ (constant in the evaluation of Lanza’s work is his status as a precursor, a term that, together 78



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with that of ‘odd’, has been repeatedly applied to him).81 On 16 August 1912, a few months after Amorós’s death in April 1912, the writer and critic Azorín wrote in the leading newspaper ABC: ‘Se halla Lanza dentro de cierta tradición española de escritores raros. Recuérdese á D. Miguel de los Santos Álvarez y á Ros de Olano’ (Lanza belongs in a certain Spanish tradition of rare or strange writers. Recall Don Miguel de los Santos Álvarez and Ros de Olano).82 The less obvious implication of Azorín’s statement went relatively unnoticed until fairly recently: precisely because of the experimental qualities of his writing, Amorós (Lanza) belonged to an identifiable group, which one might even call a literary movement. Despite the obvious shared enjoyment of literary experiment among an assortment of nineteenth-century authors (Ros de Olano, Santos Álvarez, Castro, Flores, Lanza, Ganivet, even Alarcón), literary historians remain attached to the idea that they are the precursors of the writers of the Generation of 1898. Nevertheless, an increasing number of scholars have worked to approach and revise the nineteenth-century canon in a less derisory fashion; indeed, richer, more contextually sensitive approaches are increasingly the norm in literary criticism on nineteenth-century Spain. To give but a few examples, Andrew Ginger has studied literary experiment in the work of Antonio Ros de Olano, Miguel de los Santos Álvarez, José de Espronceda and others, setting this in a broad European framework;83 Lee Fontanella and Rebecca Haidt have considered the productive relationship between technology and literature in works that emerged in the context of periodical publications;84 Noël Valis, in The Culture of Cursilería (2002) explores some of the contradictory attitudes that informed understandings of lo cursi;85 Lisa Surwillo’s book Monsters by Trade (2014) places slavery and slave trafficking at the centre of her study of nineteenth-century Spanish literature and culture and draws out the long-term differences between the debates as they were staged in Spain and elsewhere, as well as demonstrating how interpretation of the events of 1898 has distorted our understanding of the literature of nineteenth-century Spain.86 Happily, the message is also starting to filter through to the wider understanding of Spanish literature: thus, the 2013 essay by English and comparative literature scholar, Marius Hentea, ‘The Problem of Literary Generations’ does a thorough job of dispensing with the customary thesis that the authors of the so-called Generation of 1898 represented a radical break with the past. Hentea draws on the words of Azorín, Maeztu, Unamuno, as well as more recent critics to support his case.87

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Conclusion: How to manipulate time and how to write literary history

This chapter has made two main points. The first is that Spanish authors of all types were deliberately, and self-consciously, inconsistent in how they manipulated time. They did not attempt to resolve the paradoxes they created; rather, they called on different temporal models and different timescales according to their specific conceptual and rhetorical needs. The second point is that narratives which describe the nineteenth century as a time of optimism about the future and linear narratives, and the twentieth century as a time of jaded thinking, novelty fatigue and chronological disturbances, are flawed and overly simplistic. The fact that analyses of nineteenth-century literary fiction in Spain were in the past so often forced to draw upon a vocabulary that describes these authors as ahead of their times is symptomatic of this wider problem, while the proliferation of studies that, whether directly or indirectly, undermine such simplifications is evidence of the new life breathing through the study of nineteenth-century Spanish literature.

Notes

 1 Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).  2 See, for example, Johan Huizinga, In the Shadow of To-morrow: A Diagnosis of the Spiritual Distemper of Our Time, trans. Jacob Herman Huizinga (London and Toronto: William Heinemann, 1936); Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (London: Heinemann, 1980); J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Growth and Origin (New York: Dover, 1955); W.H.G. Armytage, Yesterday’s Tomorrows: A Historical Survey of Future Societies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).  3 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986).  4 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983).  5 Rosalía de Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, ed. Ana Rodríguez Fischer (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000), 105, emphasis in original. Unless otherwise stated, all translations provided are my own.  6 Emilia Pardo Bazán, La Tribuna, ed. Marisa Sotelo Vázquez (Madrid: Alianza, 2002), 134. The translation is from The Tribune of the People, trans. Walter Borenstein (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999), 115.  7 Jaime Balmes, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilización europea, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Imprenta de José Tauló, 1842), 47. Where the original quotations are from nineteenth-century editions, the original spelling and accentuation has been reproduced.

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 8 Balmes, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo, 1:5, emphasis in original.  9 Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 4. 10 Balmes, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo, 1:36. 11 Balmes, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo, 1:40. 12 Napoleon Roussell, Catholic and Protestant Nations Compared in their Relations to Wealth, Knowledge, and Morality (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855), 248. 13 Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, ‘Antes, ahora y después’, in Escenas matritenses, ed. Ramón Gómez de la Serna, 3rd edn (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964), 96. 14 Mesonero Romanos, ‘Antes, ahora y después’, 96. 15 Mesonero Romanos, ‘Antes, ahora y después’, 96. 16 Mesonero Romanos, ‘Antes, ahora y después’, 110. 17 See for example Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, vol. 3 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988); David Carvounas, Diverging Time: The Politics of Modernity in Kant, Hegel, and Marx (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002). 18 Niklas Olsen, History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2012), 147. 19 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 110. 20 J.B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, 193. 21 Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, 171. 22 Joel Colton, ‘Foreword’, in Progress and Its Discontents, ed. Gabriel A. Almond, Marvin Chodorow and Roy Harvey Pearce (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), x. 23 See Paul K. Alkon, The Origins of Futuristic Fiction (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987); Geraldine Lawless, ‘The Problem of the Future and Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Hispanic Research Journal 16:2 (2015), 147–62; Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán (trans. and ed.), Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain, Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction Series (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003). 24 Francisco Álvarez Durán, De hoy al final del siglo, ó sea el día de mañana. Cuento fantástico (Llerena: José de Amaya y González, 1870). 25 El anteojo mágico, ó La vision de los dos palacios en el bosque: Alegoría proféticodescriptiva de la actual situacion de España (Oviedo: La Oficina de D. Francisco Cándido Pérez Prieto, 1820), 9, 19. The work is signed with the initials DJAR 26 Alkon, The Origins of Futuristic Fiction, 192. 27 See ‘The Problem of the Future and Nineteenth-Century Spain’; Modernity’s Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-Century Stories (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2011); ‘New New Worlds: Historia de un pueblo and Un drama en el siglo XXI ’, in Echoes of 1812: The Cadiz Constitution in Hispanic History, Culture and Politics, ed. Adam Sharman and Stephen Roberts (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013), 226–41. 28 Chryssanthi Avlami, ‘From Historia Magistra Vitae to History as Empirical Experimentation of Progress’, trans. Ágnes Bezeczky, in Multiple Antiquities, Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth-Century European Cultures,

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ed. Gábor Klaniczay, Michael Werner and Ottó Gecser (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2011), 138. 29 Roque Barcia, Cuestion pontificia (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico R. Vicente, 1855), 87. 30 Francisco Pi y Margall, La reacción y la revolución. Estudios políticos y sociales (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipía de M. Rivadeneyra, 1854), 1:234–5. 31 Xosé-Manoel Núñez, ‘Historical Writing in Spain and Portugal’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing 1800–1945, ed. Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca and Attila Pók (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 246. 32 Modesto Lafuente, Historia general de España desde los tiempos más remotos hasta nuestros días, vol. 1 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Mellado, 1850), v. 33 Lafuente, Historia general de España, 1:vii. 34 Lafuente, Historia general de España, 1:7. 35 Lafuente, Historia general de España, 1:224. 36 Pi y Margall, La reacción y la revolución, 1:85. 37 Pi y Margall, La reacción y la revolución, 1:69. 38 Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, ‘La comendadora’, El Museo Universal 12:15 (1868), 115–23. These quotations are taken from El Museo Universal, as many subsequent editions do not include the prologue, an important framing device for the story. 39 Alarcón, ‘La comendadora’, 117. 40 Fernando Garrido, La humanidad y sus progresos, ó La civilización antigua y moderna comparadas en sus instituciones, leyes, instruccion, costumbres, religiones, filosofía, ciencias, artes, agricultura, industria, comercio, ejércitos, escuadras y colonias, y en cuanto pueda, en fin, contribuir á dar una idea exacta de las transformaciones morales y materiales por que han pasado las sociedades humanas en los tres grandes períodos históricos conocidos bajo las denominaciones de civilización antigua, edad media y civilización moderna (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipográfico-Editorial Salvador Manero, 1867), 33. The author named on the title page is Alfonso Torres de Castilla, but Garrido is the recognized author. See, for example, Núñez, ‘Historical Writing in Spain and Portugal’, 251. 41 Garrido, La humanidad y sus progresos, 33. 42 Garrido, La humanidad y sus progresos, 16. 43 Antonio Flores, Ayer, hoy y mañana, ó La fé, el vapor y la electricidad: Cuadros sociales de 1800, 1850 y 1899, 7 vols (Madrid: Mellado, 1863–64). Andrew Ginger argues that Flores’s Doce españoles de brocha gorda mixes the novelistic form of the misterios with historical discourse: ‘es un continuo juego que pone en tela de juicio al credibilidad de distinas maneras de relatar y captar la coyuntura histórica’. See Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012), 273. Enrique Rubio Cremades lists Mesonero Romanos’s short costumbrista article ‘Antes, ahora y después’ as source of inspiration for Flores’s seven-volume trilogy. See Costumbrismo y folletín: Vida y obra de Antonio Flores, vol. 2 (Alicante: Instituto de Estudios Alicantinos, 1978), 75. 44 Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, El sombrero de tres picos. Historia verdadera de un sucedido que anda ahora en romances, escrita ahora tal y como paso (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena, 1939), 6. As with ‘La comendadora’, this prologue has unfortunately been

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omitted from many later editions. All translations from this work are taken from The Three-Cornered Hat, ed. and trans. Alexander R. Tulloch (London: Everyman, 1995), 4. 45 Alarcón, El sombrero de tres picos, 9, 10; The Three-Cornered Hat, 7, 8. 46 See also, Andrew Ginger, ‘1873–1874, End of a Century? Time and Space in Valera’s Pepita Jiménez, Ros de Olano’s Jornadas de retorno, and Alarcón’s El ­sombrero de tres picos and La Alpujarra’, Hispanic Research Journal 11 (2010), 59–70. 47 See, for example, Brian Hamnett, The Historical Novel in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Representations of Reality in History and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 11. 48 Susan Martin-Márquez, Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), chapter 3. 49 Benito Pérez Galdós, La Primera República (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002), 122. 50 Galdós, La Primera República, 148. 51 Jerome de Groot, The Historical Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 9. 52 Pilar Hualde Pascual, ‘Las ruinas de Persépolis, de Ramón López Soler: Entre el centón y la filosofía hermética’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 20 (2014), 225–49. 53 Alarcón, El sombrero de tres picos, 9; The Three-Cornered Hat, 7. 54 Alarcón, El sombrero de tres picos, 11; The Three-Cornered Hat, 9. 55 Alarcón, El sombrero de tres picos, 28; The Three-Cornered Hat, 28. 56 James D. Fernández, ‘Fashioning the Ancien Régime: Alarcón’s Sombrero de tres picos’, Hispanic Review 62 (1994), 238. 57 José María de Pereda, ‘El fin de una raza’, in El fin de una raza, ed. Juan Paredes Núñez (Barcelona: Edhasa, 1991), 67. 58 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 72. 59 Fabian, Time and the Other, 7. The reference Fabian provides is to Joseph-Marie Degérando (1800), The Observation of Savage Peoples, ed. F.C.T. Moore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 63. 60 The version quoted here is Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘The Women of Spain, from The Fortnightly Review’, Littell’s Living Age 182:2351 (1889), 165, http://digital. library.cornell.edu/l/livn/index.html. For the Spanish-language version, see ‘La mujer española’, La España Moderna (May 1890), 101–13; (June 1890), 5–15; (July 1890), 121–31; (August 1890), 143–54. 61 Pardo Bazán, ‘The Women of Spain’, 166–7. 62 Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, ‘La castañera’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: I. Boix Editor, 1843), 32. 63 Robert Osborne has argued that Ganivet’s kingdom of Maya is not in fact an imaginary country, but based on the few available descriptions of Ruanda. See Robert Osborne, ‘Ángel Ganivet and Henry Stanley’, Hispanic Review 23 (1955), 28–32. .

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64 Ángel Ganivet, La conquista del reino de Maya por el último conquistador español Pío Cid (Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez 1910; Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000): www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/la-conquista-delreino-de-maya-por-el-ultimo-conquistador-espanol-pio-cid-2/. 65 Martin-Márquez, Disorientations, 85–100. 66 Cairns Craig, Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996), 218. 67 Huizinga, In the Shadow of To-morrow, 11. 68 Carvounas, Diverging Time, xii. 69 Carvounas, Diverging Time, 104. 70 Carvounas, Diverging Time, 105. 71 Flores, Ayer, hoy y mañana, vol. 6 (1863), 296–7. 72 Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, 87–107. 73 Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, 87. 74 Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, 91. 75 Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, 98. 76 See, for example, Nil Santiáñez-Tió, ‘Viaje a los orígenes de la literatura moderna: Fantasía, crítica social y metaficción en El caballero de las botas azules’, in Castro, El caballero de las botas azules, 9–36. 77 Catherine Davies, Spanish Women’s Writing 1849–1996 (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1998), 3. 78 For an example of this see Mark P. del Maestro, ‘Ganivet, Unamuno and Revindicating a ’98 Precursor’, The South Carolina Modern Language Review 2 (2003). Luis Álvarez Castro provides an account of Ganivet’s classification as ‘precursor’ in ‘Ángel Ganivet y la historografía literaria del modernismo español’, in Literatura modernista y tiempo del 98, ed. Javier Serrano Alonso and others (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Publicacións, 2000), 197–213. 79 José Luis Abellán García, Historia crítica del pensamiento español, vol. 5, La crisis contemporánea, Part 2, Fin de siglo, modernismo, generación del 98 (1898–1913) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989), 211. 80 Matthew J. Marr, ‘(Anti)heroism in Ángel Ganivet’s Los trabajos del infatigable creador Pío Cid’, Revista Hispánica Moderna 43:1 (2001), p. 231. 81 Miguel Ángel Lozano Marco, ‘Silverio Lanza visto de nuevo: Contribución a la biografía de Juan Bautista Amorós’, Anales Azorianos 2 (1985), 129. 82 Azorín, ‘Silverio Lanza’, in Obras completas, vol. 2 (Madrid: Aguilar, 1959), 785. 83 Andrew Ginger, Antonio Ros de Olano’s Experiments in Post-Romantic Prose (1857–1884): Between Romanticism and Modernism (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000) and Political Revolution and Literary Experiment in the Spanish Romantic Period (1830–1850) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1999). 84 Lee Fontanella, La imprenta y las letras en la España romántica (Berne and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982) and Rebecca Haidt, ‘Flores en Babilonia: Los “gritos” de Madrid y el imaginario urbano hacia 1850’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 10 (2009), 299–318.

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85 Noël Valis, The Culture of Culsilería: Bad Taste, Kitsch, and Class in Modern Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 119. 86 Lisa Surwillo, Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). 87 Marius Hentea, ‘The Problem of Literary Generations’, Comparative Literature Studies 50:4 (2013), 567–88.

References

Abellán García, José Luis, Historia crítica del pensamiento español, vol. 5, La crisis contemporánea, Part 2, Fin de siglo, modernismo, generación del 98 (1898–1913) (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989) Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de, ‘La comendadora’, El Museo Universal 12:15 (1868), 115–23 —, El sombrero de tres picos. Historia verdadera de un sucedido que anda ahora en romances, escrita ahora tal y como paso (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sopena, 1939) —, The Three-Cornered Hat, ed. and trans. Alexander R. Tulloch (London: Everyman, 1995) Alkon, Paul K., The Origins of Futuristic Fiction (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987) Álvarez Castro, Luis, ‘Ángel Ganivet y la historografía literaria del modernismo español’, in Literatura modernista y tiempo del 98, ed. Javier Serrano Alonso and others (Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela Publicacións, 2000), 197–213 Álvarez Durán, Francisco, De hoy al final del siglo, ó sea el día de mañana. Cuento fantástico (Llerena: José de Amaya y González, 1870) Anon. [D.J.A.R.] El anteojo mágico, ó La vision de los dos palacios en el bosque: Alegoría profético-descriptiva de la actual situacion de España (Oviedo: La Oficina de D. Francisco Cándido Pérez Prieto, 1820) Armytage, W.H.G., Yesterday’s Tomorrows: A Historical Survey of Future Societies (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968) Avlami, Chryssanthi, ‘From Historia Magistra Vitae to History as Empirical Experimentation of Progress’, trans. Ágnes Bezeczky, in Multiple Antiquities, Multiple Modernities: Ancient Histories in Nineteenth-Century European Cultures, ed. Gábor Klaniczay, Michael Werner and Ottó Gecser (Frankfurt/Main: Campus Verlag, 2011), 135–62 Azorín, ‘Silverio Lanza’, in Obras completas, vol. 2 (Madrid: Aguilar, 1959), 785 Balmes, Jaime, El protestantismo comparado con el catolicismo en sus relaciones con la civilización europea, vol. 1 (Barcelona: Imprenta de José Tauló, 1842) Barcia, Roque, Cuestion pontificia (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico R. Vicente, 1855) Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) Beiser, Frederick C., The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

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Bell, Andrea L., and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán (trans. and ed.), Cosmos Latinos: An  Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain, Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction Series (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003) Bretón de los Herreros, Manuel, ‘La castañera’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: I. Boix Editor, 1843), 29–36 Bury, J.B., The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Growth and Origin (New York: Dover, 1955) Carvounas, David, Diverging Time: The Politics of Modernity in Kant, Hegel, and Marx (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002) Castro, Rosalía de, El caballero de las botas azules, ed. Ana Rodríguez Fischer (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000) Colton, Joel, ‘Foreword’, in Progress and Its Discontents, ed. Gabriel A. Almond, Marvin Chodorow and Roy Harvey Pearce (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), ix-xii Craig, Cairns, Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1996) Davies, Catherine, Spanish Women’s Writing 1849–1996 (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1998) Fabian, Johannes, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Colombia University Press, 2002) Fernández, James D., ‘Fashioning the Ancien Régime: Alarcón’s Sombrero de tres picos’, Hispanic Review 62 (1994), 235–47 Flores, Antonio, Ayer, hoy y mañana, ó La fé, el vapor y la electricidad: Cuadros sociales de 1800, 1850 y 1899, 7 vols (Madrid: Mellado, 1863–64) Fontanella, Lee, La imprenta y las letras en la España romántica (Berne and Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1982) Ganivet, Ángel, La conquista del reino de Maya por el último conquistador español Pío Cid (Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez 1910; Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2000): www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra/la-conquista-delreino-de-maya-por-el-ultimo-conquistador-espanol-pio-cid-2/ Garrido, Fernando, La humanidad y sus progresos, ó La civilización antigua y moderna comparadas en sus instituciones, leyes, instruccion, costumbres, religiones, filosofía, ciencias, artes, agricultura, industria, comercio, ejércitos, escuadras y colonias, y en cuanto pueda, en fin, contribuir á dar una idea exacta de las transformaciones morales y materiales por que han pasado las sociedades humanas en los tres grandes períodos históricos conocidos bajo las denominaciones de civilización antigua, edad media y civilización moderna (Barcelona: Establecimiento Tipográfico-Editorial Salvador Manero, 1867) Ginger, Andrew, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012) —, ‘1873–1874, End of a Century?: Time and Space in Valera’s Pepita Jiménez, Ros de Olano’s Jornadas de retorno, and Alarcón’s El sombrero de tres picos and La Alpujarra’, Hispanic Research Journal 11 (2010), 59–70 —, Antonio Ros de Olano’s Experiments in Post-Romantic Prose (1857–1884): Between Romanticism and Modernism (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2000)

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—, Political Revolution and Literary Experiment in the Spanish Romantic Period (1830–1850) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1999) Groot, Jerome de, The Historical Novel (London and New York: Routledge, 2010) Haidt, Rebecca, ‘Flores en Babilonia: Los “gritos” de Madrid y el imaginario urbano hacia 1850’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 10 (2009), 299–318 Hamnett, Brian, The Historical Novel in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Representations of Reality in History and Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Hentea, Marius, ‘The Problem of Literary Generations’, Comparative Literature Studies 50:4 (2013), 567–88 Hualde Pascual, Pilar, ‘Las ruinas de Persépolis, de Ramón López Soler: Entre el centón y la filosofía hermética’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 20 (2014), 225–49 Huizinga, Johan, In the Shadow of To-morrow: A Diagnosis of the Spiritual Distemper of Our Time, trans. Jacob Herman Huizinga (London and Toronto: William Heinemann, 1936) Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983) Koselleck, Reinhart, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004) Lafuente, Modesto, Historia general de España desde los tiempos más remotos hasta nuestros días, vol. 1 (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipográfico de Mellado, 1850) Lawless, Geraldine, ‘The Problem of the Future and Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Hispanic Research Journal 16:2 (2015), 147–62 —, ‘New New Worlds: Historia de un pueblo and Un drama en el siglo XXI ’, in Echoes of 1812: The Cadiz Constitution in Hispanic History, Culture and Politics, ed. Adam Sharman and Stephen Roberts (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2013), 226–41 —, Modernity’s Metonyms: Figuring Time in Nineteenth-Century Stories (Lanham, MD: Bucknell University Press, 2011) Lozano Marco, Miguel Ángel, ‘Silverio Lanza visto de nuevo: Contribución a la biografía de Juan Bautista Amorós’, Anales Azorianos 2 (1985), 129–36 Maestro, Mark P. del, ‘Ganivet, Unamuno and Revindicating a ’98 Precursor’, The South Carolina Modern Language Review 2 (2003): http://scmlr.com/previousissues/volume-ii-number-1–spring-2003/ Marr, Matthew J., ‘(Anti)heroism in Ángel Ganivet’s Los trabajos del infatigable creador Pío Cid ’, Revista Hispánica Moderna 43:1 (2001), 231–7 Martin-Márquez, Susan, Disorientations: Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008) Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de, Escenas matritenses, ed. Ramón Gómez de la Serna, 3rd edn (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1964) Nisbet, Robert, History of the Idea of Progress (London: Heinemann, 1980) Núñez, Xosé-Manoel, ‘Historical Writing in Spain and Portugal’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing 1800–1945, vol. 4, ed. Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca and Attila Pók (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Olsen, Niklas, History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2012)

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Osborne, Robert, ‘Ángel Ganivet and Henry Stanley’, Hispanic Review 23 (1955), 28–32 Pardo Bazán, Emilia, ‘The Women of Spain, from The Fortnightly Review’, Littell’s Living Age 182:2351 (1889): http://digital.library.cornell.edu/l/livn/index.html —, ‘La mujer española’, La España Moderna (May 1890), 101–13; (June 1890), 5–15; (July 1890), 121–31; (August 1890), 143–54 —, The Tribune of the People, trans. Walter Borenstein (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1999) —, La Tribuna, ed. Marisa Sotelo Vázquez (Madrid: Alianza, 2002) Pereda, José María de, El fin de una raza, ed. Juan Paredes Núñez (Barcelona: Edhasa, 1991) Pérez Galdós, Benito, La Primera República (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002) Pi y Margall, Francisco, La reacción y la revolución. Estudios políticos y sociales (Madrid: Imprenta y Estereotipía de M. Rivadeneyra, 1854) Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, vol. 3 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988) Roussell, Napoleon, Catholic and Protestant Nations Compared in their Relations to Wealth, Knowledge, and Morality (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1855) Rubio Cremades, Enrique, Costumbrismo y folletín: Vida y obra de Antonio Flores, 3 vols (Alicante: Instituto de Estudios Alicantinos, 1978) Santiáñez-Tió, Nil, ‘Viaje a los orígenes de la literatura moderna: Fantasía, crítica social y metaficción en El caballero de las botas azules’, in Rosalía de Castro, El caballero de las botas azules (Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores, 1995), 9–36 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986) Surwillo, Lisa, Monsters by Trade: Slave Traffickers in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014) Valis, Noël, The Culture of Cursilería: Bad Taste, Kitsch, and Class in Modern Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002)

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4

••

How to be religious under liberalism Gregorio Alonso

The combined activities of the clergy and of lay Catholics in nineteenthcentury Spain provide a case study that can help us move beyond the shortcomings of a simplistic identification of modernization with secularization. Until recently, modernity was considered incompatible with the preservation of religious values and practices, as is evidenced by the work of key theorists of modernity such as Steve Bruce, S.N. Einsenstadt, David Martin, Charles Taylor or Bryan Wilson.1 However, in the last three decades a growing number of voices have been raised against this assumption.2 Even formerly vocal advocates of the secularization thesis such as Peter L. Berger have revisited their previous work and revised their opinions on the relationship between modern society and religious ideas or institutions.3 This chapter looks at how a number of religious figures negotiated the relationship between politics and religion in nineteenth-century Spain – a time when the country was taking its first steps towards political modernity. When historical evidence is seriously considered, it becomes clear that the Catholic clergy played a leading role in Hispanic politics and culture during the first half of the nineteenth century: to be religious was also in some sense to be political. Catholic beliefs and respect for inherited traditions were used extensively to seclude Spain from any revolutionary contagion coming from France from 1789 on. But even more revealingly, in the 1812 Constitution of Cadiz, which was to apply to both Spain and to Spain’s still extensive imperial possessions in America, the clergy was assigned an important role in the sacralization of the ritualistic and formal dimensions of political activity, in a bid to secure citizens’ loyalty to both the Crown and the Church.4 Not only did Spain’s first written constitution, the Liberal Constitution of 1812, proclaim the country to be a confessional state where no other religions could be practised; it also dictated that it would only be applicable to each Spanish town once all and each of its articles had been read out by a priest at High Sunday Mass. Moreover, it fell to priests to transmit the fundamental 89



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c­onstitutional values to Spanish children, along with basic literacy and numeracy skills. The Cortes (Parliament), would entrust the Catholic clergy with key administrative roles, making their approval a sine qua non for the successful integration of new policemen, teachers and judges to the service of the state. In a nutshell, the newly born bi-hemispherical Catholic nation aimed to achieve freedom, under the cross. This endeavour turned out to be challenging, in large part due to the deist, anticlerical and secularizing connotations of revolutionary ideas such as national representation and freedom of the press. However, these apparently contradictory practices would be overcome by the imposition of a regalist pattern by which the civil authorities would control the workings of the Church in the public sphere. During the Spanish War of Independence (1808–14), the French troops that had crossed the Pyrenees in 1807 were fought with a gun in one hand and a rosary in the other. Moreover, given the constitutional process that had begun in Cadiz in 1810, and the victory of the Spanish army in the war, with support from Portuguese and British troops, the sacralization of politics proved to be a success. It was through a war against French occupation that Spanish subjects became Catholic citizens. Nevertheless, this profound transformation of the political scenario and its long-term sustainability met with vigorous hostility from the Catholic Church, the largest international corporation active on Spanish soil. Its followers and staff wrestled among themselves when trying to define the role that the institution should play within Spanish modernity, above all as regards politics and popular participation in public affairs. This chapter focuses on the role played by four representatives of the Catholic clergy who, for various reasons, attempted to make Christianity compatible with liberalism by devising alternatives to the Church’s official opposition to budding forms of political freedom. Although in varying degrees and departing from different ideological standpoints, the clergymen whose work and contributions will be explored in this chapter tried different formulas for adapting their religious faith and practice to the introduction of national sovereignty, political freedom and constitutional rule. They were Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva; Antonio de Aguayo; Fernando Castro y Pajares and José García Mora.

Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva

Even before the War of Independence, and the Cortes and Constitution of Cadiz, the liberal cleric and exile Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva5 published the Catecismo de Estado según los principios de la Religión (1793), where he laid the foundations and set out the terms of the debates about how to relate religion and politics that would take place in the following decades. Villanueva vigor90



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ously rejected revolutionary ideas in this work. According to him, modern philosophers had exaggerated the distinction between the natural and moral, on the one hand, and the political and supernatural dimensions, on the other, in order to make respect for inherited faith and love of freedom appear irreconcilable.6 In his view, ‘Este empeño en separar la razón de la Religión [sic], y el hombre Cristiano [sic] del ciudadano, ha producido un nuevo sistema de derecho público que no conocieron los Santos Padres’ (This attempt to separate reason from Religion, and the Christian man from the citizen, has produced a new system of public Law that is unknown to the Earliest Church Fathers).7 Throughout his public life, he worked to accommodate the rulings of the Church, based on a truly Christian understanding of the Scriptures, to the needs of his contemporaries and their political expectations, on the basis of a mild version of liberalism. At one point, Villanueva’s ideas led him to engage in a bitter polemic with the famous French constitutional bishop of Blois, Henri Gregóire. However, his political ideas changed swiftly and in 1798 he even wrote a letter requesting the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain.8 Villanueva subsequently became a key figure in the Valencian group in the Cortes of Cadiz, where he made crucial contributions to parliamentary debates relating to religious and ecclesiastical issues.9 His role as diplomatic representative of Spain at the Holy See in Rome (from which he was evicted due to his critical attitude towards the Roman Curia) and his re-election to the Spanish Cortes in 1822, gained him a name as a liberal. After a second military intervention in Spain by the French in 1823, this time to restore Ferdinand VII to the throne as absolute king, he would be sent into exile. Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva and his brother Jaime, who was also a Catholic cleric and a historian, spearheaded the moderate section of the exiles in London and wrote, edited and published the official organ of their group, Ocios de los Españoles Emigrados en Londres (Pastimes of the Spanish émigrés in London), between 1824 and 1827. José Canga Argüelles, another former deputy at the Cortes and finance minister between 1820 and 1821, collaborated with them in Ocios. In Ocios, Villanueva published a series of articles examining the relationship between religion and politics. Given that most of his fellow clergymen had chosen to ally themselves with the renewed absolutism of Ferdinand VII, and even though he had held public office as a Member of Parliament, Villanueva maintained that the clergy should abstain from active political life. In his view, the involvement of the clergy and its participation in parliamentary politics could constitute ‘un gran peligro’ (a serious danger). Two conditions were to be met in order to avoid the illegitimate intervention of the clergy in political matters. The first condition would not be met until ‘la nación española no redu[jera] al clero a los estrechos límites que el Evangelio señala a su influencia’ (the Spanish nation confined the clergy to the narrow 91



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limits of influence determined by the Scriptures). Clearly, this was not to be the case during the period of monarchical and theocratic restoration Spain was going through at the time. The second condition set by Villanueva was based on his defence of a principle that would provoke bitter struggles in the years to come: religious tolerance. Clerics, he argued, should be kept out of Parliament ‘mientras una absoluta y benéfica tolerancia religiosa, no forme la base de las leyes fundamentales de la península: proscribiendo la idea de hacer dominante a un culto sobre los demás’ (until the day when an absolute and beneficial religious tolerance forms the basis of the fundamental laws of the peninsula, proscribing the idea of letting one form of worship dominate over the others).10 Thus it was during their time in exile in London, Paris or the Americas, that Spanish liberals started to re-examine their loyalty to the principle of religious intolerance, to criticize the Inquisition and to embrace diverse formulations of religious freedom. Villanueva would develop these new ideas by drawing on his own interpretation of the national past and linking these to a projected future recovery of past splendour. Possibly as a result of his experiences in Rome, he developed a particularly bitter line of criticism against the Roman Curia and its followers in Spain. In his opinion, both groups remained oblivious to the fact that Canon Law had its origins in the same principles as the Cadiz Constitution. In order to demonstrate their compatibility, Villanueva drew a series of comparisons between the traditional organization of the Christian Church and the liberal ideas that inspired the Cadiz Constitution and the laws passed by the Cortes: 1º En la Iglesia el Concilio general es superior al papa. En España el congreso nacional es superior al rey. 2º En la Iglesia el Papa y los obispos congregados en el concilio general, ejercen la potestad de establecer cánones. En España el rey con los procuradores del reino unidos en las cortes, ejercen la potestad de establecer leyes civiles. 3º El Papa debe guardar y hacer guardar en la iglesia los cánones. El rey debe guardar y hacer guardar en España las leyes. 4º En el Papa reside el poder ejecutivo de la iglesia. En el rey de España reside el poder ejecutivo del reino. 5º El Papa debe proteger los derechos de todos los grados de la jerarquía eclesiástica. El rey debe proteger los derechos de todas las clases del reino. 6º El Papa como primado ejerce jurisdicción en toda la iglesia. El rey como monarca ejerce autoridad suprema sobre todo el reino. 7º La potestad espiritual puede conceder indulgencias según los cánones. El rey puede perdonar reos y ceder indultos según las leyes.11 (1. In the Church the General Council is superior to the Pope. In Spain the National Congress is superior to the king. 2. In the Church, the Pope and the bishops congregating in the General Council, exercise the power of establishing canonical laws. In Spain the king,

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How to be religious under liberalism along with the representatives of the realm united in the parliaments, exercise the power of establishing civil laws. 3. The Pope must comply with and enforce the canon laws in the Church. The king must comply with and enforce the laws in Spain. 4. In the Pope resides the executive power of the Church. In the king of Spain resides the executive power of the realm. 5. The Pope must protect the rights of all members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The king must protect the rights of all the classes of the realm. 6. The Pope as primate of the Church exerts jurisdiction over the Church. The king as monarch exerts authority over all the kingdom. 7. The spiritual authority has the right to concede indulgences according to canon law. The king may pardon prisoners and concede amnesties according to the laws.)

Although the personal situation and the political repression suffered by the Villanueva brothers and their fellow exiles in London might have led them to think otherwise, most exiles still believed that the Roman Curia and the other supporters of absolutism were doomed to failure in the long term. The victory of civilian freedoms and constitutional ideas would eventually be possible thanks to the agency of Enlightenment and the ‘venturosas naciones’ (fortunate nations) where liberty prevailed, such as their host country, England.12

Antonio de Aguayo

In Spain, it was only by the mid-nineteenth century that the defence of religious tolerance took off as a crucial tenet of progressive thinking. Tentative support for the private enjoyment of religious freedom was proposed during the formulation of the 1856 Constitution, but this was never enacted. While the representatives of progressive and democratic ideals embraced religious freedom, changes took root very slowly. The ways in which these unfolded can be understood through a study of the life and works of Antonio de Aguayo, a priest born in 1836 in Granada. In 1865, under the semidictatorial and ultramontane government headed by General Ramón María Narváez, Aguayo published his well-known Carta a los presbíteros españoles (Letter to the Spanish priests). This triggered an enormous polemic that resonated through elite and popular circles alike. Aguayo aimed to assess the political dimensions of religion for, in his view, Christianity’s involvement in politics ‘tiende a modificar los diversos resortes del mecanismo social para el derecho, por el derecho y con el derecho’ (tends to modify the different resources of the social mechanisms for the Law, by the Law and through the Law). This modus operandi should not come as a surprise as clerics could feel at ease within a liberal system strictly determined by rules that resembled the Church’s inner organization according to Canon Law. In other words, 93



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clerics could easily take advantage of their mastery of Law to alter social mechamisms. Thus, in his letter, Aguayo also condemned the Pope’s exercise of temporal authority and firmly rejected any criticisms of revolution in Spain, arguing that, in Europe, Spain was ‘el país el menos castigado por el vendaval revolucionario’ (the country least affected by the revolutionary storm). In his opinion, the Conservative neo-Catholics had brought about a deep transformation of the social and political role of Catholicism. According to Aguayo, ‘nunca, hasta el presente, se ha pretendido hacer de la Iglesia, institución divina y para todos los tiempos, una muralla entre el pasado y el porvenir’ (never before until the present, has anybody attempted to make of the Church, a divine and eternal institution, a wall between the past and the future). Aguayo had witnessed the active role played by some clergy on the anti-constitutional and anti-liberal Carlist side in the previous civil wars in defence of their dominant position in society. Consequently, he criticized the ‘absurdos privilegios’ (absurd privileges) enjoyed by the clergy and defended a version of Catholicism that was fully compatible with political progress. In this sense, Aguayo’s views directly contradicted those who thought that the Catholic Church was being persecuted by modern rulers. For Aguayo, ‘la doctrina católica, tiene su política, porque quiere que los hombres realicen en la tierra su destino humano, es decir, su deber con Dios, con la sociedad y consigo mismos, para llegar al fin supremo, eterno y sobrenatural para que fue criado por Dios’ (Catholic doctrine has its own politics, for it wants men to accomplish their human destiny upon earth, that is to say, their duties to God, to society and to themselves, in order to reach the supreme, eternal and supernatural destination for which they were created by God). Those political goals were deemed by Aguayo as universal for all citizens and believers and were not the exclusive patrimony of any political group or faction.13 The neo-Catholic groups first formed during the short-lived Espartero regency (1840–43). It was then that defeated Carlists and clergy had joined forces under the banner of a ‘partido católico’ (Catholic party).14 They would re-emerge in the late 1850s, when they were labelled Neo-Catholics by their critics and enemies. Aguayo, as has just been highlighted, despised the politicization of the clergy. For him, the name ‘Catholic party’ was reprehensible, because ‘partido significa parte, fracción, parcialidad. Católico quiere decir universal, entero, todo’ (party means part, fraction and partiality. Catholic means universal, whole, and complete). He concluded that the notion of a Catholic party was ‘un disparate gramatical, y un absurdo lógico, porque un adjetivo universal y absoluto no puede aplicarse a una cosa particular y relativa’ (a grammatical nonsense and a logical absurdity because a universal and absolute adjective cannot be applied to something that is particular and relative). This new ‘secta’ (sect), as Aguayo referred to Neo-Catholicism, was 94



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not autochthonous but found its origins beyond the Pyrenees and, in fact, had been imported to Spain by one of the leaders of the most ultra-Catholic faction in the country, Juan Donoso Cortés, who had died twelve years earlier in 1853: ‘fue importado de Francia por el señor Donoso Cortés, célebre marqués de Valdegamas, y ha adelantado tanto en poco tiempo, que si este ilustre señor abriese ahora los ojos, habría de arrepentirse de su obra’ (it was imported from France by Señor Donoso Cortés, the famous marquis of Valdegamas, and it has advanced so much in so little time that were he to see it now, he would regret his actions). Aguayo also censured Neo-Catholics for their unhealthy love of the past and their devotion to spurious traditions. He summarized their political programme and targets as follows: Defender lo antiguo, no por amor, sino por interés y cálculo; tapar la ciencia con fúnebre crespón, y ocultar la luz para que no descubra su deformidad; condenar todo progreso y toda idea fecunda, desde el trabajo hasta la electricidad y la imprenta, y desde el yo hasta la libertad y la fraternidad; amar todo lo malo y caduco por egoísmo, y odiar todo lo bueno y nuevo por sistema.15 (To defend all old things, not for love of them but out of interest and calculation; to cover science with a funeral ribbon and conceal the light so their own deformity will not be discovered; to condemn all progress, all fertile ideas, from human work to electricity and the printing press, from the individual self to freedom and fraternity; to love all bad and rancid things due to selfishness and to hate all good and new things by default.)

Even if most members of the Catholic Party were laymen, they spoke in the name of the clergy. Their conduct enraged Aguayo and he called them ‘parásitos de la Iglesia’ and ‘mercaderes en el atrio’ (parasites of the Church and traders in the atrium) who had made ‘del altar una barricada’ (a barricade of the altar).16 Neo-Catholic papers, pamphlets and propaganda, he claimed, were quick to condemn all forward-thinking authors; even the conservative priest and theologian Jaime Balmes was anathematized for having supported Carlism’s entry into parliamentary and constitutional politics in the 1840s. For Neo-Catholics, that was a political mistake, but also a sin that they would never pardon: ‘Aún resuenan en nuestros oídos’, Aguayo continued, ‘las calumniosas imputaciones que arrojaron despiadada e inconsideradamente sobre el inmortal Balmes’ (the echoes of the slanderous accusations that they mercilessly and inconsiderately launched against the immortal Balmes are still ringing in our ears).17 Aguayo had a radically different notion of what true Christian politics would be like if Jesus’s words as cited in Luke 20:25 were to be followed: true Christian politics consisted ‘en conocer y tributar a Dios lo que se le debe, y al César, esto es, a los poderes humanos, lo que les corresponde’ (of knowing and giving to God what is God’s, and to Caesar, that is, to all human powers, 95



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what it is owed to them).18 On top of reminding readers of this Christian axiom, he argued that ‘los sacerdotes católicos no reconocemos enemigos; si los tuviéramos, serían en todo caso los que se anteponen la partícula neo; y aun por los que nos persiguen y calumnian nos manda rogar nuestro Divino Jesucristo’ (we, as Catholic priests, cannot accept having any enemies; and if did have any, they would be those who place the particle neo- before themselves; but our divine Lord Jesus Christ requests us to pray even for those who slander and persecute us).19 This attitude must take hold among the clergy and establish the requisite political neutrality. Only if these two ­requirements – the separation of powers and political tolerance – were met would the Catholic Church fulfil its sacred role given that it was an ‘Estado distinto y desemejante de los demás Estados’ (a separate State unlike other States) and that its mission was inspired by ‘de mansedumbre y paz, de conciliación y armonía’ (gentleness and peace, conciliation and harmony).20 Aguayo opposed the doctrines of Pius IX and his Secretary of State Giacomo Antonelli in three main areas: education and teaching policies, the disentailment and confiscation of Church property, and the recognition of the Kingdom of Italy. In relation to education, Aguayo pointed out the need for teachers to be able to freely exercise their profession. This was a ‘derecho individual y propio’ (individual right in itself). He rejected monopolistic systems as being ‘restrictivos e intolerantes’ (restrictive and intolerant). As for Church property, this particular priest argued that those who criticized disentailment were committing a serious error, since this had been agreed by the Holy See through concordats that were still legally binding even if they were ‘perjudiciales para la Iglesia’ (detrimental to the Church). Finally, referring to the recognition of an independent Kingdom of Italy, Aguayo said it was a matter ‘puramente de derecho público europeo’ (of purely European public law), an area where the clergy should not enter. If the Spanish clergy followed these guidelines, they would move away from ‘ese partido neocatólico, que hemos examinado (desde el que) llueven las protestas contra el derecho y el hecho de tal reconocimiento’ (that Neo-Catholic party that we have examined, from which pour protests against the Law and against recognition [of the independent Kingdom]).21 The Pope, according Aguayo, should focus on the ‘Reino de la Gloria’ and should ‘huir de todo fausto […] de todo poder temporal hasta que se pueda decir que tiene forma de siervo, como se dijo al Redentor’ (flee from all splendour, from all temporal power, until it can be said that he acts as a servant, as was promised to the Redeemer).22 The cost of such a move might be high in the short run but it would eventually have a transcendental effect on the spiritual order: ‘el poder temporal y los bienes materiales, solo deben compararse a banderas y pertrechos militares depositados en un templo, huéspedes molestos que estorban al divino culto’ (temporal power and mate96



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rial wealth should only be compared to flags and military provisions deposited in a temple, disturbing guests which disturb divine worship). Therefore, for Aguayo, ‘únicamente los neocatólicos pueden defender su posición, a riesgo de comprometer, por cosas tan contingentes y mezquinas, los intereses puros y permanentes de esa doctrina católica’ (only Neo-Catholics can support their position, at the risk of compromising, for such vile and futile reasons, the pure and permanent interests of the Catholic doctrine).23 The political neutrality of the clergy was highly commendable, regardless of the political regime: Ya se halle ante la democracia de las repúblicas de América, ya ante la tiranía de las hordas de África; ora ante el despotismo otomano, ora ante la autocracia rusa, o bien ante el movible constitucionalismo europeo, su actitud debe ser la misma, y meramente pasiva ante las temporalidades.24 (Now facing the democracy of the American republics, now the tyranny of the African hordes; under either Ottoman despotism or Russian autocracy; even under the changeable European constitutional regimes, the attitude (of the clergy) must be the same and merely passive towards temporal powers.)

Aguayo’s letter reached a resounding conclusion in its closing paragraphs: ‘la supresión de la soberanía civil, de que está en posesión la Santa Sede, no solo no dañaría, sino que contribuiría mucho a la libertad y a la prosperidad de la Iglesia’ (the suppression of the civilian authority enjoyed by the Holy See, not only would not damage the freedom and prosperity of the Church but it would instead increase and improve them).25 It is in this sense that Aguayo’s ideas were similar to those of the Italian nationalists and pro-Council Catholics led by the Turin-born priest Cesare Passaglia who would, in 1862, address a letter to Pius IX asking him to renounce his princely powers.26 He joined in the initiative as he was a ‘católico, sacerdote’ (a Catholic, a priest), and as he was not ‘descono[cer] la teología sagrada’ (ignorant of the teachings of sacred theology).27 More interestingly, just a decade before the declaration of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council, the Spanish priest acknowledged that it was legitimate for the Pope to deal with all matters related to religious dogma. However, he argued that Pius IX could not be considered infallible ‘hablando de matemáticas, de política o de filosofía’ (speaking on mathematics, politics or philosophy).28 Aguayo also drew a clear line between the Pope and the King of Rome; while the latter could claim legitimate and exclusive rights in a particular sense, he reminded readers that these came into direct conflict with the universal aspirations of the former. Aguayo’s stance as regards the Pope’s powers can be more clearly appreciated in his discussion of political freedom and the 1864 papal encyclicals Syllabus and Quanta Cura that condemned it. He argued that freedom ‘al ser combatida tan rudamente y con tal insistencia 97



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en esos documentos, se conoce que habla, no el Papa, sino el Rey, y el Rey que obedece a ciertas influencias o a error del entendimiento’ (was so rudely fought against and insistently criticized in those documents that it is obvious that it is not the Pope speaking, but the King, and the King that is complying with certain external influences or with a misunderstanding).29 The neo-Catholic and clericalist press were highly critical of Aguayo’s letter. They were so vicious that Aguayo wrote a second letter in reply to their attacks. It was published in the Republican newspaper La Democracia on the 26 October 1865 as the reproduction of a public talk he had delivered earlier that year in Barcelona. In it, Aguayo defended freedom of speech and conscience as ‘los timbres más preciados de la civilización’ (the most precious marks of civilization).30 In his speech, Aguayo had commented on the working classes’ reception of his first letter. Specifically, he commented on its reception by an audience of workers from Barcelona, Gerona, Vinaroz, Palafrugel, Binefar, Albuñol, Valladolid and San Fernando. He considered it a ‘escándalo’ (scandal) that the Neo-Catholics made repeated political use of religion because this meant a radical and absolute attack on the Christian spirit. As a result, he encouraged both laymen and the clergy to denounce and reject it. The hostile reactions to his letter among neo-Catholic circles, he argued, could only be explained by the fact that they lived ‘lujosamente con la mentira’ (opulently with lies).31 In the context of the authoritarian approach to political rule established under the governments of General Ramón María Narváez (1864–65) and Luis González Bravo (1865), Aguayo’s ideas were not welcomed by everybody. In Aguayo’s view, the time was ripe for the spiritual struggle that would precede a new age: ‘no basta creer y decir; es preciso también obrar. Los tiempos se acercan, y es menester prepararnos para el reinado de la justicia’ (it is not enough to believe and to speak; it is also necessary to act. The time is coming, and we will need to be ready for the kingdom of justice).32 Aguayo was not intimidated by criticism of his words; instead, he was satisfied by the welcoming reception they found among important sectors of the clergy. He needed the approval of these groups to carry on fighting against the neo-Catholic faction: la inmensa mayoría no han declamado contra mi Carta, y vuestras felicitaciones tan satisfactorias, cuyos elogios admito por la idea, que es únicamente quien los merece, son más que suficientes para convertir en flores las espinas de mi camino, y para que siguiendo mi tarea con más fe, y valor que virtud y ciencia, palpite mi corazón de consoladora esperanza.33 (most [clergymen] have not written or spoken against my Letter and your rewarding congratulations, and the praise given to my ideas, which are the only ones who deserve it, are more than enough to turn the thorns in my path to flowers, and to make my heart beat with consoling hope as I continue my task with more faith and courage than virtue or science).

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However, the events of 1865 underline how Aguayo’s ideas could be viewed as politically dangerous, and reveal how far removed his aim of separating political and religious authority was from conventional practice and thought at this time in Spain. On 22 May 1859, a code of practice for universities had been approved by the Cortes which contained an article aimed at the history professor who later became a Republican politician, Emilio Castelar. This article obliged teaching staff to show respect for Catholic faith and dogma, as well as loyalty to the Queen.34 Castelar, the chief editor of La Democracia was denounced on 8 August 1864 by the parish priest of Espinosa in Almeria to the Papal Nuncio, for defending ‘doctrinas panteístas y anticatólicas’ (pantheist and anti-Catholic doctrines) both in his public pronouncements and in the classroom.35 On 11 April 1865, the Noche de San Daniel (The Night of Saint Daniel), there was a serious incident in the Central University of Madrid that plainly illustrates the reactionary character of the Moderate governments headed by Narváez. Democrat, Republican and Krausist professors and students joined forces in support of Castelar, and were dealt with summarily by the Civil Guard and elements of the army. On 16 April 1865, in the aftermath of the repression that followed the Noche de San Daniel, the minister Manuel de Orovio y Echague decided to suspend Castelar without pay. On 20 April, three further professors who taught at the same university and who shared some of Castelar’s political views decided to renounce their posts in solidarity with the dismissed professor: Miguel Morayta, Nicolás Salmerón and Valeriano Fernández Ferraz. This group, who famously became known as ‘textos vivos’ (living texts) for setting an example of ideological consistency and civic virtue, would acquire enormous public prestige, gaining political ascendency during the 1868 Glorious Revolution.

Fernando de Castro y Pajares

It was against this background that the third ecclesiastical figure whose life and ideas are examined here – the priest, historian and pedagogue Fernando de Castro y Pajares (1814–74) – showed his support for Castelar. In 1868 Castro would become Vice-Chancellor of the Universidad Central, remaining in that position until 1870.36 Born in León, he became a cleric in 1829 and in 1853 completed his education with the philosophy professor Julián Sanz del Río (1814–86), the man responsible for introducing Karl Christian Krause’s version of German idealism to Spain, and the most important figure in the influential Krausist school in Spain.37 Castro became director of the Escuela Normal de Filosofía (Normal School of Philosophy) in 1850 and a prominent member of the Palace’s Royal Chaplaincy (1848–52). However, he became a public figure when he delivered his ‘Sermón de las barricadas’ (Barricades sermon) on 1 November 1861 to commemorate and thank God 99



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for the salvation of Spain after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In his sermon Castro highlighted the need for unity among governments, the clergy and the upper classes to remove the causes of new ‘terremotos sociales’ (social earthquakes) that had been witnessed across Europe in the shape of recurrent political revolutions. In his opinion, the reason for those revolutions lay in social inequality and the spreading oblivion among the ruling elites of the divine origins of political power.38 Three years later, in 1864, he published Memoria testamentaria (Memoir and testament) in which he recapitulated his spiritual development until that point of his life. In his journeys in Germany in 1857 and 1858 he had been captured by the fact that ‘la imagen de Dios de los hombres del siglo XIX no es la de Antigua Sinagoga ni de la Iglesia Romana, sino la de Jesucristo, cada vez más depurada de toda intención perseguidora y de todo fin temporal, y cada día más práctica en el sentido de tolerante y humana’ (the image of God of the nineteenth-century men is not that of Old Synagogue nor of the Roman Catholic Church but that of Jesus Christ, increasingly purged of any persecutory intentions and of any temporal aims, and every day gains practice in tolerance and humanity).39 Such transformation, according to Castro, represented a fundamental advance for the history of the Catholic Church, which until then had been split internally into two parties of contrasting ideologies. Nevertheless, beyond these divisions between ultramontanes and cismontanes the Catholic Church and its hierarchy were facing a new wave of criticism. In fact, the new role that was to be given to the Pope would provoke an even more damaging effect: the perception that there was a growing distance between Catholicism and Christianity. In this sense, Castro shared Aguayo’s defence of the authentic ‘política católica’ (Catholic politics) that was not identical to the politics of the Pope.40 According to Castro, Catholic believers showed ‘una adhesión y obediencia incondicionales al que es Vicario de Dios en la Tierra’ (an unconditional loyalty and obedience to the Vicar of God upon the Earth) that took them away from their truly Christian roots.41 Because of this, and because of the imposition of religious intolerance through the establishment of Catholic faith as the official faith in Spain, ‘el Catolicismo no es un poder social necesario a las naciones de raza latina, sino al contrario, un elemento de desgobierno y de perversión’ (Catholicism, far from being a power required by nations of the Latin race, is instead a element of misgovernment and perversion).42 In order to illustrate this assertion and justify his views Castro listed and appealed to numerous and diverse authorities, including Buddha, the Stoics, Plutarch, Erasmus, Melchor Cano, Febronius, Spanish regalist thinkers, Fenelon, Montesquieu, Vico, Guizot, Renan and many more.43 Castro’s primary objective, however, was to advocate the introduction of religious tolerance into Spanish legislation. He lamented being unable to 100



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‘realizar en mi Patria una vida religiosa públicamente libre’ (carry out in my Patria a life which would be religiously and publicly free).44 Castro needed to travel to Switzerland and Germany in 1857 and 1858 to import a formula of religious freedom which would not be at odds with a high degree of public morality, by anyone’s reckoning. Such freedom was an established part of life in northern and central European countries, where it strengthened ties among communities that had witnessed deep religious divisions. A further advantage of its implementation was that individuals’ relationship with God and the interaction between the different communities of believers would no longer be determined by a single dominant church. Castro argued that ‘Oí decir en Suiza y Alemania que los enlaces matrimoniales entre protestantes y católicos no eran raros; que tan arraigada se veía y tan en paz marchaba la tolerancia religiosa, que ciertas localidades una misma campana juntaba en nombre de Dios a católicos y protestantes’ (I heard in Switzerland and Germany that marriage unions between Protestants and Catholics were not unusual; that religious tolerance was so deeply rooted and so peaceful, that in some towns a single bell tolled to call Catholics and Protestants in the name of God).45 Castro accordingly criticized the Moderate government for upholding religious intolerance and depriving Spain of the beneficial effects derived from religious freedom. He was also critical of the Curia, who were preparing their onslaught on the modern ideas of freedom of religion, rational thought or freedom of association as reflected in the encyclicals Quanta Cura and Syllabus, where they also condemned modern science and popular participation in politics. The new stance of the ecclesiastical authorities was informed by an authoritarian and counter-revolutionary agenda. According to Castro, this phenomenon would have detrimental consequences for the Christian religion and he wrote that ‘el Catolicismo, a fuer de ser Romano, ha dejado de ser apostólico, y ha perdido su cualidad de católico’ (Catholicism, for being so Roman, has stopped being Apostolic and has lost its Catholic qualities). As a result of these changes, religion had been reduced to ‘la personalidad del Papa hasta hacer de él un Dios y un Rey para fines temporales y dominación, no rechazando los medios de fuerza, sino utilizándolos’ (the exaltation of the Pope’s personality to the point of making him a God and a King with temporal ends of domination, not by rejecting methods of violence, but employing them).46 In 1866 Castro became a member of the Royal Academy of History and in his inaugural address he raised the four key points of Hispanic liberal Catholicism in Discurso sobre los caracteres históricos de la Iglesia Española (Discourse on the historical characteristics of the Spanish Church). In the opening section he condemned clerical involvement in politics. Their attitude ran against the behaviour of the Visigothic clergy who ‘habían querido mantenerse de cualquier implicación en las luchas terrenas y mantenerse como un poder moderador’ (had wanted to remain aloof from all worldly struggles and 101



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to remain a moderating power).47 In the following section he dealt extensively with the conflicts that emerged from the recurrent disagreements between the courts of Rome and Madrid, although he also emphasized their collaborative links and historical cooperation. He underlined the essential and primal unity of the Church as a defining feature of Catholicism in the third section. However, Castro argued that unity had been articulated through, and made possible by, the respect due to Church’s internal plurality. The closing section of the Discurso was the most controversial. Castro advocated the independence of Church and State. He fully embraced the formula of a free Church in a free state, as Count Cavour in Italy, Ignaz von Döllinger in Bavaria and the Bishop of Orleans and Félix Dupanloup, in France, had done, some years before him.48 Castro’s proposal was also in line with the members of the 1863 Congress of Malines who had defended the theological and political need for the full separation and independence of the State from the Church. This movement had not had a serious impact in Spain until this point, because of the a two-pronged regressive movement witnessed there in the 1860s. On the one hand, the Church in Spain had centralized itself as well as revising its dogmas, motivated by an openly anti-liberal spirit. On the other, the liberal authorities who ran the Spanish government continued to persecuting public criticisms of the Church, as the events surrounding the Noche de San Daniel made clear.

José García Mora

The last religious figure discussed in this chapter is José García Mora, a Federal Republican priest who provides another example of Catholic heterodoxy. Mora, during the Glorious Revolution of 1868, temporarily broke with the Catholic Church and carried out an unprecedented initiative. On 30 April 1870 he founded in Villanueva de la Vera in Badajoz, Extremadura, the Iglesia Liberal Cristiana (Liberal Christian Church), which declared itself free from Roman control. The highly critical and polemical articles published in its press organ, Los Neos sin Careta (The Neos unmasked), led to a serious caution from the local ecclesiastical authorities and to a temporary suspension. Among other controversial measures, Mora’s organization broke financial ties with the Roman Curia and in his own parish, Mora abolished all charges for bulls and for religious services. the bishop of the diocese of Plasencia, whose jurisdiction included Villanueva de la Vera, threatened José García Mora with excommunication. In August 1871, Mora felt that it was high time to stop risking his position as a son of the Church and he retracted from his previous actions.49 Mora’s behaviour is an extreme example of the way in which religion and politics intertwined in a particularly tumultuous period of Spanish history. 102



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The biggest difficulties faced by the Church after the approval of the 1869 Constitution derived from the implementation of religious tolerance. For the first time, Catholic priests would be required to learn and then to teach their parishioners how to be religious in an open market of faiths; they would need to compete for souls and minds with a host of Protestant missionaries who had entered the country through Catalonia and Gibraltar in the 1830s and had since opened chapels and edited several publications. Spain, it was felt, had stopped being ‘eminentemente católica’ (eminently Catholic)50 and the advocates for religious freedom as well as those people who practised faiths other than Roman Catholicism had something to celebrate.

How to be tolerant: Toward the end of the nineteenth century

In conclusion, it can be argued that it was only in the 1860s that anything like a significant number of people across the peninsula thought it desirable to live in a society where there was religious freedom and tolerance. A combination of factors accounted for this transformation, which was as much practical as it was theoretical or intellectual. On the other hand, the support of prestigious and well-known Catholic priests such as Castro, Aguayo and Mora, as well as their ideological identification with those parties, also played a key role in the way Spaniards started to legislate on religious matters and to understand their own public religious life. The shared objective was to remove clerical control and the monopoly of the centres of political, cultural and educational power. The reasons for such an attitude were to be found in the need to cleanse and purify the Catholic Church itself, but also to consolidate the regime born with the 1868 Revolution. On the other hand, the criticisms against the neoCatholic and the Carlist clergy went hand in hand with the implementation of administrative and legislative measures that would re-shape the relationship between the Spanish State and Catholic Church. The high economic, political and cultural costs of religious intolerance were repeatedly highlighted and, in practical terms, the privileged status of the Church in Spain did finally reach an end. However, this was for a short period only: as we will see in the next chapter, the long debate how (or whether) to be religious continued to be a decisive factor for Spaniards. With the Bourbon Restoration initiated in 1874 the Church would regain at least some of its privileges and Spanish politics would split into clericalist and anticlerical poles that went on to characterize the following decades and the twentieth century.

Notes

 1 Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); S.N. Eisenstadt, Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

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Prentice-Hall, 1966); David Martin, On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Bryan Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society (London: Pelican, 1969). Crucial contributions to the debate can be found in Steve Bruce, Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), especially 170–94; Daniel V.A. Olson and William H. Swatos Jr (eds), The Secularization Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Nicos Mouzelis, ‘Modernity and the Secularization Debate’, Sociology 46:2 (2012), 207–23.  2 See J.C.D. Clark, ‘Secularization and Modernization: The Failure of the ‘Grand Narrative’, The Historical Journal 55 (2012), 161–94; David Nash, ‘Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization’s Failure as Master Narrative’, Cultural and Social History 1:3 (2004), 302–25; Mark Edward Ruff, ‘The Postmodern Challenge to the Secularization Thesis: A Critical Assessment’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions – und Kulturgeschichte 99 (2005), 385–401; Rodney Stark, ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’, in The Secularization Debate, ed. Olson and Swatos, 41–67.  3 Berger published a classic work on the sociology of religion in the 1960s: The Sacred Canopy. The title of his edited volume in the late 1990s is revealing enough: The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).  4 José María Portillo Valdés, La nazione cattolica. Codice 1812: indipendenza per la Spagna e Costituzione (Manduria: Lacaita, 1998); Carlos Garriga and Marta Lorente, Cádiz, 1812. La constitución jurisdiccional (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007); Gregorio Alonso, La nación en capilla. Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España, 1793–1874 (Granada: Comares, 2014).  5 See the introduction by Germán Ramírez Aledón to the edition of Villanueva’s autobiography, Vida literaria de Don Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva [1825] (Alicante: Fundación Juan Gil-Albert, 1996).  6 Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, Catecismo de Estado según los principios de la Religión (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1793), i.  7 Villanueva, Catecismo de Estado, vi. All translations are mine or by the editors.  8 Germán Ramírez Aledón, ‘Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva y la polémica sobre la carta del obispo Grégoire contra la Inquisición española en 1798’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 13 (2005), 13–54.  9 Germán Ramírez Aledón, ‘Villanueva, diputado y polemista en Cádiz’, in Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva y el grupo valenciano en las Cortes de Cádiz, ed. Germán Ramírez Aledón (Cadiz: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz, 2008), 217–85. 10 Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, ‘¿El establecimiento en España de una cámara alta o de un senado ofrece obstáculos invencibles?’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 3 (July 1827), 301–16. 11 Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, ‘Incompatibilidad de la monarquía universal y de las usurpaciones de la curia Romana con los derechos esenciales de las naciones. Parte II’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 2 (November 1824), 391.

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12 ‘Combinación teocrática en Europa’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 3 (July 1827), 318–40. 13 All the quotations are from Antonio de Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Antonio Almirante, 1865), 7, 10. 14 Gregorio Alonso, La nación en capilla, 223. 15 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 11. 16 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 12. 17 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 12. 18 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 13. Italics in original. 19 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 13. 20 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 14–15. 21 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 17, 18, 20, 22. 22 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 24. 23 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 24. 24 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 24. 25 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 28. 26 See Renato Mori, La questione romana (1861–1865) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1963), 93–5, and Francesco Traniello, Cattolicismo conciliarista Religione e cultura nella tradizione rosminaina lombardo-piemontese (Milan: Marzorati, 1970), 284–5. 27 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 28–9. 28 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 29. 29 Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros españoles, 29. 30 Antonio de Aguayo, ‘Segunda carta a los presbíteros españoles’, La Democracia, 26 October 1865. 31 Aguayo, ‘Segunda carta a los presbíteros españoles’. 32 Aguayo, ‘Segunda carta a los presbíteros españoles’. 33 Aguayo, ‘Segunda carta a los presbíteros españoles’. 34 Archivio Segreto Vaticano, parte Moderna, Archivio Nunziatura di Madrid caja 417, rubrica 3, f. 860. On the events of the night of San Daniel, see Guillermo G. Calleja Leal, ‘Madrid: De la Noche de San Daniel al cuartel de San Gil’, Revista de Historia Militar 90 (2001), 107–86. 35 Alonso, La nación en capilla, 227. 36 Rafael Serrano García, Fernando de Castro (1814–1874). Un obrero de la Humanidad (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2010), 319–92. 37 Juan López Morillas, The Krausist Movement and Ideological Change in Spain, 1854–1874 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the relations between Fernando de Castro and Sanz del Río and the Kruasist circle, see José Luis Abellán, ‘Estudio preliminar’ in Fernando de Castro, Memoria testamentaria. El problema del catolicismo liberal (Madrid: Castalia, 1975), 1–70. 38 Máximo Carracedo Sancha, Fernando de Castro. Católico liberal, krausista y heterodoxo (León: Instituto Leonés de Cultura, 2003). 39 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 92. 40 See Aguayo, Carta a los presbíteros, 8, 9, 10. 41 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 93.

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42 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 93. 43 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 96. 44 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 98. 45 Castro, Memoria testamentaria, 98. 46 Castro, Memoria testamentaria,100. 47 Fernando de Castro, Discurso sobre los caracteres históricos de la Iglesia Española: Leído en la Real Academia de la Historia en la recepción pública de Dr. D. Fernando de Castro, 2nd edn (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1866), 115. See also Alejandra Ibarra Aguirregaribia, ‘La construcción de las “heterodoxias”. Catolicismo liberal y krausismo en España (1851–1898)’ (PhD diss., Universidad del País Vasco, 2014); and Manuel Suárez Cortina, Entre cirios y garrotes. Religión y política en la España contemporánea, 1808–1936 (Santander: Universidad de Cantabria and Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2014), 142–9. 48 Marvin R. O’Connell, ‘Ultramontanism and Dupanloup. The Compromise of 1865’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 53:2 (1987), 200–17. 49 Valeriano Gutiérrez Macías, ‘El cura Mora’, ABC, 19 December, 1974, 127. 50 Petición dirigida a las Cortes en favor de la unidad católica en España (Madrid: Imprenta de La Esperanza, 1869), 352.

References

Abellán, José Luis, ‘Estudio preliminar’, in Fernando de Castro, Memoria testamentaria. El problema del catolicismo liberal (Madrid: Castalia, 1975), 1–70 Aguayo, Antonio de, Carta a los presbíteros españoles (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Antonio Almirante, 1865) —, ‘Segunda carta a los presbíteros españoles’, La Democracia, 26 October, 1865 Alonso, Gregorio, La nación en capilla. Ciudadanía católica y cuestión religiosa en España, 1793–1874 (Granada: Comares, 2014) Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967) —, (ed.), The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999) Bruce, Steve, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) —, Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) Calleja Leal, Guillermo G., ‘Madrid: De la Noche de San Daniel al cuartel de San Gil’, Revista de Historia Militar 90 (2001), 107–86 Carracedo Sancha, Máximo, Fernando de Castro. Católico liberal, krausista y heterodoxo (León: Instituto Leonés de Cultura, 2003) Castro, Fernando de, Discurso sobre los caracteres históricos de la Iglesia Española: Leído en la Real Academia de la Historia en la recepción pública de Dr. D. Fernando de Castro, 2nd edn (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1866) Clark, J.C.D., ‘Secularization and Modernization: The Failure of the ‘Grand Narrative’, The Historical Journal 55 (2012), 161–94 Eisenstadt, S.N., Modernization: Protest and Change (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1966)

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Garriga, Carlos, and Marta Lorente,  Cádiz, 1812. La constitución jurisdiccional (Madrid: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007) Gutiérrez Macías, Valeriano, ‘El cura Mora’, ABC, 19 December 1974 Ibarra Aguirregaribia, Alejandra, ‘La construcción de las “heterodoxias”. Catolicismo liberal y krausismo en España (1851–1898)’ (PhD diss., Universidad del País Vasco, 2014) López Morillas, Juan, The Krausist Movement and Ideological Change in Spain, 1854–1874 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) Martin, David, On  Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005) Mori, Renato, La questione romana (1861–1865) (Florence: Le Monnier, 1963) Mouzelis, Nicos, ‘Modernity and the Secularization Debate’, Sociology 46:2 (2012), 207–23 Nash, David, ‘Reconnecting Religion with Social and Cultural History: Secularization’s Failure as Master Narrative’, Cultural and Social History 1:3 (2004), 302–25 O’Connell, Marvin R., ‘Ultramontanism and Dupanloup. The Compromise of 1865’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 53:2 (1987), 200–17 Olson, Daniel V.A., and William H. Swatos Jr (eds), The Secularization Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) Petición dirigida a las Cortes en favor de la unidad católica en España (Madrid: Imprenta de La Esperanza, 1869) Portillo Valdés, José María, La nazione cattolica. Codice 1812: indipendenza per la Spagna e Costituzione (Manduria: Lacaita, 1998) Ramírez Aledón, Germán, ‘Introducción’, in Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva, Vida literaria de Don Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva (Alicante: Fundación Juan Gil-Albert, 1996) —, ‘Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva y la polémica sobre la carta del obispo Grégoire contra la Inquisición española en 1798’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 13 (2005), 13–54 —, ‘Villanueva, diputado y polemista en Cádiz’, in Joaquín Lorenzo Villanueva y el grupo valenciano en las Cortes de Cádiz, ed. Germán Ramírez Aledón (Cadiz: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz, 2008), 217–85 Ruff, Mark Edward, ‘The Postmodern Challenge to the Secularization Thesis: A Critical Assessment’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions – und Kulturgeschichte 99 (2005), 385–401 Serrano García, Rafael, Fernando de Castro (1814–1874). Un obrero de la Humanidad (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2010) Stark, Rodney, ‘Secularization, R.I.P.’, in The Secularization Debate, ed. Swatos and Olson, 41–67 Suárez Cortina, Manuel, Entre cirios y garrotes. Religión y política en la España contemporánea, 1808–1936 (Santander: Universidad de Cantabria and Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2014) Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) Traniello, Francesco, Cattolicismo conciliarista Religione e cultura nella tradizione rosminaina lombardo-piemontese (Milan: Marzorati, 1970)

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Villanueva, Joaquín Lorenzo, Catecismo de Estado según los principios de la Religión (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1793) —, ‘Incompatibilidad de la monarquía universal y de las usurpaciones de la curia Romana con los derechos esenciales de las naciones. Parte II’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 2 (November 1824), 385–94 —, ‘¿El establecimiento en España de una cámara alta o de un senado ofrece obstáculos invencibles?’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 3 (July 1827), 301–16 —, ‘Combinación teocrática en Europa’, Ocios de Españoles Emigrados 3 (July 1827), 318–40 Wilson, Bryan, Religion in a Secular Society (London: Pelican, 1969)

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5

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How to prescribe a cure for the ills of art Oscar Vázquez

The jaundiced patient lies only somewhat conscious of her attendants. To her right, an avuncular older physician testing her pulse; to her left a member of the Sisters of Charity who holds, presumably, the patient’s child while extending a cup of medicinal tea or soup. More than simply a representation of what may have been witnessed in any number of hospitals or homes in the years following cholera and influenza pandemics of the early 1890s, Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s 1897 Ciencia y Caridad (Science and Charity) (Figure 1) affords a beguiling introduction into tensions and contradictions in philosophical debates of nineteenth-century Europe. It likewise poses several equally important problems of aesthetics and art history in nineteenth-century Spain.1 My aim in this chapter is more speculative and exploratory, than explanatory. I argue that this almost 2  ×  2½ metre, oil-on-canvas painting is best understood as an attempt to work through contemporary debates which sought to negotiate medical and religious knowledge. These are debates that had extended into literary and artistic circles. Science and Charity is an example of how popular allegories were transformed by late nineteenth-century artists to help visualize larger social, metaphysical and, ultimately, aesthetic issues. Picasso’s work, in short, was more than simply the product of a ‘precocious’ 15-year-old boy. It offers an introduction into some general problems of interpretation of nineteenth-century European painting as a whole, and Spain specifically, at a key turning point in Picasso, and Modernism’s, trajectory. Ultimately, if the arts themselves were sick – as many concluded they were – the question was how to cure them.

A change of names

A few critics poked fun at the young Picasso’s Science and Charity when it was exhibited in Madrid’s National Exhibition of 1897. One of them suggested that it appeared that the doctor in the painting was feeling the pulse of a 109



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glove, rather than the poorly drawn hand of the ill woman.2 Nonetheless, the work was generally favourably received. Indeed, it was the fact that the work won an honourable mention at the Madrid salon, and a gold medal in  the Exposición de Bellas Artes in Málaga of that year, that purportedly was the reason Picasso’s father decided to send his son to study in the capital city, under the tutelage of the landscape and history painter Antonio Muñoz Degrain, and at the San Fernando Academy. It was Picasso’s father and uncle who sat as the model for the attending physician in the painting. And it was also his father who, it has long been claimed, suggested the theme and altered the title of the work from A Visit to the Sick Woman to Science and Charity.3 That title change is significant for, instead of merely being descriptive of what can be seen, it now offers two responses to a dilemma or unvoiced question posed by the painting: which of (a) the knowledge of the material world, and (b) that of the spiritual realm is the most effective succour of the ill human condition? It seems a challenging question for so young an artist, even one such as Picasso. It is the very posing of this pictorial question by Picasso – and the father’s change of title – at this time that is explored in this chapter. The prescription offered by Picasso for the dilemma invoked by his canvas posed further problems of their own. John Richardson in his 1991 multi-volume monograph on the famed artist, born in Malaga, sees in Picasso’s Science and Charity the beginnings of a recurrent theme that would haunt the artist throughout later periods of his life. Richardson attributes the vow taken (and later broken) by Picasso to never paint again, to a moment almost three years earlier when the artist – it is claimed – pleaded that the life of his ill, younger sister María de la Concepción (Conchita) be spared. She died from diphtheria months later in January of 1895. Richardson further suggests that the recurrent guilt of broken vows in later years, is also the ‘guilty feelings for the (other) women in his life’; that they were all ‘bound up with guilty feelings for his dead sister’.4 In his Picasso: Life and Art (1987), Pierre Daix understood Conchita’s death as linked to the ‘extraordinary maturing’ and to the ‘phobic reaction to illness which Picasso’ displayed through his life.5 Cast in this light, it may be difficult not to read the work through a biographical lens, which is largely the historiography of the work. Art historian María Teresa Ocaña sees Science and Charity as a ‘watershed in Picasso’s career’ and as the last hommage ‘Picasso granted his father’.6 Mary Mathews Gedo understood the works from this period as attempts by Picasso to free himself from his father’s influence, while historian Palau i Fabre has also seen the painting as one of negotiation with the elder Picasso.7 And if the son were challenging or negotiating his father’s authority, it would mean that he was also contending with the artistic traditions and social structures that brought his father to suggest the title in the first place. We might conjecture also that 110



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the artist was mediating other authority figures, namely the Church, the state and, of course, the burden of Spain’s artistic past. The work of 1897, in which Picasso revisited the theme of convalescence, but now renamed Science and Charity, is in fact a return to the hospital ward or bedroom not solely by way of guilt. Institutional parents are allegorically represented by medicine and the Church, the two principal institutions that challenged the philosophical and artist currents of the day. It is understandable that the death of Picasso’s sister would have been a traumatic blow to the artist. It may also be that it affected him such that he repeatedly returned to the theme of a dying young woman, or, according to the same argument, it kept him from being more faithful to his future partners. Yet these biographical details brought to bear on the ‘sick woman’ motif do not tell the whole story of the choice, and popularity, of the theme of science and religion in 1897, and how the particular art object may have functioned within specific discourses. Further, such interpretations disavow the burden of meanings of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ that weighed down on academicians, artists and doctors alike. Those very interpretative strategies of Picasso’s piece that split the canvas’s meaning between, on the one hand, the interiority of psychological impulses and, on the other, the exteriority of social relations is, to a great degree, the very binary that was at issue for a young Picasso who was unable to resolve how to merge the two sides conceptually or pictorially. The question, then, is not one of finding the subconscious motivations of Picasso or discovery of an early trauma, nor of finding the historical event or events that pushed Picasso in a particular stylistic direction. The change of titles in Picasso’s work points to a significant moment as much for the artist’s future success, as for what it tells us about Pablo and his father Don José’s sensitivity to current discourses. The name change is a manifestation of the awareness on the part of Picasso’s father, concerning contemporary debates between science and religion, and of what I call here, the medicalization of aesthetics.

Iconography of healing and mourning

The question of the burden of tradition on artists, or of their awareness of current topics, at least relieves the 15-year-old Picasso of having to carry the weight of ‘genius’, a concept that has functioned to reify art history as a discipline.8 The problems posed by Science and Charity are not those of heritage or genealogies that lead us to mythic origins, at least not visual ones; such problems are the domain of provenance and iconography. Yet, pointing out the traditions and thematic possibilities available to late nineteenth-century artists is necessary to suggest both the ties to past traditions, contemporary innovations and the parameters with which artists intended to engage. 111



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The subject of an ailing patient treated by a physician (representing science), while simultaneously succoured by a cleric or charity giver (representing religion), is largely the creation of the nineteenth century. This popular binary emerged from a long-standing tradition of allegorical imagery – as individual, separate subjects related to, but differing from, an earlier tradition of the vanitas or memento mori – which had served as a basic lexicon for European artists and writers for centuries. The allegories offered artists ample opportunity to  comment on deterministic notions of science, positivistic change and free will in the face of life’s transience, the inevitability of death and of the possibilities of eternal salvation. Nineteenth-century allegorical works were plentiful and a favourite of Romantic-era artists: Thomas Cole’s 1842 series Voyage of Life, or the numerous, symbolic landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich allude as much to the cycles of generations, as to the brevity of life on this earth. These historically familiar strategies for understanding the rise and fall of civilizations through biological metaphors take a significant medical turn in the later nineteenth century, moving from the emblemata, memento mori and allegory of ruins to representations of the pathologic body. Picasso’s Science and Charity is a splendid case in point. Science and Charity sits chronologically and thematically between two of Picasso’s other paintings involving themes of physicians and medicine: prior to Science and Charity is a near-death bed scene, La enferma (Sick Woman) of 1894; after Science and Charity are several symbolist-inspired works of 1899, as well as the larger, more famous scene that Picasso will envision through a very different formal and critical lens as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon in 1907.9 The later image is a painting in which a medical student or medical inspector acts in a play about life (or in the well-known phrase by Steinberg, in the ‘philosophical brothel’).10 On either side of the bed in Science and Charity are representatives of religion and medicine. Both physicians and clerics had been painted and illustrated separately by scores of artists in the years leading up to Picasso’s canvas. But transformations in the medical field, with new discoveries published monthly, led artists to be commissioned by and take an increasing interest in the theme of physicians.11 Among the most renowned is Sir Luke Fildes’s The Doctor (1891; London, Tate Gallery) which is probably based on the death of that artist’s own son years earlier; a personal situation similar to that which most likely produced Picasso’s own cathartic canvas of grief (or guilt) over his sister’s death. In Spain, advances in medicine attracted artists such as Luis Jiménez Aranda to complete La sala del hospital en la visita del médico en jefe (A Hospital Room During The Visit of The Head Doctor) (1889; Seville, Museo de Bellas Artes), a work that won him a gold medal in 1892 at the National Exhibition that is often considered the official sanctioning of social realism in the Spanish 112



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salons. In the same 1897 exhibition in which Picasso’s Science and Charity was shown, José Soriano Fort’s ¡Desgraciada! (The Miserable, Hopeless One) (1896; Diputación Provincial de Alicante), was also on display, representing a severely ill patient with the observing physician standing next to the bed. The subjects and titles of these paintings are probably enough to suggest how their focus on the care of an attending physician differs from works which show the doctors as scientists and anatomists of the dead, rather than caretakers of the living, even if in certain cases, the cadavers of the anatomy session or dissections being represented imbue the paintings with a heavily moralistic tone, as is the case with Gabriel von Max’s portrayal of The Anatomist (1869; Neue Pinakothek, Munich) with its memento mori skull in the background, or Anatomía del corazón; ¡Y tenía corazón! (Anatomy of the Heart; And She had A Heart!) (1890; Museo de Málaga) by Enrique Simonet (Figure 2). On the other side of the equation, or bed in this case, is the representative of religion. Here, as in so many nineteenth-century cases, the artist has focused on a nun as religion’s chief representative. This is what is seen in Enrique Paternina García’s La visita de la madre (The Mother’s Visit) (1892; Museo de Bellas Artes, Badajoz) (Figure 3), a work that has often been credited with being the inspiration for Picasso’s Science and Charity. The nuns shown in both of García Paternina’s and Picasso’s canvases were from the Order of the Sisters of Charity, among the most common female institutional caregivers in nineteenth-century Western Europe, whose principal mission was the care of orphaned children, the poor, as well as the sick in hospitals.12 In Science and Charity, the nun is not only from the Order of the Sisters of Charity, but also holds a baby, in keeping with traditional images of ‘Charity’ as developed centuries earlier by creators such as Cesare Ripa (Figure 4).13 Picasso’s work simultaneously follows earlier iconographic models, and leaves the care of children to the church represented by the nun, which was precisely one of the hotly contested debates regarding education in Spain at the time. In this binary, the Church (metaphysics and idealism) is gendered as female, and science (materialism), as male. Significantly, Picasso completed many religious themed paintings during this period and several of these included the Sisters of Charity. One such image specifically addressed the most important, miraculous moment in that Order’s history. The pen and watercolour sketch titled A Holy Vision – Revelation of the Miraculous Medal from 1896 (Figure 5), according to Richardson, was loosely modelled on Bartolomé Murillo’s Aparación de la Virgen a San Ildefonso (San Ildefonso Receiving the Chasuble from the Virgin) (c.1650–55). Picasso’s sketch – which was part of the young artist’s first commission for an altarpiece (destroyed in 1909) – shows a seminal moment in the Order’s history, when the Virgin Mary appeared in 1830 in Paris to St Catherine Labouré, a novice in the Order of the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul. The Virgin 113



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Mary bestowed upon St Catherine a golden medal with her image and emblemata, saying that all who wore the medal would receive heavenly graces. A medal was commissioned, and during the 1832 cholera epidemic in Paris, many claimed that possession of the devotional medal had saved their lives. Thus, the choice of theme for the commission – a key event in the history of the Order – seems a logical one, but it was also timely following the cholera epidemics of the late 1890s. It may very well be, therefore, that both his sister’s death and the epidemics of the last few years of the century, now folded into the commission of the Sisters of Charity, were the context for his further exploration of the theme that became Science and Charity. An engraving in a contemporary popular journal of the era (Figure 6) shows the extent of the overlaps among the fields involved with medicine, art and charity: it shows the use of the Palacio de Bellas Artes as the place of succour for the cholera patients during the epidemic of 1890. Here, the palace of art is literally the place of succour for the ailing. Picasso’s concern with the placement of the nun in the composition was not merely a design issue but symbolic. While Picasso’s Science and Charity seems to keep the two figures representing the poles of science and religion physically separated on either side of the patient’s bed, a significant contextual difference is, nonetheless, underscored by the change of the title, and particularly the transformation and insertion of ‘Charity’ as a descriptor for the nun, the representative of religion. A preparatory sketch (Figure 7) shows a significant moment in Picasso’s thought concerning the relation between science and religion. It shows that Picasso debated the nun’s (or servant’s, it is unclear in the earlier sketches) position within the composition, placing her at one point much farther away from the patient and bed, all the while the figure of the physician remained static. Moreover, in the final painting, the doctor physically touches the patient, taking her pulse, while the figure, now clearly a closer and more active nun offers drink, suggesting that both institutions had particular roles to play in the healing process. Picasso’s 1897 Science and Charity is an amalgamation that brought together the lengthy earlier traditions of allegorical images with the new preoccupations with science and medicine. Its tone is also reconciliatory, reflecting general attitudes of the day. In fact, the theme of ‘Science and Charity’ found its way into a number of professional journals in the Spanish-speaking world (as far away as Caracas in Venezuela), which sought to suggest that the new scientific discoveries in medicine should not replace the humanitarian side of caregiving.14 The shift in the title, from simply a ‘Visit to the Sick Woman’ to one that resonates with the traditional caritas, suggests an understanding of the wider aid that should be offered to individuals in the here and now. If we look, as a comparison, to American painter Daniel Huntington’s earlier painting Philosophy and Christian Art (Figure 8) from 1868, we readily 114



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note some significant differences with Picasso’s work at the century’s end. In Huntington’s composition, inspired by Renaissance and early Baroque painting, the young woman points to a nativity scene representing the transcendental power of Christian art to inspire and guide humans on earth. The male philosopher points to the pages of a book with the words ‘SCIENTIA’ and ‘MECHANICA’, which are offered as an alternative answer to the silent question: which is the best path? Huntington neatly keeps science separate from both religion and art. He has rejected here the slightly earlier currents of Romanticism and the penchant of some strains of American Transcendentalism for a ‘mystical identification of nature and God and secular justifications of art’.15 Huntington’s work suggests a contemporary, popular understanding of the relation between nature and religion (represented by science and Christian art), and manifests what Wendy Greenhouse has dubbed the ‘“Catholicization” of American religious art’ with ‘a particular feminine emphasis’.16 Picasso’s work is more conciliatory, even if medicine is given pride of place. Don José’s suggestion of the title Science and Charity was influenced by several significant intellectual and political debates regarding the relationship between the fields and aims of science and religion. Among these was the introduction of Darwinism in Spain after the Spanish-language publication of the Descent of Man in 1876 (a year before the Spanish edition of Origin of Species). Darwinism was, of course, vociferously debated in all arenas across Europe, but its introduction in Spain also prompted the publication of numerous articles that argued whether religion and science were incompatible.17 The debates also brought in foreign apologists on both sides. For instance, the Spanish translation of John William Draper’s largely anti-Catholic History of the Conflict between Religion and Science was also published in 1876.18 The book set in motion numerous published responses and counter-arguments.19 Draper – a chemist and pioneering photographer, as well as historian– set out to show, through a historical reading, how developments across the centuries prove that Catholicism was incompatible with modern civilization, calling the present situation brought about by the Catholic Church as nothing less than an impending religious crisis.20 After several chapters on the histories of the development of Christianity, and of sciences, the book ends with a scathing denunciation of the pronouncements of the First Vatican Council and later papal encyclicals. The encyclical of 1879 by Pope Leon XIII, the Aeterni Patris: On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy, tried to ameliorate some of the more extreme positions which had emerged from the First Vatican Council (1868–70). At that Vatican Council, two important doctrines were drawn up, among the most contested of which was the dogma of papal infallibility. It also claimed that governments could not interfere in Church matters.21 It is 115



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in light of these more hardline positions that the 1879 encyclical attempted to reconcile new scientific and cultural trends with Christian traditions, via a return to the scholasticism of St Thomas Aquinas, and thereby guide Christians into the new scientific age.22 These religion/science debates had spilled into aesthetics and criticism of the period through concerns over materialism, positivism and the neo-Kantian philosophies of Krausism popular in Spain at that time. The debates further show that, for most Spanish Catholic clerics and theologians, materialism and positivism were synonymous with the literary artistic term ‘Naturalism’, although there were conservative practitioners within this literary movement. Idealism for its part was equated with symbolism and transcendentalism, and whose roots certainly could be easily traced through numerous important earlier texts (such as Cousin’s influential understanding of the ideal within Plato’s philosophy, which is beyond the scope of this chapter). Nonetheless, the artistic debates concerning Naturalism versus idealism were, in Spain, nothing less than what has been termed ‘culture wars’ concerning the relations between the State, science and the Catholic religion.23

Naturalism

Some of the leading intellectuals of the day assumed positions on one or other side of the divide between Naturalism and idealism, while others viewed these polarities in negative terms. Articles from the 1870s through the turn of the century point to the variety of ways that the idealism-and-Naturalism debates were being explored through the pictorial arts. As early as 1872, an academic inaugural lecture at Madrid’s San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts spoke of the relationship between El realismo y el idealismo en las artes (Realism and idealism in the arts).24 In 1879, Manuel de la Revilla published his ‘El naturalismo en el arte’ (Naturalism in Art), an essay which at this early stage attempted to distinguish Naturalism from earlier anti-academic trends such as realism and Romanticism, defending Naturalism against its opposite, the Ideal which he considered to originate from the caprice of a disorganized fantasy, as he put it.25 Just as important, he understood there to be a key relationship between the revolution in positivism and science and trends in the pictorial arts.26 Emilia Pardo Bazán’s ‘La cuestión palpitante’ (The Pressing Question), first released in 1882 in the Madrid paper La Época, and as a book the following year,27 was among the most significant essays introducing audiences to these debates on Naturalism through a discussion of the roman experimental of Zola and others. Philosopher Ramón de Campoamor released his Ideísmo (Ideaism (a neologism)) the same year Bazán’s book was published.28 By 1890 leading critic and historian Pedro de Madrazo understood the 116



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Naturalist–Idealist question as the latest manifestation of older binaries, charging that there was no antagonism between the ancient and the modern, between classicism and Naturalism.29 Seven years later, however, a reviewer of the 1897 National Exhibition in Madrid, took advantage of Miguel Blay’s statue Al Ideal (Towards the Ideal), to explain the reasons why contemporary Spanish art, in his opinion, had lost its way. He felt that it was due to a distancing from the study of Nature.30 These debates continued well into the early years of the next century with the notion of the ideal becoming embroiled within symbolist, aesthete notions of ‘art for art’s sake’.31 We have seen that the binary that is represented by science and religion could most frequently be found together with the debates regarding materialism (science) and idealism (religion). The arguments were part of ongoing philosophical debates concerning positivism/idealism, which reductively equated positivism with materialism and superficiality; in artistic terms, this superficiality was translated as an excessive emphasis on surface qualities and a negation of traditional compositions and subjects.32 Within the pictorial arts, those debates quite often took the form of arguments over surface quality and finish of paintings and sculpture. An example of these polarized debates over a work’s surface quality within Spanish academic circles was the competition held in 1893 by the San Fernando Academy in Madrid for the best painting representing Spanish culture. After prolonged debates regarding finish and sketchiness, the academicians agreed to judge the entries on a purely pictorial basis rather than the ‘scientific’ dimension, but keeping in mind Raphael’s School of Athens.33 The divide in that competition’s debates between the two terms pictorial and scientific was essentially one between content and execution, respectively. Both terms were linked to the increasing popularity of sketching societies, as well as the ‘sketch-finish’ debate that partly determined who could enter academic contests. Picasso and his critics were not the only ones responding to what, by the date of his painting, had become a forceful, polarizing debate. Many late nineteenth-century Spanish artists took up brush, pencil and pen to represent this favoured subject that was further understood to be a reflection on the relationship between idealism and Naturalism. That the early versions of Picasso’s Science and Charity show a cot and poorer surroundings, is in keeping with the trend of painters working in subjects associated with Naturalism to often show the marginalized and destitute of society as ill or in need of saving; what in literature Noel Valis has termed ‘Sacred Realism’.34

In the name of the father

The change of title by Picasso and Don José should be contextualized within these contemporary debates, but not limited to them. Picasso, counselled 117



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by his father, was building upon all of these extant traditions, as well as newer experiments with the themes of death or dying, such as those by late ­nineteenth-century symbolists, which were replete with melancholic overtones. What I am arguing, then, is that the (pathological) divide represented by the patient, between science and religion, was not a guilt-ridden representation of Conchita. And while metaphors of the ill or moribund body of the Spanish nation could be found earlier, it was not until after 1898 that they became a truly pressing, current issue; hence we should not interpret the sickly patient in terms of Spanish national identity. Rather, it is Picasso himself who was caught between the pressures and dilemmas of both the familial presence of the father, and the institutional pressures of the current Naturalism and idealism debates. We can bring several explanatory models to bear on Picasso’s work in order better to understand the binary opposition represented on his canvas. One of these is associated with the concept of modernity. There is an ‘irreversible split’ or a binary between understanding modernity as a historical period, on the one hand, and as an aesthetic concept on the other; a split that begins to occur in the first half of the nineteenth century. Neils Larsen, Fredric Jameson and others have examined the understandings of Modernism as a split between realism and greater abstractions; this split continued to represent ‘opposed strategies of design’, whereby realism operated on the premise that recognizable, universally shared practices of representation exist to give us the world as it truly is, whereas Modernism challenged this premise, calling for constant formal and technical reforms in representation. Modernism was nothing short of a critique of the ideological social structuring of bourgeois systems.35 Such theoretical models might lead us to investigate the histories of the theories of realism from the late nineteenth century through to the twentiethcentury theorists, including Lukács – a task that is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, my point here is that if the construction of realism or Naturalism in relation to discourses of Modernism is to be understood as a form of ideology, then any late nineteenth-century attempts at reconciliation of those poles must also manifest significant ideological, cultural shifts. Picasso’s Science and Charity represents just such a shift, both in terms of Picasso’s own artistic career, as well as in the contemporary Modernist debates in Spain.

Conclusion

I would argue that, from a twenty-first-century perspective, the answer to the unvoiced question posed by Picasso’s binary can never be a choice of either or, one or the other. My argument concerning the composition as regards the spatial relations of medicine (science) and the Church (religion) is not meant 118



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to rehabilitate the representation of these concepts as mere illustrations or allegories of contemporary concerns over their divide. Rather, in the 1890s, the metaphor of the arts as ill and in need of resuscitation was widespread.36 The function of representing (literally, in spatial and gendered labour terms) the choice of the two differing solutions to the problem subject was precisely what was at stake: the very conditions of the arts. The bedridden patient can be understood not only in terms of Picasso’s ambivalence, or his working through the choices then being debated. Caught between science and charity, between his father’s and uncle’s close guidance, and the paths offered by traditional institutions, the ill patient therefore mirrors the very choices facing the artists and critics of the day. The father, ultimately, is the definer of this pictorial script which hinges on polarities of love and death, interior and exterior, male and female, material and ethereal, temporal and eternal. We recall here Derrida’s analysis of ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, which offers a philosophical context for thinking of cures, ailments and paternal relations and an understanding of logos: ‘In what way, indeed, is the father–son relation distinguishable from a mere cause–effect or generator-engendered relation, if not by the instance of logos?’37 Soon after painting Science and Charity, the young Picasso would abandon the work’s Naturalism for the Symbolist-inspired modernista vocabulary of the Quatre Gats artistic circle in Barcelona and within months attempt a total break from both, leaving his father and family, academic tradition and religion. It seems, therefore, that neither prescription offered an adequate cure for the conditions of Picasso’s art.

Notes

 1 Ciencia i caritat (Science and Charity). 1897, oil on canvas. 197 × 249.5 cm. Signed P. Ruiz Picasso, bottom-left corner. Barcelona, Museu Picasso inventory number MPB 110.046. See Malén Gual and Mariona Tió, Ciencia y caridad al descubierto (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona; Institut de Cultura, 2010).  2 Sastre del Campillo (pseudonym of Antonio Martinez Viergol), Exposición de Bellas Artes en 1897. Catálago satírico (Madrid: Tipografía y Encuadernación de Leonardo Miñón, 1897), 13–14. Also cited by Marilyn McCully, ed., Picasso – The Early Years, 1892–1906 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1997), 26; and José Javier Campos-Bueno, ‘Art and Science in Sorolla’s Painting A Research in Dr. Simarro’s Lab’, Pyschologia Latina 1 (2010), 18.  3 As far as I can determine, it was Picasso’s friend and biographer Jaime Sabartés who was the first to attribute the work’s title change to Don José. See Jaime Sabartés, Picasso. Documents Iconographiques, trans. Félia Leal and Alfred Rosset (Geneva: Pierre Cailler, 1954), 299–300. Penrose, although citing Sabartés’s earlier work in several instances, does not explicitly say it was the father’s choice of title, but rather only that ‘Don José chose with care a theme which would do

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his son credit’. See Roland Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 43. Elizabeth Cowling goes as far to suggest that it would be fair to call the 1896 First Communion and 1897 Science and Charity ‘collaborative ventures’ because of the ‘prominent role’ played by Don José in the works. See Cowling, Picasso. Style and meaning (London: Phaidon, 2002), 48. According to John Richardson, the work (Science and Charity) was originally titled A Visit to the Sick Woman but it was Don José who ‘elevated it to Science and Charity to impress the jury of Madrid’s Exposición de Bellas Artes’. See A Life of Picasso, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1991), 80. Mary Mathews Gedo stated that Picasso ‘usually did not name his canvases at that time’. See Picasso, Art as Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 23. A slightly different tale is told by Josep Palau i Fabre who, in 1975, wrote that if Picasso ‘intended to call his picture The visit to the sick woman’ but changed the title so as to differentiate his work from Enrique Paternina’s The Mother’s Visit shown at the 1896 Barcelona Fine Arts Exhibition. See Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso in Catalonia, trans. Kenneth Lyons (Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1981), 42.  4 Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. 1, 50.  5 Pierre Daix, Picasso. Life and Art, trans. Olivia Emmet (New York: HarperCollins; Icon Editions, 1993), 7.  6 Pablo Picasso, Maria-Teresa Ocaña, and Museo Picasso, Picasso: The Development of a Genius, 1890–1904: Drawings in The Museu Picasso of Barcelona (Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores, 1997), 340.  7 ‘Once free of his father’s influence, Picasso revealed a style far more incisive than one might anticipate on the basis of works like Science and Charity’. See Mathews Gedo, Picasso, Art as Autobiography, 26. See also Josep Palau i Fabre and Pablo Picasso, Picasso in Catalonia, 38.  8 Griselda Pollock, ‘Artists Mythologies and Media Genius: Madness and Art History’, Screen 21 (1980), 57–96.  9 Other works of Picasso’s from these years include several dark, symbolist influenced canvas with titles such as Close to Death (Museu Picasso MPB 110.082), At the Sick Woman’s Bedside (Museu Picasso MPB 110.23), The Presence of Death (Museu Picasso MPB110.075), and The Stillborn Child (Museu Picasso MPB 110.095), all from 1899–1900. Pablo Picasso and Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue, 1885– 1973, 2nd edn (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2008), vol. 18, ‘Picasso in the Nineteenth Century: Youth in Spain I – 1889–1897. Málaga, Corunna and Barcelona’, 58; and vol. 19: ‘Picasso in the Nineteenth Century: Youth in Spain II – 1897–1900. Málaga, Corunna and Barcelona’, 3–7, and 290–91. 10 Leo Steinberg, ‘The Philosophical Brothel’, originally published in Art News 81 (1972), reprinted in October 44 (Spring 1988), 7–74. 11 The 2010 exhibition catalogue, Ciencia y caridad al descubierto of the Museu Picasso, Barcelona (edited by Malén Gual and Mariona Tió), reproduces, and has contextualized, Picasso’s painting within numerous European paintings that demonstrate the late nineteenth-century interest in themes of physicians and patients.

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12 While there was no single order (the Vincentian order of the Daughters of Charity is the oldest dating back to the seventeenth century), the most famous and prolific of Roman Catholic and Anglican Sisters of Charity were founded in the 1830s and late 1860s respectively. 13 The nun was a local person paid to don the habit of the Sister of the Order of St Vincent de Paul and the habit was borrowed from a friend of the family, a Sister Josefa González, according to Sabartés. See Sabartés, Picasso. Documentation iconographique, 299. 14 Ciencia y Caridad. Periódico médico (Barquisimeto, Venezuela), 1898–99. 15 Wendy Greenhouse, ‘Daniel Huntington and the Ideal of Christian Art’, Winterthur Portfolio 31:2–3 (1996), 103–40 (115, 118) (The quotation is on p. 118). 16 And which she argues ‘suggest the Protestant limits of his appropriation of his Catholicism’. See Greenhouse, ‘Daniel Huntington and the Ideal of Christian Art’, 124, 126. 17 These articles appeared between 1879 and the 1880s in journals such as Revista de España, El Liberal and Revista Contemporánea. Also, see Matías Nieto Serrano ‘La ciencia y el arte’, El Siglo Médico 34:1754 (7 August 1887), 498. 18 John William Draper, History of The Conflict Between Religion and Science (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875). It was translated into Spanish the following year by Augusto T. Arcimís – and with a prologue by Nicolás Salmerón – as Historia de los conflictos entre la religión y la ciencia (Madrid: Imprenta, Estereotipia y Galvanoplastia de Aribau y Ca., 1876). 19 For example, Contestación a la historia del conflicto entre la religion y la ciencia de Juan Guillermo Draper (Valladolid: Imprenta, Gaviria y Zapatero, 1880) by the influential (later) Bishop of Salamanca, Spain, Tomás Jenero Cámara y Castro. Another was Antonio Comellas y Cluet’s Demostración de la armonía entre la religión católica y la ciencia (Barcelona: Librería de Álvaro Verdaguer, 1880). 20 Draper, History of The Conflict Between Religion and Science, 327. 21 Already in 1864 – the same year that organizing for the First Vatican council began – the publication Syllabus de Errores maintained the ultramontanist position of defending the authority of the Pope, that Catholicism was incompatible with liberal society, and condemned the currents of Positivism and Naturalism. It was the 1864 Syllabus that set the stage for Vatican I. See Marta M. Campomar Fornieles, La cuestión religiosa en la Restauración. Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Santander: Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 1984), 15–42; William J. Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 14–31. 22 Solange Hibbs, ‘La iglesia católica española ante el reto de la modernidad y de la ciencia (1850–1900)’, in Pensamiento y literatura en España en el siglo XIX. Idealismo, positivismo, espiritualismo, ed. Yvan Lissourgues and Gonzalo Sobejano (Toulouse: Presses Univesitaires du Mirail, 1988), 273–93 (the quotations appear on p. 273). 23 See Julio de la Cuera, ‘The Assault of The City of Levites: Spain’, in Culture Wars: Secular–Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark

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and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 181–201; and Hendrik Schlieper, Naturalismus und Kulturkampf in Spanien (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012). 24 L.A. de Cueto, El realismo y el idealismo en las artes. Discurso leído ante la Real Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando en la recepción de … 1872 also published in the Gaceta de Madrid (6, 7, 9 May 1872). For Cueto, see also Javier Hernando Carrasco, Las bellas artes y la Revolución de 1868 (Oviedo: Ethos-Arte, 1987), 19–21. 25 Indeed, he wrote ‘Between realism and naturalism, there is little real difference in principle’. Manuel de la Revilla, ‘El naturalismo en el arte’, Revista de España 68:270 (28 May 1879), 166, 178. 26 Revilla, ‘El naturalismo en el arte’, 164. 27 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘La cuestión palpitante’, La Época, beginning with vol. 34, no. 10895 (7 November 1882), 1. The work appeared in book form with a prologue by Clarín as La cuestión palpitante (Madrid: V. Saiz, 1883). There is a large body of literature on Pardo Bazán and Naturalism. On the essay and its context, see the introductory essays in La cuestión palpitante. Emilia Pardo Bazán, ed. José Manual González Herrán (Barcelona: Editorial Anthropos; Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1989). 28 Ramón de Campoamor, El Ideísmo (Madrid: Imprenta Central a cargo de V. Saiz, 1883). 29 Pedro de Madrazo, ‘Bellas Artes. Algo de moderna crítica y de arte moderno’, Ilustracion Española y Americana 34 (22 December 1890), 374–5. 30 Francisco Alcántara, La Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. 1897 (Madrid: Centro Editorial Artístico, 1897), 82. 31 For example, Federico Urales argued that the ‘arte por el arte’, or ‘el arte por la idea’ (art for art’s sake; art for the sake of the idea) was one of two bands that divided contemporary art (the other being social realism which is suggested by the examples he offers his readers). ‘El Ideal en la Exposición de Bellas Artes’, La Revista Blanca 8:145 (1 July 1904), 10–13. 32 Spanish Prime Minister Cánovas del Castillo in his ‘Concepto de Naciones’ (Concept of Nations) criticized the many illusions engendered by positivists, as he called them adding that the sciences should have less respect for matter and more for the theological absolute. Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, ‘Concepto de las Naciones’, Revista General de Legislación y Jurisprudencia (Madrid), 61 (1882), 388. 33 San Fernando Academy Archives. Libro de Actas. Sesión Ordinaria. Monday, 7 January (1895), 28–9. Cited in Oscar E. Vázquez, ‘Defining Hispanidad: Allegories, Genealogies and Cultural Politics in Late-Nineteenth-Century Madrid’, Art History 20 (1997), 114. 34 Noël Valis, Sacred Realism: Religion and the Imagination in Modern Spanish Narrative (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010). 35 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 11. See Neil Larsen’s critique of Fredric Jameson, in Modernism and Hegemony. A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990),

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3. Francisco Jarauta, ‘Mito y experiencia de la modernidad’, in Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, Fin de Siglo y Formas de la Modernidad 3 (1990), 14–5. 36 Perhaps the most infamous account of the arts as sickly and in dire need of care is that of Max Nordau’s 1892 Degeneration. For a discussion of these metaphors, see this author’s The End Again. Degeneration and Visual Culture in Modern Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017), particularly ‘Introduction’ and chapter 6. 37 ‘Logos represents what it is indebted to: the father who is also chief, capital, and good(s). Or rather, the chief, the capital, the good(s)’. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Father of Logos’, in ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ [1968] in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 81.

References

Alcántara, Francisco, La Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. 1897 (Madrid: Centro Editorial Artístico, 1897) Callahan, William J., The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012) Calinescu, Matei, Five Faces of Modernity. Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987) Cámara y Castro, Tomás Jenero, Contestación a la historia del conflicto entre la religion y la ciencia de Juan Guillermo Draper (Valladolid: Imprenta, Gaviria y Zapatero, 1880) Campillo, Sastre del (Antonio Martinez Viergol), Exposición de Bellas Artes en 1897. Catálago satírico (Madrid: Tipografía y Encuadernación de Leonardo Miñón, 1897) Campomar Fornieles, Marta M., La cuestión religiosa en la Restauración. Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (Santander: Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 1984) Campoamor, Ramón de, El Ideísmo (Madrid: Imprenta Central a cargo de V. Saiz, 1883) Campos-Bueno, José Javier, ‘Art and Science in Sorolla’s Painting A Research in Dr. Simarro’s Lab’, Pyschologia Latina 1 (2010), 9–26 Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio, ‘Concepto de las Naciones’, Revista General de Legislación y Jurisprudencia (Madrid), 61 (1882) Comellas y Cluet, Antonio, Demostración de la armonía entre la religión católica y la ciencia (Barcelona: Librería de Álvaro Verdaguer, 1880) Cowling, Elizabeth, Picasso. Style and Meaning (London: Phaidon, 2002) Cuera, Julio de la, ‘The Assault of The City of Levites: Spain’, in Culture Wars: Secular– Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 181–201 Cueto, L.A. de, El realismo y el idealismo en las artes. Discurso leído ante la Real Academia de Nobles Artes de San Fernando en la recepción de … 1872, also published in the Gaceta de Madrid, 6, 7 and 9 May, 1872 Daix, Pierre, Picasso. Life and Art, trans. Olivia Emmet (New York: HarperCollins; Icon Editions, 1993) Derrida, Jacques, ‘The Father of Logos’, in ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’ [1968] in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)

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Draper, John William, History of The Conflict Between Religion and Science (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1875) —, Historia de los conflictos entre la religión y la ciencia, trans. Augusto T. Arcimís with a prologue by Nicolás Salmerón (Madrid: Imprenta, Estereotipia y Galvanoplastia de Aribau y Ca., 1876) Greenhouse, Wendy, ‘Daniel Huntington and the Ideal of Christian Art’, Winterthur Portfolio 31:2–3 (1996), 103–40 Gual, Malén, and Mariona Tió, Ciencia y caridad al descubierto (Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona and Institut de Cultura, 2010) Hernando Carrasco, Javier, Las bellas artes y la Revolución de 1868 (Oviedo: EthosArte, 1987) Hibbs, Solange, ‘La iglesia católica española ante el reto de la modernidad y de la ciencia (1850–1900)’, in Pensamiento y literatura en España en el siglo XIX. Idealismo, positivismo, espiritualismo, ed. Yvan Lissourgues and Gonzalo Sobejano (Toulouse: Presses Univesitaires du Mirail, 1988), 273–93 Jarauta, Francisco, ‘Mito y experiencia de la modernidad’, in Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, Fin de Siglo y Formas de la Modernidad 3 (1990) Larsen, Neil, Modernism and Hegemony. A Materialist Critique of Aesthetic Agencies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990) Madrazo, Pedro de, ‘Bellas Artes. Algo de moderna crítica y de arte moderno’, Ilustracion Española y Americana 34 (22 December 1890) Mathews Gedo, Mary, Art as Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) McCully, Marilyn (ed.), Picasso – The Early Years, 1892–1906 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1997) Nieto Serrano, Matías,‘La ciencia y el arte’, El Siglo Médico 34:1754 (7 August 1887) Palau i Fabre, Josep, Picasso in Catalonia, trans. Kenneth Lyons (Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books, 1981) Pardo Bazán, Emilia [1882], La cuestión palpitante (Madrid: V. Saiz, 1883); La cuestión palpitante, ed. José Manual González Herrán (Barcelona: Editorial Anthropos; Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1989) Penrose, Roland, Picasso: His Life and Work (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958) Picasso, Pablo, Maria-Teresa Ocaña, and Museo Picasso, Picasso: The Development of a Genius, 1890–1904: Drawings in The Museu Picasso of Barcelona (Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores, 1997) Picasso, Pablo, and Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, and Sculpture: A Comprehensive Illustrated Catalogue, 1885–1973, 2nd edn (San Francisco: Alan Wofsy Fine Arts, 2008) Pollock, Griselda, ‘Artists Mythologies and Media Genius: Madness and Art History’, Screen 21 (1980), 57–96 Revilla, Manuel de la, ‘El naturalismo en el arte’, Revista de España 68:270 (28 May 1879) Richardson, John, A Life of Picasso (New York: Random House, 1991) Sabartés, Jaime, Picasso. Documents Iconographiques, trans. Félia Leal and Alfred Rosset (Geneva: Pierre Cailler, 1954)

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San Fernando Academy Archives. Libro de Actas. Sesión Ordinaria (7 January 1895), 28–9 Schlieper, Hendrik, Naturalismus und Kulturkampf in Spanien (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012) Steinberg, Leo [1972], ‘The Philosophical Brothel’, October 44 (1988), 7–74 Urales, Federico, ‘El Ideal en la Exposición de Bellas Artes’, La Revista Blanca 8:145 (1 July 1904) Valis, Noël, Sacred Realism: Religion and the Imagination in Modern Spanish Narrative (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010) Vázquez, Oscar E., ‘Defining Hispanidad: Allegories, Genealogies and Cultural Politics in Late-Nineteenth-Century Madrid’, Art History 20 (1997), 100–23 —, The End Again. Degeneration and Visual Culture in Modern Spain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017)

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6

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How to know about right and wrong

1

Alison Sinclair

Éste es el contagio, el vil contagio, que baja de la literatura al pueblo.2 (This is the contagion, the wretched contagion, that comes down from literature to the common people.) (Valle-Inclán, Los cuernos de Don Friolera (1921))

As the character Don Estrafalario reminds us in Los cuernos de Don Friolera (The horns of Mr Silly) by the Spanish modernist author Ramón del ValleInclán, there are links to be perceived between literature and behaviour, between discourse and practice, between culture and civilization, and these links are not necessarily either positive or simple. The case alluded to here by Estrafalario is couched in terms of contamination: the way that we perceive the world, in so far as it is mediated by the literature we consume, is one that may be damaging. Of the many focus points for thought raised by this esperpento (a type of play defined by Valle-Inclán, and which inverts and subverts the nature of the hero and heroism), the dubious value of literature in its relationship to man’s behaviour is given prominence by the final pages of the play. In the main act of the play we have seen how the unfortunate Friolera is goaded into action by public opinion. Convinced that his wife has cuckolded him, and that he should take some action, he pursues his wife and her putative lover. Mistakenly, and tragically, he manages to kill his daughter, who has been taken with them. At the end of the play this tale is reworked into a blind-man’s ballad, in which Friolera is glorified into a heroic avenger, is rewarded by the King and Queen for killing his wife and lover, and has his story published in the illustrated papers. Don Estrafalario’s diatribe against popular literature relates to a particularly seedy branch of the genre: the romance de ciego (blind man’s ballad), with its extremes of sensationalism, melodramatic gesture and implausible plots. This is how life has been transformed for popular consumption. In the course of the play we also see how other equally seedy genres such as romantic 126



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novelettes and popular theatre provide role-models for Friolera’s wife and her lover. If ‘real’ people base their actions and reactions on such literature (as do Loreto, and, somewhat more reluctantly, Friolera within that play) then it is not only likely but arguably inevitable that it will all end in tears. Doing what you think you have to do is what proves to be Friolera’s personal tragedy, unrecognized in the romance de ciego. Yet the process by which he comes to this ‘wrong’ action, in some ways regarded as the ‘right’ action, because he does what he thinks is expected of him, is one that involves a travesty of what could be seen as the process of education and civilization. Friolera has taken in impressions of what are the ‘right’ or recommended types of reaction in response to certain situations and, albeit reluctantly and misguidedly, tries to act upon them. It is something of a commonplace to believe that education leads to civilization. Whatever nuancing critics may engage in when assessing Norbert Elias’s work on the civilizing process, basic beliefs endure about the relationship between education and a sense of what is right and wrong, and they endure with some justification.3 The type of literature and culture with which I am concerned here, however, does not map obviously onto a concept of improvement, although – as I hope to demonstrate – it contains some sense of education in the broadest sense. What constitutes right and wrong within popular culture is not identical to the rather restricted and restricting concept of ‘right-doing’ that emerges in conduct literature. The existence of conduct literature as a popular genre from the sixteenth century onwards in Europe testifies to a perception that there has continued to be a regular hole in the market for writing about ‘how to … behave’. Within this, we might observe two broad trends: in general, more has been written about the behaviour of women (at least prescriptively) than about that of men, and it tends to fall into the category of simple advice about being ‘well-behaved’. Second, in the detail of what has been written for men, there is a greater emphasis on courtliness (as in Castigilione), or the upright and well-considered actions of man in society (as in Gracián’s El criticón (The Critic)).4 Conduct literature, as it exists broadly in Europe, and of which there is a mirroring or repetition in Spain as it moves towards a more bourgeois culture through the nineteenth century, is only one part of the cultural picture. Increasingly, and certainly through the nineteenth century, conduct literature has as its target audience an aspiring middle class. In many respects it is distinct from the more striking and often shocking popular literature of exemplarity that existed (in social terms) below it. This chapter concentrates on a spectrum of writings and practices within popular literature that reflect on good and bad conduct in Spain through the nineteenth century, including some of a type of which Don Estrafalario would almost certainly have disapproved. Of particular interest is the degree 127



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to which it is not necessarily concerned just with good and bad conduct, but with more fundamental (and not always logical) concepts of what right and wrong. This chapter examines three areas: items of exemplarity that demarcate what is ‘wrong’; cultural concepts central to how what is ‘wrong’ can be perceived as admirable, and which include complex areas such as valentía (show of bravery); and finally the spectrum of retribution for what is ‘wrong’ as an indicator that allows us to read the paradoxes of thinking about wrongdoing, and that is characterized by a spirit of completion and admonition. Two distinctly contrasting strands emerge. There is exemplarity that is related to compliance, and exemplarity that consists in independence. Thus in some areas of popular culture we find the strand of decorum, conformity with one’s fate, submission to codes of behaviour that aim at containing excess, rather than allowing for its expression. In these examples there is a reflection of what is required by religion (obedience to the commandments, and to one’s confessor). But on the other hand, and allied with some of the strongest elements of popular culture, there is a tradition of valentía, of a style of ostentatious performance of selfhood. Habitually linked to an attitude of confrontation, even rebellion, and the expression of the individual will and desire, this tradition lies at the heart of the conversion of the wrongdoer into the hero. Typically this is linked to the embodiment of masculinity, but it is also found in the actions and attitudes of a significant number of female figures. Combinations of these two strands are not unknown. They can be found, for example, in the stoicism with which wrongdoers may eventually meet their end. The ends of wrongdoers inform, retrospectively, how their lives are to be taken as examples. As indicated in an earlier essay,5 one of the forms of popular literature in Spain that provided a straight educational guide to right and wrong was the aleluya. This was a type of broadside with illustrations (usually 48), accompanied by two-line captions, often in verse. Initially religious in content, the aleluya came to be used for examples of morality and generalized moral summaries. Later it would be used for political caricature.6 In some of these aleluyas, contrastive narratives of what happens to the man (or woman) who does right (or wrong) in their course of life, suggests an incremental weighting towards virtue or vice. There is a sort of moral compound interest that operates in these exemplary lives, with a positivist inevitability about the trajectory of the protagonist. Such is the intentionality of the narrative that these popular exemplary stories will hardly grip their reader on the basis of suspense or excitement. Some of the aleluyas discussed have examples of right and wrong that come in neat companion sets, such as Vida de la mujer buena y la mala (Life of the good and bad woman).7 Looking at these retrospectively, through a lens of determinism, we might pay attention to those which imply, as that pair just 128



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cited implies, that there is ‘badness’ and ‘goodness’ in nature, as essential characteristics, even though the probable dates at which such aleluyas were put together precede by an appreciable distance the heyday of determinism in the nineteenth century (exemplified by Bernard, Zola and Taine). Other sets pay attention to action, such as two versions of the Vida del hombre obrando bien y obrando mal (Life of the man who acts well and the man who acts badly).8 Perhaps of more interest, in terms of indicative restriction, are those that are specific in relation to class or occupation, such as the Vida de la criada buena y la mala (Life of the good and bad maidservant) (intended, presumably, for consumption by maids, rather than by their employers).9 In part we could see them as contrasting with the verbal treatment of mistresses by maids in the Catalan suelto, Conversació en que sis criadas treyan a venal la condició de sas mestressas (Conversation in which six maidservants gossip about what their mistresses are like), with its companion piece, Las queixas de las mestressas de la conversació de las sis criadas (Complaints by mistresses about the conversation of their maidservants).10 They also contrast with those who have been released from immediate parental supervision, as in the Vida del estudiante bueno y la del malo (Life of the good and bad student), in which the emphasis is not on potential criminality, but on a life that might be dissolute and delinquent.11 Somewhat more extreme in the examples it offers is the Vida de un calavera (Life of a madcap), although even this is centred upon behaviour that is madcap and foolish, rather than seriously ‘wrong’.12 Aleluyas are not particularly easy to date, and were often reprinted. Some used (or re-used) crude illustrations in the form of woodcuts; others revealed their later date of composition by the relative sophistication of illustration that was permitted by more advanced technology: such is the example of the Vida de la mujer buena y la mala.13 Others run against one’s expectations. Warnings about the demon drink might seem to us to be more a motif of the latter part of the nineteenth century and yet the Vida del hombre y de la mujer borrachos (Life of the drunkard man and woman) is of a simplicity that borders on crudity, with its one-line commentaries, and crude graphics. Of note, perhaps, is that the drunken man goes to the bad by becoming involved in street-brawls, with the public shame of his trousers falling down, while the example of the woman is more contained: she is portrayed as spinning in the prison of San Fernando. While the man’s relation with alcohol will lead to public fighting and eventually his death, in the case of the woman her actual transgressions are simply within the family, and her end is in ridicule, not demise.14 The aleluyas cited here function in the framework of ‘How to …’ or ‘How not to …’, and indicate what happens if you engage in particular behaviours. Indeed, one pair seems to concentrate specifically on the link between behaviour and outcome in their titles: the Bida de la muger buena y consecuencias de 129



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la buena educación (Life of the good woman and results of a good upbringing), and the Bida de la muger mala o consecuencias de sus bicios (Life of the bad woman and results of her bad ways).15 The realities of what might cause behaving badly that we can see in aleluyas suggest a world that is concerned more with the rewards of compliance than with the sparkiness that might result from, or give rise to, independence. The idea of upbringing is usually implied in what goes right or wrong, and it is clear that the provision of this good upbringing will produce satisfactory citizens who will also enjoy lives that are blessed in their tranquillity. The idea of ‘education’ is not implied by this term, and there is no advocation of simple schooling here. In encouraging such compliance with norms of good behaviour, a sense of reasoning and logic is used. There will be a quid pro quo for good behaviour. But some examples of popular literature operate on a principle that is related to fright not persuasion. Goya would comment on this in 1799 via his third engraving of the Caprichos (The Caprices), ‘¡Que viene el coco!’ (The bogeyman is coming!) Scaring infants would seem to be a way of controlling them, although the face of the woman with the two children in that engraving suggests a level of fascination with the mystery figure confronting them. Much popular literature in Spain appeared not just in the form of aleluyas but as pliegos sueltos (chapbooks). Some sueltos are much more precise about the terrible things that can happen to those who do wrong. In an example of 1847, printed in Madrid by Marés, the deal is set out rather clearly in the title. She is La doncela [sic] condenada (The maid condemned), so we know from the outset that this is a sort of bringing to account. This is a case of a child being out of line, and her disobedience leads to the fate of being ‘despedazada por los demonios’ (torn to bits by demons). The image presented is relatively stylized, in that two demons are simply gripping the woman. The fantastical nature of the attackers is evident from these two demons, and from a multiheaded monster in the background. There is an image of a priest on the left, a type of indication of the presence of order. Curiously, the text holds back on recounting what actually happens. Considerable detail supplied about the girl’s wrongdoing (mainly in the form of indulgence in self-adornment) is designed to engage the listener into a horrified amazement. The comeuppance, however, is given remarkably brief treatment. The girl’s finery is found on the floor, and she is ‘toda hecha mil pedazos/ por mano de los demonios’ (ripped to bits by the demons). The only detail that draws us in (at the same time as it repels us) is the stench that greets those who go to find what has happened to her.16 A different example is conveyed through a horrifying tale that spells out in riveting detail in its title what is to come: La fiera de Oporto. Caso notable y espantoso que acaba de suceder en la ciudad de Oporto reino de Portugal, con 130



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un animal fiero; dáse cuenta de cómo por la providencia de Dios arrebataba diariamente los niños de las casas de sus padres sin hacerse visible, trasladándolos á una cueva de un monte; declárase también como al cabo de algunos dias se descubrió la causa de este castigo, por un tierno niño de pechos que lo declaró por disposicion divina (The wild beast of Oporto. Noteworthy and terrible event that has just taken place in the city of Oporto in the kingdom of Portugal, concerning a wild animal; account of how, through the providence of God, children were each day wrenched from the houses of their parents, without that power being made visible, said children being taken to a cave in the hills; it is also recounted how at the end of some days the reason for this punishment was made known, through a tender infant still at the breast, speaking through divine intervention).17 This is a report of apparently random attacks on children by a wild animal. It was printed in 1846 in Madrid, by the printer Marés, one of the major producers of this type of literature. The title informs of how the ‘animal fiero’ operated, and the text of the title draws the reader or spectator into the terrible narrative of how the beast not only attacked on a daily basis, but wrenched the children from their homes, and took them off to its cave. In this example the ‘read all about it’ element is the most significant. The title then entices the audience in by the image of a ‘tierno niño de pechos’ (tender infant still at the breast) who explains – so the title says – what the reason for this activity of the wild animal is about. The mention of the ‘tierno niño de pechos’ contributes an element of delicate intervention by the purest and most innocent of beings. The illustration in this case is clearly quite fantastic, but equally clearly intended to be horrific. The many-armed, or many-limbed monster is depicted with two children hanging from its pincer-like grip, while at the side a multitude of infants cower in the mouth of the cave. The text, however, while it delivers on the front of delineating how, relentlessly, children are torn from their homes on a daily basis, does not manage to deliver the image of the ‘tierno niño de pechos’. What does transpire, however, is that this is not a tale of mindless violence, but rather that these children have been kidnapped because their parents were failing to bring them up with proper discipline and order. The multiple failures of parents, whether to understand, or to act with responsibility, recur throughout this literature. Upbringing is not the same as education. But it would appear that here too, simple deficit is the trigger for things going badly, and there is evidence for it in the historical context of nineteenth-century Spain. If we switch educación for ‘education’, in the form of basic levels of schooling, then outside of the world of literature some striking correlations were observed. Thus in 1888 an official document states, with reference to specific parts of Castile, that schooling was a major factor in the different crime levels of city and country: 131



Spain in the nineteenth century según lo acreditan el ejemplo de Ciudad Real, en donde se vio que pocos procesados sabían leer y escribir, y los de Reus y Tortosa, en cuyos términos se observa menor criminalidad en la población urbana que en la rural. Nada tiene de extraño, porque la cultura del espíritu abre los ojos del hombre a la luz de la razón, y lo pone en camino de usar la libertad sin ofensa de nadie, cuando la enseñanza no deja de ser moral y religiosa.18 (this is shown by the example from Ciudad Real, where it was seen that few of those brought to justice could read and write, and the examples of Reus and Tortosa, where one can see a lower occurrence of criminality in the population in the urban areas than in the rural areas. This is not strange, because culture of the mind opens the eyes of man to the light of reason, and puts him on the road to use his freedom without giving offence to anyone, always providing the teaching is moral and religious.)

This narrowly predates the observation by made in 1889 by Napoleone Colajanni, the Italian criminologist, and cited by the Spanish criminologist Bernaldo de Quirós in 1904, namely that the major social factor in homicide was illiteracy.19 The level of illiteracy in the population in 1887 in Ciudad Real was 73 per cent, with few provinces – among them Almería, Canarias, Granada, Jaén, Málaga and Murcia – that exceeded that level.20 Bernaldo de Quirós’s next comment in the essay on homicide is interesting. Drawing his authority (now more distantly) from Claude Fleury, the French Enlightenment educationalist, he points out that education fills what otherwise would be a void, and thus ‘malas impulsiones’ (impulses towards wrong), instead of finding an open field, will encounter images that will stand in their way. There is a risk that such comments would incline the reader to view members of a largely illiterate pueblo as blank slates on which right-thinking or wrong-thinking images or ideas might be imprinted. Being illiterate in this period does not, however, necessarily imply a lack of mental resource. In a case of homicide reported for Aranjuez in 1906 we find a couple described as being from ‘una familia humilde de labriegos’ (a humble family of labourers) and whose condition of jornaleros (day labourers) might imply illiteracy. But a complex calculation about domestic resources ensues from an insulting and unreasonable attack on the husband by a fellow jornalero, in the course of which he receives a severe blow on the head with a stone. His wife, finding him on the ground, and at risk of a final and fatal blow, takes out her navaja (knife) and stabs the attacker in the heart, causing his death. The question arises as to which of the couple should admit guilt.21 The wife assumed she should, believing their children would be better protected by the husband. But subsequently the couple (and the witnesses) change their declaration, affirming that the husband was responsible for the death of the attacker, but that this was in legitimate defence of his wife. The case was dismissed and 132



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was written up in El Heraldo de Madrid, El Liberal, El País, La Época and La Correspondencia de España on 17 and 18 April 1907.22 Cases such as this would contribute to the local conceptions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and how to tread a practical path between the two.

Upbringing and frictions

The message of the aleluyas is predominantly that compliance with social expectations will lead to a tranquil and productive life (not to mention social recognition and general happiness). Within this framework there is room neither for independence nor for fun. Different avenues open up elsewhere in relation to desire and its rewards (or its pains). Two major themes can be seen in popular culture of the nineteenth century, one for men, one for women. Both paint a much more active life than can be gleaned from the path of compliance. For men, there is an ideal of agency, activity, renown and – as a type of logical consequence – excess. For women, there is the message that if they are thwarted in their desires, they may well end up following the same route as their male counterparts, rebelling against the constraints of social circumstance, leading to disorderliness of quite extreme proportions.

Exemplary masculinity

The central question about the behaviour of men is whether the template for imitation should be one of compliance or rebellion. This structure of behaviour and reward comes, however, from a conformist world that does not seem to envisage dynamism, self-determination or energy in the same social space as rewards for doing what you are told to do. Therefore, a separate system has to be sketched out, one in which recognition as a man, or rather, as a ‘man of worth’, may derive not from compliance but from standing out from the crowd, and even of standing one’s ground. The structure of the honour system in Spain, with its roots in the Middle Ages, is readily associated with the Golden Age, and specifically with the theatre of that period. Central to wife-murder plays, such as those of Lope de Vega and Calderón, is the presumed loss or lack of innocence of the wife, and the pressures this brings to bear on the husband. This is the situation that will be rehearsed and found to be empty in Los cuernos de don Friolera, with which this chapter began. The fragility of masculinity derives from that divide by which the sphere of woman is that of the home, and thus of enclosed intimate space, whereas the sphere of the man is outside, in the street, a domain in which he is anonymous, and must either construct his own being to be respected, or suffer an attack on that public being. 133



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That man is subject to his being recognized, and hence respected, by others, was central to legal concepts of medieval Spain. While ‘fama’ (good reputation) was the good, the essential quality not only to possess, but to be recognized to possess, its errant opposite, ‘mala fama’ (bad reputation) (and the legal condition of ‘infamia’ [lack of good reputation] that could be imposed for certain actions, behaviours or occupations) was a constant threat. The society of early modern Spain had a wealth of examples where the heritage of fame, and its dire opposite, infamia, passed down through Visigoth and Roman law, continued to colour, in uncomfortable manner, the private and public life of the population. What mattered in medieval Spain, and what is reflected in the Siete partidas (The seven books), compiled in the mid-thirteenth century for Alfonso X, was reputation. Here, in the foundational legislation of Spain, as in the wife-murder dramas of the Golden Age, and finally in the early twentieth-century Los cuernos de don Friolera, the pivotal question for honour was not what was but what was believed to be. Consistent with the idea that ‘mud sticks’ was the seriousness with which ‘injurias’ (insults) in public were regarded in the Siete partidas (see Título IX of the VII Partida). Specifically ‘injurias’ that related to sexual activity were regarded as ‘atrozes’ (atrocious) (the meaning of which in Spanish was ‘cruel y grave’ [cruel and serious]), and a case of 1497 provides evidence that attacks on property was regarded with less severity than attack on reputation.23 One of the areas of concern of Alfonso the Wise in the Siete partidas is, surprisingly, with the crime of ‘musical attack’. This type of attack, in the form of circulation of songs or rhymes about another in a way that attacked their honourable person, was considered to be on a par with attacks of violence.24 The gravity with which such offences were regarded puts into perspective the importance and role of popular culture. It also could be seen as offering an explanation for the prominence within popular culture of examples that proclaim the valour, bravery and heroic reputation of the men portrayed. Thus items of popular culture that contained or celebrated the lives of hypermasculine, bragging and aggressive types, can be seen as a sort of defensive reaction against slurs against honour or – perhaps more centrally – provided examples of hombría (manliness). A whole sub-genre of popular culture promotes a disruptive and egotistical model of manhood that centres on the tradition of valentones, guapos and chulos (braggarts, flashy and insolent men). The representation of valentía (being a braggart) as a type of inverse of infamia takes place on a mobile and interactive canvas. As Mantecón Movellán points out, the reputation for valentía was a type of personal worth that could be acquired.25 This concept maps well on to the discussion by Caro Baroja of honour and shame, specifically with reference to how honour could be acquired, as well as how it could be lost.26 Thus valentía, like either honour or infamy, was something that existed in the minds of others, and simple belief 134



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was sufficient to give it full weight in social dealings. But valentía differs from honour in that, when we look at the examples of popular culture that portray it, we see that the way it demands recognition is one that proclaims its own emptiness. This fragility of the persona of the valentón is conveyed through the exaggerations of discourse in which he indulges. Far from even purporting to be realistic in their representations, sueltos of this genre are characterized by their obvious excess, and this complicates the type of exemplarity they might be offering to the reader or the listener. This feature of the genre of valentía is one that raises important questions about the informed nature of its consumer. The fact that it exists in forms of popular culture directed to a largely illiterate audience might suggest that – in discursive terms – such an audience was also simple-minded. But, as illustrated above, it is not clear that lack of literacy has to imply lack of mental capacity, nor indeed subtlety in understanding social dynamics. The Spanish consumer of popular culture in the nineteenth century might or might not have been able to spot the ironic implication of punctuation in the way that a reader of an English broadside might at the same period, but knowing a braggart in real life would have been sufficient education for spotting – and arguably treating with some detachment – the braggart in literature.27 And there were rules about how to acquire reputation as a valentón. As Mantecón Movellán summarizes, valentía was: al alcance de cualquiera. Era algo que no podía derivarse de una sola acción. Se precisaba contar con toda una serie de acciones audaces que acababan por reconocerse y contarse como épicas dentro del entorno en que se integraba el individuo. Antes de que esto se produjera, el ‘valentón’ podía haberse ido formando un carácter dentro de una actividad profesional o de otras múltiples maneras. De no llegarse a ‘valentón’ o ‘valiente’ uno podía quedar como ‘travieso y valentoncillo’.28 (within anyone’s reach. It was something that could not be gained on the basis of a single action. There had to be a whole series of audacious deeds that were finally recognized and told of as epics within the environment in which the individual found himself. Before this happened, the ‘audacious man’ might have been gaining his reputation via some professional activity, or through various other words. The man who did not get to the level of ‘audacious’ might end up as being a ‘ne’er-do-well and a chancer’.)

Different ploys for claiming the reader’s recognition for valentía are embodied in popular literature. One ploy is almost counter-intuitive, in that it appears to demand recognition for a whole group of characters, and not just for a single individual. This is illustrated by the story of Andrés Vázquez and his six brothers, dating back to the late eighteenth century, and which exists in several versions. A sober woodcut of the seven men heads one of the long 135



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versions printed by Sotos.29 The title is lengthy and promises to tell of ‘las grandes crueldades, insultos, muertes, y robos, que hizo Andrés Vazquez, y sus hermanos’ (the great cruelties, outrages, deaths and robberies, carried out by Andrés Vázquez and his brothers). The textual detail of what these men did to their victims is quite extreme. To give one example (which raises the question of verisimilitude, or of exaggeration), they rob a pregnant woman of her jewels, bind her husband, rape the wife, rip the child from her belly and beat the husband with the child. But in this excess of detail the opposite of what is intended perhaps results. The catalogue of evil deeds turns into just that, a catalogue, and one has the sense of an infantile, or at least immature, desire to produce a shocking account. The romance ends with the bandits’ own confession (a confession that is simultaneously a boast) that they carried out 102 murders, sacked 14 churches, raped 20 married women and more than 40 unmarried women, in addition to an infinite number of robberies. In this example, a certain lack of art, coupled with the desire to impress in a rather crude manner, enables the detachment of the reader. To read it in this way would be to view this suelto as suffering from aesthetic deficiency. The alternative, and conceivably less persuasive possibility, is that this is a knowing excess that is being presented to us, so that we view the bragging of Andrés and his brothers as simply that, an excess that is hollow. A similarly excessive braggart is Francisquillo el Sastre (Frankie the Tailor), a character in relation to whom there are a number of mysteries. The diminutive of the title may be pointedly ironic, and part of the provocation to which, in the course of the suelto he is seen to respond. The title reveals this and the occupation of tailor, while the subtitle outlines the range of activities and styles of behaviour that characterize him: it will tell of ‘los desafíos, hazañas y valentias del más jaque de los hombres’ (the challenges, deeds and brave actions of the greatest of adversaries), thus not only one who gets involved in brawls and challenges, but brags about them. Francisco boasts that all comers known for their bravery and violence should approach, and his examples include the aristocratic and the legendary. He goes on to relate a series of encounters of his activities from the age where – without obvious provocation other than stand-offs that he seems to seek out – he gets the better of others, killing them with his scissors, sometimes chopping them to pieces. As he travels from place to place, his reputation goes before him. His use of tailor-like vocabulary in bragging suggests that this is a protest from a man who sees himself as under-estimated. The image of Francisquillo on the front of the suelto is of a man brandishing a large pair of scissors.30 In the case of this character, as with so many who are favourites in the popular culture repertoire, we are left with the question of whether there had ever been a real Francisquillo el Sastre. Some names found in various reprintings, such as the bandits Diego Corrientes, Francisco Estéban el Guapo and 136



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Luis Candelas, are of real-life people, converted into quasi-mythical state through the processes of the popular imagination. Botrel identifies twentyeight versions of Diego Corrientes (1757–81) produced between 1848 and 1980, and more can now be added to this number from the digital library of ‘Spanish Chapbooks’ held in Cambridge University Library.31 Some other real bandits can be traced through the genre of causas célebres (famous legal cases). For Francisquillo el Sastre there is no hard evidence of a real braggart of this name, although there is Paco el Sastre (Frank the Tailor), who belonged to the bandit group of Luis Candelas.32 The details available, however, in the causa célebre by Vicente y Caravantes show no obvious resemblance between the two.33 These examples are not the only indications of what might constitute exemplary masculine behaviour. Others, such as Juan de Serrallonga, are portrayed as upright, contained, dignified. But the killings Serrallonga perpetrates in the early stages of his career are presented in a casual manner that indicates at least a tolerance of violence.34

What does a woman do?

If you are a woman, being obedient to social requirements such as those suggested in the aleluyas appears to bring some sort of social approbation, and what we see is that appropriate behaviour for a woman is contained and restrained. But an appreciable strand of popular culture takes as its focus the behaviour that women engage in when they are thwarted or wronged. A recurrent theme is that of the woman whose romantic inclinations diverge from the plans of her parents. Frequently, the exemplary nature of accounts of this type reside less in commentary on the excesses to which such a women may be driven, than in grasping the terrible consequences that derive from failed parental judgement. Thus it is with the case of Sebastiana who, thwarted by both parents and brothers, kills all of them in the most violent of manners.35 Similarly, Teresa de Llanos kills the two brothers who wished to prevent her making a marriage of her choice. What happens in her case is exemplary in a particular way, one that connects with the story of Francisquillo el Sastre. She kills the two brothers who had stood in the way of her plans, but then proceeds to kill a further twenty people. The indication here is that – perhaps in the spirit of a basic level of thermo-dynamics – if you apply undue pressure, relieving that pressure results not in equilibrium, but in a lack of it. Women criminals seem to invoke voyeurism, whether we are dealing with women of the nineteenth century in Spain, or the example of Myra Hindley of the twentieth century. Thus, as Gómez Bravo points out, although women were notable in the nineteenth century for their involvement in crimes of theft 137



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and fraud, what criminologists and prison-reformers tended to concentrate upon was their high involvement in violent crime (delitos de sangre).36 The example of Teresa de Llanos, from Seville, implies a message of possible salvation for woman: although doing wrong is not expected of her sex, being a woman will rescue her from final retribution. This story appears in several different printings, the earliest from the period being some time between 1760 and 1778. On the death of her parents, in an interestingly thoughtful assessment of her situation, Teresa decides to marry, in order to gain some independence from her two brothers. She therefore chooses a well-born man, and apparently does this ‘por no sujetarse a nadie’ (so she is not under the control of anyone).37 Her brothers, who object to this bid for independence (it would seem to be this that concerns them, rather than disapproval of her choice of man), set out to prevent her and kill the suitor. In the tradition of the mujer varonil, the assumption of man’s clothing bestows freedom of action.38 It also appears to release the wearer from conventional reticence of action, and Teresa dons masculine clothing. Having avenged her own wrong, she then engages in a picaresque journey in which she either rights the wrongs of others, or reacts touchily (and fatally) to offences she believes to have been offered to her, her behaviour ranging between that of a valentón and a type of freelance knight errant. When finally condemned to be hanged on account of her killings, she is reprieved for being a woman (and not for any sense that any of her crimes were justified). This example raises the question of whether women’s excessive behaviour is original or simply (and disastrously) responsive. The case of Teresa de Llanos suggests that there is an ‘inner woman’ who seeks justice, yet is unrestrained in her violent response. The tradition would appear to be a strong one, and reappears in a suelto of 1831 where we are told how the brothers of Doña Inés de Alfaro kill her lover. In this case there is no question of the brothers acting in loco parentis and forbidding the love of Inés for her suitor, although effectively they have been placed in that position by the death of their parents. Rather, the brothers present an example of careless and irresponsible behaviour, in that they kill the suitor as the result of a sudden brawl. The response of Inés is thus a free-standing desire to avenge the wrong that has been done her. Dressing as a man, she takes revenge upon them, shooting one and stabbing the other, causing death to both. It seems this action then leaves her in a moral vacuum. She continues to dress as a man and takes on with the ­costume the behaviour of a valentón. It is even as though she has taken on the careless bravado attitude of the brothers who caused her suitor’s death. Her man’s costume, coupled with her lack of money, seems to lead her into the activities of robbery and murder that characterize the valentón. A hermit she encounters when she takes refuge at one point in a wood predicts a disastrous end for her, and also sees through her disguise. She spurns him, and proceeds 138



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to a further and more extensive round of violence and crime. When finally arrested and condemned to death, we are told that she is less horrified by the human retribution in the form of her execution that awaits her than by Hell and God’s justice. She is hanged, but twenty-four hours later is seen still to be moving by the hermit she had met earlier. He rescues her, and she takes up a devout life with him, eventually entering a nunnery.39 If there is exemplarity in the text of this suelto it seems to be more about redemption than about the wrongness of excessive and thoughtless violence. This is emphasized by the visual portrayal of the restitution of Inés to a life of virtue that we find in the image of the 1831 printing of this suelto. Although there is no censure of her donning male garb to effect her revenge, there is an implied link between doing so and the unleashing of violent potential within her. Curiously, there is another suelto that concerns a woman from a place named Llanos in Seville, printed in Barcelona by the Herederos de la Viuda Pla, calle de Cotoners, which would place it in the mid-nineteenth century – nearly a century after the printing of the suelto about Teresa de Llanos cited here. On account of her ‘maldades’ she is turned by God into a mule. The nicely oblique phrasing of the title relieves God of direct responsibility here, in that it states that ‘permitió Dios se trasformase en mula’ (God allowed her to be transformed into a mule). It is not clear that this suelto is originally of the date of this printing. But the content and, specifically, the female-voiced narrator that declares itself in the feminine, and exhorts other women to take heed of what happens to this woman, places it within the frame of conformist conduct literature typical of that date, albeit through an extreme and laughable example. Orphan of both father and mother at the age of 22 (the age at which Inés de Alfaro was also orphaned, and two years older than Teresa de Llanos), her upbringing has been one of excessive indulgence. A holy man comes to warn her, when she turns to a life of frivolity and unrestrained behaviour, that Christ has declared himself offended by her. Her come-uppance (given that she turns the holy man away) is not just to be turned into a mule, but to be shod, a fate which brings her death. Worse than this, it proves impossible to bury her, as the earth refuses her body. All of this is held up, in an extremely simple case of warning, to any ‘mujeres escandalosas’ (scandalous women) whose way of life might resemble hers.40 The nature of sueltos, the numerous reprintings of old tales, and a lack of reasonable means to date them, means that it is difficult to think in terms of progression or development of social attitude in their content. If we take these three examples, however, there is a potential framework for seeing a move in attitudes. The first two examples show a form that simultaneously applauds the assumption of valentía by women (or at least does not condemn them for it) while noting the unleashing of unpredictable violence within them. 139



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The third example, more simplistic, more admonishing in its lesson, only sees woman as one who may be transgressive because she is unthinking and frivolous, an attitude that suggests its placing within mid-nineteenth century conduct writings.41

Conclusion: The difficulties of getting it right, or avoiding getting it wrong

What are the consequences of doing wrong rather than conforming to ideas of doing right? One of the problems with the ending of the romance de ciego in Los cuernos de don Friolera is that it tells of official reward and recognition, based on a version of events that seems far from accurate. Perhaps this indicates that Friolera has done no wrong? In many of the cases referred to so far in this chapter, the end-tale of wrongdoing is of punishment, and – not infrequently – of death publicly imposed. In carrying tales of the grisly ends that can befall wrongdoers, the sueltos might be expected to be exemplary in the sense of showing that wrongdoing will not go unpunished. Executing those who did wrong was not just a matter of individual retribution but to warn wrongdoers of what could happen, and in that sense was exemplary, an act of admonition. The action of Friolera takes place as the twentieth century begins, but is re-told at the end in the form of the romance de ciego. Friolera may be modern man who has no idea of the sources of his identity or of what should guide his moral compass, and in this context the heroism suggested by the nineteenth-century form of summarizing his behaviour and its outcome drives home a difficult lesson: we have become responsible for deciding our moral actions, and it is not sufficient to follow a set of potted norms. We can highlight a step-change in thinking about right and wrong by referring to the reception of norms of popular literature by Isidora the protagonist of Galdós’s novel of 1881, La desheredada (The disowned lady). In this novel, consonant with the social and progressive concerns of the late nineteenth century, but informed by scientific advances, the central issue is the possibility of civilization winning out over heredity. Isidora, the aspirational protagonist, looks for other parentage to enhance her future. That is, she is trying to change her position in relation to right and wrong by making a change to her social class, almost as if the fundamental questions of right and wrong are cast to one side. Meanwhile her brother engages in ever more delinquent behaviour, despite her efforts to tame and improve him. Isidora is already on a downward trajectory when Mariano quotes snippets to her from sueltos about Francisquillo el Sastre and Juan Portela, both characters from popular culture discussed here. Isidora’s desire to be counted as separate from the pueblo, arguably equal to her desire to improve her brother, is possibly accentuated by the fragility of her own position. She declares, ‘Me estás envenenando 140



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con tus horribles coplas. Ningún joven guapo y decente aprende tales cosas. Esto está bien para el pueblo, para el populacho’ (You’re poisoning me with your horrid verses. No good-looking and decent man learns things like that. Doing that is all right if you are one of the people, one of the wretched lower classes).42 The point being made here by Isidora is different from the one that Estrafalario will make some forty years later, and with which we opened. She thinks in terms of class, and her perception is that the literature will somehow contaminate her and make her rise the more difficult. Estrafalario’s point is more to do with what underlies the delinquency of Mariano, for whom the bandits of the sueltos have an attraction that derives from their wrongdoing. One could argue that Estrafalario (possibly here a form of mouthpiece for Valle-Inclán), positioned in the twentieth century, and looking back at the nineteenth, is making a different point, even though it still relates to class. The form and setting of Los cuernos de don Friolera are not just those of the esperpento, but are existentialist avant la lettre in their aim to highlight man’s frailty and vulnerability towards the roles society might want him to adopt. Don Friolera shows up the potential hollowness of social norms about behaviour, and the hazards of believing you should do what you are told to do, or of taking others as your example. What we have seen of the complexities of form and message of the nineteenth-century examples discussed sets the scene for the complexities of understanding (and/or puzzlement) of the twentiethcentury Friolera, and the Everyman (and woman) that he represents. Far from simple, the earlier examples embody both desire and denial, imagination and reality, and they recommend compliance as much as they display the attractiveness of rebellion. It is small wonder that Isidora (who is, after all, no fool) should see this literature of her time as dangerous, or that her delinquent brother should find it attractive. Nor is it any wonder that Friolera should find himself in a vacuum of moral understanding because of his failure to see the difference between what is, and what is represented, or talked about.

Notes

  1 This chapter was written as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Wrongdoing in Spain 1800–1936: Realities, Representations, Reactions’, and I would like to acknowledge their support.  2 Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Los cuernos de Don Friolera (1921).  3 Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).  4 Background on this for England is provided by Ruth Kelso (ed.), Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century: With a Bibliographical List of Treatises on the Gentleman and Related Subjects Published in Europe to 1625 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1929); Pam Morris, Conduct Literature for Women, 1720–1770 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004); and for Spain by Bridget Aldaraca, ‘El Ángel del hogar’: Galdós and the Ideology of Domesticity in Spain (Chapel Hill: University

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of North Carolina, 1991); Catherine Jagoe, Alda Blanco and Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca (eds), La mujer en los discursos de género: Textos y contextos en el siglo XIX (Barcelona: Icaria, 1998); and Jesús Cruz, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011). See also Baltasar Gracián [1651–57], El criticón (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1971).  5 Alison Sinclair, ‘Popular Faces of Crime in Spain’, in Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and ‘Deviance’, ed. Christiana Gregoriou (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 145-61.  6 See Sinclair, ‘Popular Faces of Crime in Spain’, 145–50.  7 Vida de la mujer buena y la mala (Madrid: Despacho Sucesores de Hernando, Arenal 11, [between 1880 and 1924]), CUL Tab.b.721 (6). Note that in many cases the date of this type of material is uncertain. Unless otherwise indicated, the popular literature referred to in this chapter comes from the collection in the Cambridge University Library, indicated as CUL, and free access is available online through the Digital Library: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/spanishchapbooks.  8 Vida del hombre, obrando bien y obrando mal (Madrid: Imprenta de J.M. Marés, calle de Relatores, núm. 17 [between 1842 and 1859]), CUL Tab.b.723 (70), and Vida del hombre, obrando bien y obrando mal (Barcelona: Se halla de venta en la papelería y efectos de escritorio del Sucesor de A. Bosch, calle del Bou de la Plaza nueva, 13, [between 1850 and 1855?]), CUL Tab.b.723 (90).  9 Vida de la criada buena y la mala (Madrid: Despacho Sucesores de Hernando, Arenal 11, [between 1880 and 1924]), CUL Tab.b.722 (27). 10 Conversació en que sis criadas treyan a venal la condició de sas mestressas (Barcelona: Estampa dels hereus de la V. Pla, carrer de la Princesa [between 1854 and 1920]), CUL S743:3.c.8.2 (3), and Las queixas de las mestressas de la conversació de las sis criadas (Barcelona: Estampa dels hereus de la V. Pla, carrer de la Princesa [between 1854 and 1920]), CUL S743:3.c.8.2. (8). See also an earlier version of the first of these (Barcelona: En la estampa dels Hereus de Joan Jolis, al carrer dels Cotoners [between 1760 and 1778]), CUL 8000.c.979 (85). 11 Vida del estudiante bueno y la del malo (Madrid: Despacho Sucesores de Hernando, Arenal 11 [between 1880 and 1924]) CUL Tab.b.722 (32). 12 Vida de un calavera (Madrid: Despacho Sucesores de Hernando, Arenal 11 [between 1880 and 1924]), CUL Tab.b.722 (29). 13 See Sinclair, ‘Popular Faces of Crime in Spain’, 150. 14 Vida del hombre y de la mujer borrachos (Madrid: Despacho Sucesores de Hernando, Arenal 11 [between 1880 and 1924]), CUL Tab.b.721 (5). 15 Joan Amades, Joan Colominas, and Pau Vila, Imatgeria popular catalana: Les Auques, 2 vols (Barcelona: Editorial Orbis, 1931), 1: plate XXV and 2: plate LXX. 16 La doncela [sic] condenada: Nueva relacion, en la que se declara el más riguroso castigo que Dios nuestro Señor, dió á una infeliz doncella, la cual por inobediente á sus padres fué despedazada por los demonios: con lo demás que verá el curioso lector (Madrid: Imprenta de D. José María Marés, Corredera Baja de San Pablo, núm. 27, 1847), CUL 8743.c.72 (59). 17 La fiera de Oporto. Caso notable y espantoso que acaba de suceder en la ciudad de Oporto reino de Portugal, con un animal fiero; dáse cuenta de cómo por la providencia

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de Dios arrebataba diariamente los niños de las casas de sus padres sin hacerse visible, trasladándolos á una cueva de un monte; declárase también como al cabo de algunos dias se descubrió la causa de este castigo, por un tierno niño de pechos que lo declaró por disposicion divina (Madrid: Imprenta de D. José Maria Marés, Corredera Baja de San Pablo, núm. 27, 1846), CUL 8743.c.72 (72). 18 Memoria que eleva el fiscal del Tribunal Supremo al Gobierno de SM, de 1888, 9, cited in Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, La violencia en Castilla-La Mancha durante la Restauración. 1875–1923 (Toledo: Ediciones Parlamentarias de Castilla-La Mancha, 2006), 32. 19 See Constancio Bernaldo de Quirós, ‘El homicidio en España’, in Alrededor del delito y de la pena, ed. C. Bernaldo de Quirós (Madrid: Vda de Rodríguez Serra, 1904), 30. 20 Mercedes Vilanova and Xavier Moreno Juliá, Atlas de la evolución de analfabetismo en España de 1887 a 1871 (Madrid: Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1992), 189–90. 21 Although in modern usage a navaja is a small knife, at most a flick-knife, the blades of some weapons referred to by navaja in the nineteenth century could reach a foot or so in length. 22 José Ángel Orgaz Torres, Se ha cometido un crimen: Crónica negra de Aranjuez y su comarca (1844–1931) (Aranjuez: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2011), 81–4. 23 José Ángel Solórzano Telechea, ‘Justicia y ejercicio del poder: La infamia y los “delitos de lujuria” en la cultura legal de la Castilla medieval’, Cuadernos de Historia del Derecho 12 (2005), 313–53 (325–26). See, in particular, law 3 of Título IX of Partida VII for insults in sons. Alfonso el Sabio, Las siete partidas, Digitalia.com, 176–7, and translation in Robert I. Burns, SJ, Alfonso el Sabio, Las siete partidas, vol. 5, Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 1352. 24 See Burns, introduction to Alfonso el Sabio, Las siete partidas, vol. 5, xxiii. 25 Tomás Mantecón Movellán, ‘«La ley de la calle» y la justicia en la Castilla Moderna’, Manuscrits 26 (2008), 170–3. 26 Julio Caro Baroja, ‘Honour and Shame: A Historical Account of Several Conflicts’, in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. Jean G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), 81–137. 27 See some of the English examples in the online exhibition, ‘Read all about it’, at Cambridge University Library, where the length and density of texts suggests a subtle capacity to read in their intended audience. See the subtlety of prose in the account of Kate Webster (CUL Broadsides. A.87.3): https://exhibitions.lib. cam.ac.uk/wrongdoing/artifacts/kate-webster/ (accessed 27 March 2015) and the English examples from the section on ‘Staging Crime’ in that exhibition. 28 Mantecón Movellán, ‘«La ley de la calle»’, 171. 29 Andres de Vazquez y sus hermanos: Famoso romance donde se da cuenta y declara la vida, prision y muerte de siete hermanos bandoleros y en el que se refieren las grandes crueldades, insultos, muertes y robos que hicieron Andres Vazquez y sus hermanos, llamados Manuel, Juan, Francisco, Pedro, Gerónimo y Antonio Vazquez, naturales de Cazalla: con lo demas que verá el curioso lector: fueron castigados en Ciudad Real

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(Con licencia en Madrid: En la Imprenta y libreria de Luis Siges y Sotos, calle de Bordadores, frente de S. Gines [between 1750 and 1850?]), CUL Syn.6.77.7 (50). 30 Nueva relacion de los desafios, hazañas y valentias del mas jaque de los hombres: Francisquillo El sastre (Madrid: Despacho de Marés y Compañia, Juanelo, 19, [between 1867 and 1874?]), CUL S743:1.c.8.2 (2). 31 Jean-François Botrel, ‘Diego Corrientes ou le bandit généreux: Fonction et fonctionnement d’un mythe’, in Culturas populares: Diferencias, divergencias, conflictos. Actas del Coloquio celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez, los días 30 de noviembre y 1–2 diciembre de 1983, ed. Yves-René Fonquerne and Alfonso Esteban (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1986), 241–66. 32 Paco is a common nickname for Francisco, without the mockery of the diminutive of Francisquillo. 33 José Vicente y Caravantes, Anales dramáticos del crimen o causas célebres españolas y extranjeras, 7 vols (Madrid: Imp. de Fernando Gaspar, 1859). 34 See the two verse versions of Don Juan de Serrallonga printed in the first and second halves of the nineteenth century in Barcelona: D. Juan de Serrallonga: Historia escrita en trovos ([Barcelona?]: Imps. Hospital, 19 El Abanico [between 1810 and 1850?]), CUL S743:3.c.8.8 (23) and D. Juan de Serrallonga: historia escrita en trovos (Barcelona: Imprenta de Llorens, Palma de Sta. Catalina, 6 [between 1842 and 1898?]), CUL F180.b.8.1 (62). 35 Sinclair, ‘Popular Faces of Crime in Spain’, 153–7. 36 Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, Crimen y castigo: Cárceles, justicia y violencia en la Espana del siglo XIX (Madrid: Catarata, 2005), 156–9; Gómez Bravo, La violencia en Castilla-La Mancha, 58. 37 Xacara nueva en que se refiere y da cuenta de veinte muertes que una doncella llamada Doña Teresa de Llanos, natural de la ciudad de Sevilla, siendo las primeras à dos hermanos suyos, por averle estorvado el casarse: y tambien se declara como se vistió de hombre, y fué presa, y sentenciada à muerte, y se vió libre por averse descubierto que era muger y el dichoso fin que tuvo (Barcelona: Por los herederos de Juan Jolis, en la calle de los Algodoneros [between 1760 and 1778?]), CUL S743:3.c.8.2 (22). 38 See Melveena McKendrick, Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the ‘Mujer Varonil’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). 39 Doña Ines de Alfaro: dió muerte á dos hermanos suyos porque se la habian dado á Don Pedro de Aguilar su amante: huyó al campo en trage de hombre, en donde cometió muchos crímenes y asesinatos, y habiendo finalmente sido cojida y sentenciada á la pena capital, se descubrió que era muger, con todo lo demas que se verá (Barcelona: En la imprenta de Ignacio Estivill, January 1831), CUL F180.b.8.1 (107). 40 Nuevo romance en que se declara la desenvuelta y mala vida de una doncella del reino de Sevilla, que por sus maldades permitió Dios se trasformase en mula: y los demonios la llevasen á que la herrase un herrador, con lo demas que verá el curioso lector (Barcelona: Imprenta de los herederos de la V. Pla, calle de Cotoners [between 1834 and 1920?]), CUL S743:3.c.8.2 (47). 41 See Alison Sinclair, ‘Luxurious Borders: Containment and Excess in

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Nineteenth-Century Spain’, in A Companion to Spanish Women’s Studies, ed. Xon de Ros and Geraldine Coates (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 211–26. 42 Benito Pérez Galdós, La desheredada, ed. Germán Gullón (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000), 252.

References

Aldaraca, Bridget,‘El Ángel del hogar’: Galdós and the Ideology of Domesticity in Spain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) Amades, Joan, Joan Colominas, and Pau Vila, Imatgeria popular catalana: Les Auques, 2 vols. (Barcelona: Editorial Orbis, 1931) Baroja, Julio Caro, ‘Honour and Shame: A Historical Account of Several Conflicts’, in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. Jean G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), 81–137 Bernaldo de Quirós, Constancio, ‘El homicidio en España’, in Alrededor del delito y de la pena, ed. C. Bernaldo de Quirós (Madrid: Vda de Rodríguez Serra, 1904), 27–32 Botrel, Jean-François, ‘Diego Corrientes ou le bandit généreux: Fonction et fonctionnement d’un mythe’, in Culturas populares: Diferencias, divergencias, conflictos. Actas del Coloquio celebrado en la Casa de Velázquez, los días 30 de noviembre y 1–2 diciembre de 1983, ed. Yves-René Fonquerne and Alfonso Esteban (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1986), 241–66 Burns, Robert I., SJ (ed.), Alfonso el Sabio, Las siete partidas, vol. 5, Underworlds: The Dead, the Criminal, and the Marginalized (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Cambridge University Library, ‘Read all about it’, available at: https://exhibitions.lib. cam.ac.uk/wrongdoing/ Cambridge University Library, ‘Spanish Chapbooks’, available at http://cudl.lib.cam. ac.uk/collections/spanishchapbooks Cruz, Jesús, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011) Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969) Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro, Crimen y castigo: Cárceles, justicia y violencia en la Espana del siglo XIX (Madrid: Catarata, 2005) —, La violencia en Castilla-La Mancha durante la Restauración. 1875–1923 (Toledo: Ediciones Parlamentarias de Castilla-La Mancha, 2006) Gracián, Baltasar [1651–57], El criticón (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1971) Jagoe, Catherine, Alda Blanco and Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca (eds), La mujer en los discursos de género: Textos y contextos en el siglo XIX (Barcelona: Icaria, 1998) Kelso, Ruth (ed.), Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century: With a Bibliographical List of Treatises on the Gentleman and Related Subjects Published in Europe to 1625 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1929) Mantecón Movellán, Tomás, ‘“«La ley de la calle»” y la justicia en la Castilla Moderna’, Manuscrits 26 (2008), 165–89

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McKendrick, Melveena, Woman and Society in the Spanish Drama of the Golden Age: A Study of the ‘Mujer Varonil’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) Morris, Pam, Conduct Literature for Women, 1720–1770 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004) Orgaz Torres, José Ángel, Se ha cometido un crimen: Crónica negra de Aranjuez y su comarca (1844–1931) (Aranjuez: Ediciones Doce Calles, 2011) Pérez Galdós, Benito, La desheredada, ed. Germán Gullón (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000) Sinclair, Alison, ‘Luxurious Borders: Containment and Excess in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, in A Companion to Spanish Women’s Studies, ed. Xon de Ros and Geraldine Coates (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), 211–26 —, ‘Popular Faces of Crime in Spain’, in Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and ‘Deviance’, ed. Christiana Gregoriou (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 145–61 Solórzano Telechea, José Ángel, ‘Justicia y ejercicio del poder: La infamia y los “delitos de lujuria” en la cultura legal de la Castilla medieval’, Cuadernos de Historia del Derecho 12 (2005), 313–53 Vicente y Caravantes, José, Anales dramáticos del crimen o causas célebres españolas y extranjeras, 7 vols (Madrid: Imp. de Fernando Gaspar, 1859) Vilanova, Mercedes, and Xavier Moreno Juliá, Atlas de la evolución de analfabetismo en España de 1887 a 1871 (Madrid: Centro de Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, 1992)

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7

••

How to be a man

1

Collin McKinney

Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man. (Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna) It is no easy task to find the middle. (Aristotle)

For an individual wanting to know how to be a man in nineteenth-century Spain, Mariano de Rementería y Fica’s popular conduct manual seems a logical place to start. First published in 1829, El hombre fino al gusto del día, o, Manual completo de urbanidad, cortesía y buen tono (The refined man to the taste of our times, or, Complete manual of etiquette, courtesy and good tone) is an adaptation of French etiquette books for a middle-class Spanish public. In reality, the question of how to be a man is peripheral to Rementería’s main concern, which is to instruct his readers, both male and female, on how to conduct themselves in polite bourgeois society. He covers everything from appropriate behaviour at parties to the many ways to tie a necktie. But the intertwining of gender and class in nineteenth-century Spain means that gender performativity – how to be a proper man or woman (the only valid choices at the time)2 – is always lurking below the surface. Rementería opens his instructional guide with a warning for his ideal man: ‘No es el mundo un palenque al cual deba cada uno bajar armado de todas armas, antes bien se huye de aquellos que las llevan aceradas, y que penetran y hieren. Mal empleo es el de un hombre que se hace temible’ (The world is not some arena which everyone goes down into fully armed, rather one flees from those who carry steel arms that pierce and wound).3 Rementería’s advice to men is to avoid confrontation and to flee from those who seek conflict. Kind words, sharp dress and strict adherence to codes of conduct, he argues, are the real marks of a man. This guidance for the hombre fino (refined man), or hombre de buen tono (polite man) as he is also known, is somewhat unexpected, almost revolutionary, when one considers that the discourse of masculinity has traditionally been laced with militaristic overtones, celebrating male a­ ggression 147



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and condemning the pacifist attitude described here. The traditional view of masculinity argues that a ‘real man’ stands up, faces a fight and never backs down. In challenging the popular stereotype of Spanish masculinity based on bellicose heroism, bravado and sexual conquest, the hombre fino champions a new breed of man, one based on French models and tailored to the social demands of life in the age of urbanization and industrialization. Rementería’s guide became a huge success because it offered guidance to a public hungry for information on how to behave during a period of unprecedented opportunities for upward social mobility. By the end of the century, it had been through multiple editions and spawned a new wave of conduct literature. This is not to say that this new model of refined masculinity supplanted the traditional model of rough masculinity. If we have learned anything from the recent body of scholarship on masculinity, it is that models of gender do not exist in isolation. Rather, at any given moment multiple masculinities compete for social hegemony.4 As this chapter shows, Spaniards continued to hold tight to many aspects of the traditional model of rough masculinity based on violence and bravado. Yet they also embraced elements of refined behaviour. I argue that the tension between refined and rough manliness is the defining characteristic of the discourse of masculinity in nineteenth-century Spain. Whether on the subject of sex, fashion, and above all violence, men, especially middle-class men, found themselves caught between these competing extremes. The result was a Goldilocks model of masculinity that sought to straddle the middle ground – not too hard, not too soft. This alternative model, which I term respectable masculinity, culled the most desirable qualities of rough and refined masculinities as it attempted a delicate balancing act between the perceived effeminacy of strict social decorum and the dangerous hypermasculinity of a bygone era.5

Constructing masculinity

The very notion that one must learn how to ‘be a man’ suggests that having a penis is not enough. Somehow, being a man requires doing manliness through action, attitude and appearance. It is by now commonplace to refer to gender as a constructed identity rather than a coherent, monolithic, biological reality. Biology may create differences, but society gives those differences meaning. After all, chest hair is a symbol of masculinity in many cultures, but not in Japan where since the late 1980s men have gone to great lengths to remove torso hair.6 Similarly, researchers have noted that young men on the Micronesian island of Chuuk demonstrate their manliness by fighting, while among the Semai tribe of Malaya men view themselves as non-violent and go out of their way to avoid confrontation.7 Such examples illustrate the cultural relativity of gender expression, which should be understood as historical, 148



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created in context and manifested at an individual level but within socially established limits. Just as every society has its own epistemological paradigm, its own unique way of conceptualizing the way the world should be, so too does every culture construct its unique versions of gender. Once we understand that masculinity and femininity are fractured and subject to change, we also realize that in describing masculinity, even something as specific as Spanish masculinity, we run the risk of oversimplification. The interplay between gender, race, nationality, sexuality and class results in a plurality of masculine identities: white masculinity and masculinity of colour, Spanish and other national types, heterosexual and homosexual, workingclass as well as middle-class. This variety, in addition to the fact that gender identity, in practice, is both highly contextual and individualized, makes the study of masculinity difficult. One useful way to approach the topic is to look at the predominant models of gender, the trends and ideals expressed in the gender discourse. This is why R.W. Connell’s notion of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ has achieved such prominence in men’s studies. In her pioneering book Masculinities (2005), Connell suggests that a relational approach, one that highlights the ‘patterns of masculinity’ within a given socio-cultural context, is the most effective way to understand the range of gender expression.8 As with many aspects of Spanish culture, the dominant model of masculinity that held sway for so long in Spain emerged during the period of the Reconquista. Beginning in the eighth century – shortly after the successful Moorish invasion and expansion into modern-day Spain – and continuing through the end of the fifteenth century, Catholic forces slowly reclaimed the Iberian peninsula and expelled Muslim rulers. In addition to the eventual expulsion of Jews and Muslims, the victors attempted to void centuries of Islamic influence through the dissemination of a proto-nationalist discourse brimming with themes of cultural and religious unity. Not surprisingly, bellicose masculinity became one of the driving forces of this incipient Spanish society. As one historian describes, it was a period when ‘toda la sociedad aceptaba la inferioridad, la impureza y la fragilidad de las mujeres’ (all society took as granted the inferiority, impurity and fragility of women), while it simultaneously celebrated ‘la fuerte masculinización de esta sociedad de guerreros’ (the marked masculinization of what was a warrior society).9 It is not happenstance that violence figures prominently in the establishment of chivalric masculinity as the hegemonic model, or that it coincided with the birth of a new national mythology. It was a time of war, and as with other facets of nation building, Spanish gender norms were articulated in such a way as to promote a myth of unity and homogeneity, but also to consolidate the power of an elite few. In the case of Spain, as in the case of other western European countries, the exemplary man was of noble birth, Christian, heroic and bellicose, traits that would come to define ideal masculinity for several 149



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centuries. The cultural fiction that was Spanish masculinity in the Middle Ages consisted of two approaches. In the first instance it promoted those qualities that would ensure martial success and the consolidation of power, namely violence: The literary texts of medieval Castile provide a clear picture of the traits and attitudes considered ideal for men in the society. Aggressive behavior, sexual assertiveness, and menacing speech all figure prominently in these works as characteristic of ‘real’ men. In popular as well as in learned texts, masculinity is proved not through biology, but through force, intimidation, and the use of threatening language.10

The second approach was to feminize the enemy, to ‘deny Muslim men the “manly” traits and attitudes that Muslim, as well as Christian, culture so valued’.11 This symbolic castration, applied to Jews as well, disempowers competitors and is as central to the creation of hegemonic masculinity as is the celebration of ostensibly positive, manly traits. As Michael Kimmel explains, ‘We come to know what it means to be a man in our culture by setting our definitions in opposition to a set of “others” – racial minorities, sexual minorities and, above all, women.’12 Perhaps the most famous example of idealized masculinity from that period is Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, who is invariably portrayed in literature, film, and statuary as a paragon of Spanish male identity. He is shown to possess the physical symbols of medieval manliness in spades: lush beard, strong, adept at swordplay, an accomplished horseman.13 By way of example one can turn to the following description of the Spanish hero, replete with the imagery of medieval manliness: ‘Andaba el Campeador montado en su buen caballo / y con la cofia fruncida, ¡oh Dios, y qué bien barbado! / el almófar en la espalda y con la espada en la mano’.14 El Cid here is shown riding Babieca, his brave warhorse, the horse being a familiar phallic symbol (and an image that would be repeated by many a Spanish monarch in the centuries to come), in a show of authority and power. His beard, which is so magnificent that the poet feels compelled to use an exclamative, offers yet another phallic symbol. Finally, El Cid does not carry the sword in its scabbard on his hip, but holds it in his hand in an unmistakable show of phallic potency. This is no idle gentleman. He is a warrior ready for a fight. But there is more to El Cid than his beard and horse. A valiant leader who protects his vassals and family, battles the enemies of Christendom, and avenges all affronts to his personal honour, he acts according to the dictates of medieval manliness.15 The mythification of El Cid over time has been a highly gendered enterprise, portraying him as a shining example of chivalric masculinity, guided by bravery and honour, but still capable of social etiquette.16 A man who worries most of all about defending his king and family from enemies and yet still 150



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knows how to navigate the social intricacies of the court; it is little wonder that El Cid became a reference point for Spanish soldiers in modern times.17 It must be stressed that this model was a culturally exalted ideal rather than the norm, and in fact was impossible for most men. One might possess some of these qualities, but very, very few did or even could possess them all. Therein lies its power and the reason that it persisted for so long. As Connell (following Gramsci) posits, hegemonic models need not reflect the reality of men’s lives in a given cultural context.18 Rather, hegemonic masculinity is shaped by the popular gender discourse in such a way that it establishes and perpetuates specific dynamics of power and privilege. In the case of Spain, the idealized model of masculinity – white, Catholic, noble, militant – legitimated those in power, motivated national expansion (the Reconquista and conquest of America) and perpetuated the disenfranchisement of women and male racial/ethnic/religious/social Others.19 Rough masculinity became hegemonic in an era when violence and wealth won wars and maintained empires. Despite its privileged status, rough masculinity was not without its problems. While the veneration of bellicose masculinity may have worked well in folktales, literary depictions,and propaganda against cultural Others, in practice it often deteriorated into a state of dangerous hypermasculinity. The horrific violence inflicted on the indigenous peoples of the Americas, as narrated by Bartolomé de las Casas in his various chronicles, portrays an outof-control masculinity driven by violent urges, consumed by greed and nearly impossible for the Crown to control. Las Casas refers to the conquistadors as ravening wolves who, ‘crazed by blind ambition’, delight in ‘so much bloodshed without any just cause’.20 In Books of the Brave (1949), Irving Leonard suggests that these conquistadors were inspired by tales of El Cid and other chivalric romances, such as Amadís de Gaul, Demanda del Sancto Grial con los maravillos fechos de Lanzarote y de Galaz (Quest for the Holy Grail with the marvellous deeds of Lancelot and Galaz), and Belianis de Grecia, which maintained an ethos of medieval masculinity in the sixteenth century by promoting the ‘acceptance of artificial standards of value’, not just regarding gender, but with respect to many aspects of conduct, morality and thought patterns: the young men of Renaissance Spain impatiently awaiting summonses to serve in their Emperor’s armies or eagerly volunteering for the expeditions to the New World, felt themselves stimulated to heroic action by these exhilarating romances which glorified the warrior as the prototype of their culture.21

As this passage suggests, by the sixteenth century the warrior figure had achieved cult status, something that all men could strive for regardless of class, a culturally normative ideal of male behaviour. Yet such fervour offers an incomplete imitation of medieval masculinity, for it stands in contrast to the code of chivalry attributed to El Cid and other exemplars of manliness, which 151



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required self-control in addition to strength. True masculinity, so the theory goes, is sturdy, constant and composed, not wild and unrestrained. The ideal Spaniard was violent, yes, but his acts of violence were considered legitimate, controlled, and always employed with just cause. Ideal men directed their aggression at appropriate targets and were equally capable of achieving their goals through non-violent means. It is this model of chivalric masculinity, rough and refined, that would serve as a template for respectable masculinity in the nineteenth century.

A changing masculinity

Like the Spanish Empire to which it was so closely linked, the prominence of rough masculinity gradually dwindled. It eventually fell out of favour in the eighteenth century as the Bourbon monarchy ascended the Spanish throne and France became the uncontested cultural reference point for Spain’s social elites. The effects of this afrancesamiento (Frenchification) varied from the frivolous (an increased penchant for Gallicisms) to the weighty (the adoption of Enlightenment ideals). One of the most visible changes was the appropriation of French fashions. As I have indicated in an earlier essay, the adoption of Parisian styles resulted in a blurring of appearances between men and women that came to be seen as a key example of the feminizing influence of French culture. Gone was the warrior hero of previous centuries, and in his place was a new man who valued reason, polite behaviour and high fashion above strength, military exploits and patriotic fervour.22 A common criticism levelled at afrancesados was that their tastes and habits were less masculine than those of traditional Spaniards. In her excellent study on the role of the body in eighteenth-century culture, Rebecca Haidt observes that the petimetre, the embodiment of French-inspired elegance in Spain, produced disquiet because he was gender ambiguous, that is, because he was not easily ‘identifiable as “man”’.23 Haidt’s observation recalls Julia Kristeva’s description of the abject: ‘It is not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.’24 In the case of the petimetre the disruption of gender borders was largely at a visual level, through the adoption of alternative fashion trends. But as Carmen Martín Gaite notes in her exploration of the importance of gender politics to the Hispanic Enlightenment, the negative reaction to the petimetre also stems from his lack of violent tendencies: las actitudes masculinas que la nueva mentalidad tenía por excelentes eran aquellas que contradecían la imagen del espadachín valeroso y esforzado, siempre dispuesto a reñir y matar en pro de la fe y la honra; imagen portadora durante siglos de esencias tan indiscutiblemente atribuidas a la raza que resultaba

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How to be a man totalmente revolucionario ahora, sin más ni más, atreverse a desafiarlas, a poner de manifiesto su reverso de barbarie.25 (those masculine attitudes most highly prized by the new mentality were those that contradicted the image of the brave and valiant swordsman, ever ready to fight and kill for his faith and his honour; an image that for centuries conveyed essential characteristics that were so incontestably attributed to the race that it was utterly revolutionary now, without so much as a by-your-leave, to dare defy them, to highlight their barbaric flipside.).

Here Martín Gaite highlights the same attributes of rough masculinity we saw epitomized by El Cid: skilled in swordplay, capable of violence, motivated by honour. These she contrasts to the anti-masculine petimetre, a fop who displays inclinations and behaviours considered improper for men.26 Modern scholars are not the first to note this shifting gender paradigm. Near the end of the eighteenth century writers and social critics had already begun to question the masculinity of those who embraced French styles. Playwright Ramón de la Cruz, author of hundreds of popular sainetes (a oneact comedy sketch, usually providing a social commentary, staged during the interlude of a full-length play), drew an unfavourable comparison between the afrancesados and the rough masculinity of Spain’s illustrious, imperial past: Aquel bruto desaliño del cabello y de la barba que hacía a nuestra nación tan terrible a las contrarias, ya dócil a beneficios del jabón y las pomadas por donde quiera que vamos van diciendo nuestras fachas que somos gente de paz. Ya nadie al vernos se espanta27 (That brutal shock of hair and beard that made our nation so terrifying to enemy states, is now docile before the benefits of soap and pomades; wherever we go our faces tell tale that we are people of peace. Nobody who sees us is frightened any more.)

By focusing on grooming and gender identity these verses suggest a correlation between appearance and character, in keeping with the physiognomic spirit of the day. In other words, part of being manly is looking manly, and in this context looking manly entails an authentically dishevelled, bearded roughness. The idea that Spain was virile in the past but had become ‘docile’ reveals a level of unease about the new male styles and implicitly places the blame on those who embrace French customs. His comments about the bearded men of the past would find an echo in the beard movement of the 153



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nineteenth century, which can be interpreted as an attempt to remasculinize Spanish men. The increasingly common criticism of French-inspired fashions indicates a fear of undecideability that reached a peak in the nineteenth century, a symptom of a growing crisis of masculinity. In times of crisis, men typically retreat to traditional expressions of gender identity, espousing models based on what are perceived to be firm boundaries rooted in the past.28 As numerous scholars have noted, a central theme in the gender discourse of the nineteenth century was the concept of essential differences, which argued that women and men are diametrical but complementary opposites.29 In a classic description of the anatomical and psychological dissimilarities of the sexes the celebrated hygienist Pedro Felipe Monlau writes that woman is physically ‘más floja y más blanda’ (more weak and more soft), and therefore ‘dotada de una sensibilidad mayor; sus sentidos son más delicados y finos’ (endowed with greater sensibility; her sense are more delicate and fine). By contrast: El hombre es ardiente, altivo, robusto, velludo, osado, pródigo y dominador. Su carácter es ordinariamente expansivo, bullidor; su textura es fibrosa, recia, compacta; sus músculos son fornidos, angulosos; sus fuertes crines, su barba negra y poblada, y su pecho velludo, exhalan el fuego que le abrasa; su genio sublime e impetuoso le lanza a los altos, y le hace aspirar a la inmortalidad.30 (Man is ardent, proud, robust, hairy, daring, generous and dominant. His character is habitually expansive, boisterous; his texture is fibrous, tough, dense; his muscles are hefty, angular; his thick mane, his black, bushy beard, his hairy chest breathe out the fire that consumes him; his sublime, impetuous genius launches him to the very heights, and makes him aspire to immortality.)

Monlau’s description, originally written in 1853, paints an unambiguous and idealized vision of the male body and his corresponding character, one that leaves no room for gender ambiguity. Man is muscular, hairy and hard. Woman is soft and weak. Man dominates. Woman submits. Monlau’s ideal man represents a clear departure from the overly refined afrancesados as he conjures up classic images of rough masculinity and domestic femininity. As this passage shows, Monlau’s work, as well as the ángel del hogar (angel of the hearth) corpus, reacts to the threat of gender ambiguity by constructing increasingly polarized portraits of proper femininity and masculinity. If the gender discourse relegated women to the home, it was not because of some arbitrary social norm, they argued, but because the domestic sphere was woman’s natural habitat. Men, by contrast, were urban warriors, using their robust bodies and minds to do battle in the public sphere. Even as the gender discourse began calling for a shift back to traditional models of masculinity and femininity (albeit with science offering the 154



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justification rather than religion), and notwithstanding the gradual waning of France’s importance to Spanish culture, especially after the events of the Peninsular War, the petimetre, or rather his descendants, continued to be socially relevant in the nineteenth century. The true nineteenth-century heir to the petimetre, at least in questions of style, is the elegante, for whom fashion was the defining characteristic of his identity. Nevertheless it was the hombre fino, the protagonist of la sociedad de buen tono, who truly embodied the spirit of the petimetre.

From refined to rough

El hombre fino belongs to the genre of conduct literature (guías de urbanidad) that proliferated in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century conduct books were produced for a select few, primarily the children of noble families and their tutors. But with the ascension of the middle class at the beginning of the following century the readership for such books suddenly widened. Conduct literature promised to legitimate members of the middle class by teaching them the rules of high society so that they might confidently interact with those of the ancien régime. In tracing the rise of middle-class culture Jesús Cruz points to the number of conduct manuals published during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as an accurate indication of the embourgeoisement of Spanish society.31 In the eighteenth century, Spain produced 44 courtesy and etiquette books. By comparison, France published 216 and England put out 287. In the following century Spain’s nearly 300 rivalled the numbers of these same countries: 403 and 335 respectively. Given the relatively low levels of literacy in Spain during this period, the popularity of such manuals is all the more pronounced.32 Spain’s industrialization and urbanization may have been slow and uneven when compared to Great Britain and the other major western European nations,33 but in matters of taste and behaviour they clearly perceived themselves as a modern society in step with the rest of Europe.34 The etiquette books of the nineteenth century covered virtually all aspects of polite sociability. Rementería explains the scope of his book in the opening pages of El hombre fino: ‘Se hablará del juego, de los viajes, de la conversación, bailes, tertulias, teatros, y lo perteneciente al vestido … Hablaremos de las reglas del trato fino y del buen tono, insistiendo particularmente sobre la sociedad de las mujeres y modo de dirigirse con ellas’ (This book will speak of games, of journeys, of conversation, dances, salons, theatres and matters pertaining to dress … We will speak of the rules of refined intercourse and of good tone, with a particular emphasis on the company of women and how to address them).35 As we might expect, these categories are very class specific, excluding the working class and even many of the petit bourgeoisie who 155



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did not possess the income for such leisurely pursuits as theatre attendance, ­keeping up on the latest fashions, paseos in carriages and vacations abroad. Most conduct books published in Spain during this period, including El hombre fino, were adaptations of French works, lending weight to the popular notion that France was the epicentre of good taste and high society. ‘París’, explains Rementería in the introduction to El hombre fino, is the ‘centro de civilización y de sociabilidad, de ligereza y de disipación, de fortuna y de necesidades’ (centre of civilization and sociability, of frivolity and dissipation, of fortunes and needs).36 But the perceived effeminacy of afrancesamiento culture led some to question the masculinity of those who came across as overly refined. For instance, Gabriel Araceli, the narrator and protagonist of the realist novelist Benito Pérez Galdós’s popular Episodios nacionales (National episodes), contrasts his friends, who ‘vestían a la española’ (dressed in Spanish style), with the ‘extraña figura’ (strange figure) of the afrancesado, who strikes him as highly extravagant ‘en sus afeminados gestos y sobre todo en sus trajes’ (in his effeminate gestures and especially in his clothing).37 However, it was more than dress and mannerisms that caused some to question the masculinity of the Frenchified Spaniard. Timothy Mitchell lists polished speech, exhibitionistic courtesy, a ‘servile coquettishness with women’, elegant dress and a dislike of violence as being the key features of his public persona.38 So it is with the hombre fino as well. Conversation and urbane behaviour are topics that feature prominently in Rementería’s instructions to middle-class men. The sixth chapter, titled ‘De la conversación’ (On conversation), states that ‘en la conversación es en donde se conoce a un hombre bien educado’ (it is in conversation that one recognizes the well educated man). As for exhibitionistic courtesy, that is the very crux of El hombre fino and polite society in general. ‘Un hombre de mérito debe ser urbano’, writes Rementería, ‘su urbanidad debe ser universal porque todo tiene referencia con ella’ (A man of distinction must be urbane; his urbanity must be all-encompassing because everything follows from it).39 Courtesy was especially important when dealing with members of the opposite sex. Unlike the homosocial environment of the workplace, the tertulias, balls, paseos and theatres of polite society presented opportunities for the hombre de buen tono to interact with women. One might even say that social decorum demanded it: ‘Un hombre, pues, de mundo debe buscar ansiosamente la conversación de las mujeres’, advises El hombre fino, ‘Los hombres hacen las leyes, ha dicho uno de nuestros escritores, pero las mujeres forman las costumbres’ (A man of the world, then, must eagerly seek out the conversation of women. Men make laws, one of our writers has said, but women shape customs).40 This belief that women somehow establish and enforce customs led some to decry what they considered to be the effeminate/ feminizing character of polite society. 156



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In a classic literary depiction of nineteenth-century Spanish masculinity, Galdós’s Tormento reflects this view in the form of a dichotomy between society–femininity on the one hand and frontier–masculinity on the other. In this 1884 novel, Galdós introduces readers to Agustín Caballero, a self-made man who returns to Madrid after earning a fortune by speculating on grain at the American frontier. Caballero, the novel’s most positive portrayal of masculinity, is repeatedly shown to be out of place in what the narrator considers ‘la afeminada sociedad’ (effeminate society) (Tormento, 40). On one occasion Caballero wonders whether he should have remained at the frontier, where a man can be himself: ‘¿Por qué no te quedaste en Brownsville, bruto? ¿Quién te mete a ti en la civilización? […] Este mundo no es para ti. Tu mundo es el río Grande del Norte y la Sierra Madre; tu sociedad las turbas de indios bravos y de aventureros feroces; tu trato social el revólver’ (Why did you not stay in Brownsville, you brute? Who asked you to come to civilization? […] This is no world for you. Your world is the Río Grande del Norte and the Sierra Madre; your society, the swarms of Indian braves and fierce adventurers; your social intercourse, your revolver) (Tormento, 277). The message, recalling the tenets of rough masculinity, is that man’s language is violence and his natural habitat an untamed wilderness full of adversity, ready to be conquered, and possessing the types of conflict or ‘hard and heavy phenomena’ that Lionel Tiger views as central to the formation of traditional masculinity.41 Caballero’s ideal world is far removed from the confines of polite society that threaten to squelch his virility. The prominent role played by women in polite society was seen as further proof that refinement went hand in hand with emasculation. Rementería concludes his introduction to El hombre fino by predicting that ‘el bello sexo me dará un aplauso, sin excepción alguna, pues el espíritu de toda la obra es el respeto, el obsequio y las atenciones que particularmente son debidas a su sexo’ (I will receive applause from the fairer sex, without a single exception, for the spirit of this whole work is the respect, homage and attentiveness that are particularly due to their sex). In a later passage he explains the importance of women’s presence in polite society: ‘es indudable que una sociedad sin mujeres, bien pronto viene a parar en tertulia de política o un club masónico. Poco a poco va faltando en tales reuniones la urbanidad’ (it is beyond doubt that a social event without women very soon ends up as a political salon or masonic club. Little by little urbanity slips away from such meetings). From these passages it is clear that Rementería does not merely advocate the acceptance of women in polite society, he considers them the focal point: ‘Un hombre de mundo debe estar siempre sujeto a los mandatos de las damas, procura adivinar sus deseos, y aun se complace en prevenírselos’ (A man of the world must always be subject to the commands of ladies, seek to divine their wishes, and even delights in anticipating 157



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them).42 Such concessions to a feminine presence might have been viewed by some as having an air of Oedipal infantilization about them, rendering the doting gentleman ‘not fully a man’, as Kimmel puts it, because they recall the humiliation and dependency of infancy.43 As one writer puts it: ‘all the niceties of masculine behaviour – modesty, neatness, cleanliness – come to be regarded as concessions to feminine demands, and not good in themselves as part of the behaviour of proper man’.44 Whether or not the norms of polite society caused concern because they potentially stirred up latent Oedipal anxieties, there can be little doubt that women featured prominently in la sociedad de buen tono. In his examination of polite society, Jesús Cruz makes a convincing case for the social power of women, describing how they were charged with organizing social events, including decisions regarding guest lists, food choices and the ever-important seating arrangements at dinner parties.45 This seemingly contradicts the natural order of things (man as master, woman as subordinate helpmate) outlined by Monlau and other social commentators. Despite these obvious parallels between Rementería’s ideal man and eighteenth-century gender norms, one area where the hombre fino differs somewhat from his petimetre forebear is the degree to which fashion dictated his behaviour. Whereas the petimetre’s preoccupation with fashion was allconsuming, Rementería advises men to avoid ostentatious attire: El hombre juicioso sigue la moda sin afectación, procura que se advierta más bien en su modo de vestir un buen gusto, que lo que se llama última moda. Cuando se advierte a un jóven lo caprichoso de su modo de vestir, no tiene otra respuesta que dar sino que es moda. En nuestra opinión, esta respuesta es la más ridícula que pueda darse, no porque se haya de desdeñar la moda, sino porque se debe seguir sin hacerse notable […] Sígase pues la moda; pero como quien sabe sacrificarla cuando no conviene.46

(The discerning man follows fashion without affectation, he aims for others to observe good taste in his manner of dressing, rather than what people call the latest fashion. When one observes in a young man how capricious is his manner of dressing, one has no other response to give than that it is in fashion. In our view, this response is the most ridiculous that could be given, not because one should disdain fashion, but because one should follow it without making a show of oneself […] So, let fashion be followed; but as one who knows how to sacrifice it when it is not appropriate.)

Although Rementería may have cautioned against excess, the refined man could ill afford to neglect his appearance altogether. The necktie receives particular attention in El hombre fino, and was considered the ultimate visual expression of male fashion: ‘La corbata es la parte más importante del vestido del hombre … Debe, pues, ser el objeto del cuidado particular y de la atención más severa’ (The necktie is the most important part of a man’s dress … It must, 158



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therefore, be an object of particular care and of the most severe attentiveness). Rementería goes on to describe numerous ways to tie it, including the corbata a la americana, corbata para el baile, corbata a lo gastrónomo, corbata de caza and corbata a la Gron (American-style, dance-style, gastronomic-style, huntingstyle and Gron-style). So convinced is Rementería that the tie represents the ultimate sign of a man’s character, that he does not consider it hyperbole when he declares that, ‘Por la corbata se juzga al hombre, o permítasenos decir, que la corbata es todo el hombre’ (A man is judged by his necktie, or if we may be permitted to say so, the necktie is the whole man).47 But others argued that even something as obviously masculine as the tie could become a mark of effeminacy if not held in check. A cartoon by Cilla in the satirical paper Madrid Cómico pokes fun at tie-loving men with the title, ‘el sexo ¿fuerte?’ (the stronger(?) sex). A man stands at the window of a tailor’s shop, leaning forward to get a better view of the items on display. His thoughts, revealed below the image, help the viewer answer the question posed by the title: ‘¡Caramba! el caso es que necesito una docena de corbatas y no sé qué modelos elegir … ¡Ay, Jesús! nos mandan unas cosas de París este año’ (Gosh! The thing is I need a dozen neckties and I don’t know which models to choose … Oh, Jeez! The things coming in from Paris this year).48 His excitement over something as commonplace as a display of ties is meant to be laughable, and the viewer would have an easy time concluding that the man obsessing over ties could not possibly belong to el sexo fuerte. In the nineteenth century fashion was synonymous with feminine, and the man who failed to realize this was not considered much of a man at all. The fact that the ties come from Paris, the fashion centre of nineteenth-century Europe but also the heart of afrancesado culture, only serves to confirm his perceived effeminacy. Returning once more to Galdós’s Tormento (1884), we find a more nuanced commentary on the tie and the gendering of fashion in the portrayal of Agustín Caballero. Caballero’s first appearance in the novel comes in the fifth chapter when he arrives at the Bringas home for a social visit. He is greeted by Rosalía, who makes no effort to hide her frustration when appraising his dishevelled appearance: ‘Mira, ponte bien la corbata, que al paso que lleva, el lazo llegará pronto al cogote… ¡Ay, qué desgarbado eres! Si te dejases gobernar, qué pronto serías otro’ (Look, put your tie on properly, the way you’re going, the bow’ll end up on the scruff of your neck in no time … Oh, you’re so ungainly. If you did as you’re told, you’d be a different man in no time at all).49 Caballero’s discomfort in social situations contrasts with the attitude of Rosalía, who embodies the aspirant, appearance-obsessed bourgeosie. Rosalía revels in the spectacle of making social visits, of being seen at the theatre, or riding down the Paseo de la Castellana (Tormento, 55–6, 198–9). Caballero, 159



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meanwhile, feels uneasy whenever he is subjected to another’s gaze (and even his own): ‘Déjame como soy’, he protests when Rosalía attempts to straighten his tie, ‘Pásmate de lo que te digo: he vivido quince años sin ver un espejo, o lo que es lo mismo, sin verme la fisonomía y sin saber cómo soy’ (Leave me as I am. This’ll astound you: I tell you, I’ve lived fifteen years without looking in a mirror, or – there’s no difference – without seeing my physiognomy and without knowing what I’m like) (Tormento, 39). Even this apparently meaningless encounter reveals their disparate attitudes. Rosalía believes that improving his appearance, especially his wardrobe, would transform him into a more respectable middle-class gentleman, an idea that Caballero dismisses as silly, ‘Vaya unos melindres’ (What a lot of fuss) (Tormento, 39). It is no coincidence that the focus of Rosalía’s fussing is his tie. Here the tie is a figurative illustration of the tension between refined masculinity and traditional, rough masculinity. Caballero has little in common with the hombre fino, whose habits he fails to comprehend. Instead, he identifies with the traits of rough masculinity and feels ill-equipped to navigate the norms of polite society: ‘Era tosco y desmañado’, explains the narrator, ‘y parecía muy fuera de lugar en una capital burocrática donde hay personas que han hecho brillantes carreras por saberse hacer el lazo de la corbata’ (He was rough and clumsy, and he seemed very out of place in a bureaucratic capital where there are people who have made dazzling careers out of knowing how to do up the bow of a necktie) (Tormento, 40). In wearing his tie askew, which Rosalía views this as proof of his indomitable nature, Caballero represents the ‘bruto desaliño’ celebrated in Ramón de la Cruz’s sainete. Likewise, the narrator mocks those that have built careers on the ability to tie a tie, instead glorifying Caballero’s inability to wear it properly by equating such a faux pas with masculine good sense: ‘Caballero, con muy buen sentido, había comprendido que era peor afectar lo que no tenía que presentarse tal cual era a las vulgares apreciaciones de la afeminada sociedad en que vivía’ (Caballero, with very good sense, had realized it was worse to affect what he didn’t possess than to present himself as he was before the vulgar judgements of the effeminate society in which he lived) (Tormento, 40). The use of afeminado is clearly pejorative, in keeping with Kimmel’s observation that hegemonic masculinity derives and maintains its elevated status by denigrating femininity and feminizing subordinate and marginalized men.50 Such a contrast suggests that Rementería has gotten it completely wrong when he argues that the tie is the man. While fashion offers a quick and easy measure for distinguishing rough and refined masculinity, non-visual indicators, such as attitudes toward violence, provided another marker by which these two models were set at odds with one another. A general disdain for violence is found throughout El hombre fino, particularly in the opening paragraphs: 160



How to be a man Lo hemos dicho, que la sociedad no es un palenque para combatir … Los arrebatos, las escenas violentas, el choque de los intereses, y todas las tempestades de las pasiones es cierto que se encuentran en el mundo, pero en la sociedad de buen tono deben hallarse los hombres, aun de caractéres opuestos, como dos ejércitos en el momento de una tregua.51 (As we have said, society is not an arena in which to engage in combat … Sudden impulses, violent scenes, clashes of interests and all the storms of passion, it is true, are to be found in the world, but in polite society men – even those of opposing temperaments- must be like two armies during a truce.)

Like the passage cited in the introduction to this chapter, the rhetoric here contradicts the long-standing practice of resolving conflict through violence that we find in the tradition of rough masculinity, and which sometimes manifest itself in the duel. Duelling, while illegal, persisted in isolated instances throughout the nineteenth century, suggesting that not all were eager to adopt Rementería’s pacifist attitude. Like many aspects of bourgeois masculinity, duelling at this time was a symbolic roleplay of bellicose, medieval masculinity. ‘It should be stressed that this combat of honour is exemplary of the bourgeois class that produced it’, explains Leigh Mercer, in that ‘its function is more one of ceremony and symbol than of the fulfillment of justice’.52 Thanks to mechanical limitations of the weapons and various ritualistic protocols, duels rarely led to loss of life. Instead, given the mere risk of injury and the spirit of conflict, they were seen as ideal for testing bravery, proving one’s masculinity and settling disputes. With its highly developed codes and rules, the duel embodies the essence of controlled violence that defines middle-class masculinity. In his popular duelling manual, Prontuario del duelo (1902), Ángel Murciano counters the claim that duelling is barbaric, arguing instead that duelling, a practice whose medieval origins he is quick to point out, often represents the best solution for ‘caballeros’, ‘hombres de honor’ and ‘personas decentes’ (gentlemen, men of honour, decent persons).53 Murciano is clearly referring to middle-class men and a model of respectable masculinity that combines elements of rough and refined manliness. As Mercer explains, ‘dueling clearly fulfills the modern Spanish man’s need to be both radical and orthodox, aggressive and controlled and beyond yet still within the mainstream’.54 This restrained violence became a hallmark of respectable masculinity, synthesizing the brutality of warfare and the non-violence of polite society into a socially tolerable level of violence. A symbolic celebration of violence can also be found in organized sport. Fencing’s rise as a sport corresponds to duelling’s decline, the former replacing the latter as a more acceptable expression of one-on-one combat. As one nineteenth-century author, Rafael María de Labra noted in 1879, fencing is a product of medieval martial culture: 161



Spain in the nineteenth century Y bien; ¿cómo la esgrima no había de ser objeto de la atención de esta raza osada, orgullosa, caballeresca, cuya historia esmaltan las algaradas de siete siglos de aquella incesante guerra que termina en la leyenda granadina; las inverosímiles expediciones de los atrevidos almogabares al prestigioso Oriente; la inconcebible epopeya de la conquista de América, el Romancero del Cid y los dramas de Calderón?55 (And so, how could fencing not be an object of attention for this daring, proud, chivalric race, whose history is adorned with the tumults of seven centuries of that endless war culminating in the legendary exploits at Granada; with the unbelievable expeditions of the intrepid Almogavars to the famed Orient; the unimaginable epic of the conquest of America, the Ballad Cycle of the Cid and the plays of Calderón?)

Fencing had been practised for centuries, primarily as training for battle and duels, but its codification and popularity as a sport emerges during the nineteenth century and coincides with the final decades of duelling. Despite the fact that when Labra writes his Cartas sobre la esgrima (Letters on fencing), there is no practical need for the majority of Spanish men to be skilled at swordplay, the underlying message is clear: to be skilled in violence, even if it is purely symbolic, is to share in the heroism of the conquistadors and El Cid himself. Yet it is the discourse surrounding the bullfight that perhaps best reflects the tension between the new spirit of progress and sophistication and the bellicose ideals of the past. Bullfighting is quite possibly the most pervasive symbol of Spanish masculinity. It celebrates the traditional expressions of manliness such as domination, strength, skill with a blade and bravery. And while a thorough discussion of the role of gender in modern bullfighting is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth taking stock of the debate surrounding the sport in the nineteenth century, given the frequent references to gender.56 As a tradition viewed by many as uniquely Spanish, bullfighting has often been touted as an emblem of national virility. In Observaciones sobre las corridas de toros, y contra la supresión oficial de las mismas (Observations on bullfights and against the official suppression of these) (1878), author and politician Miguel López Martínez, writing on behalf of the Consejo Superior de Agricultura, alludes to Spain’s collective masculinity as justification for bullfighting: En los tiempos que corren no está el mal de la sociedad en la energía y virilidad de los hombres, sino en la afeminación de las costumbres. Hoy, como siempre, y más que otras veces, es necesario combatir la flojedad de espíritu que inclina a la molicie y el espanto ante el peligro que induce a la cobardía. El hombre que no puede fijar los ojos sin temblar, sin estremecerse en los destrozados intestinos de un caballo, acabará por horrorizarse de la agonía de un cordero, de las convulsiones de una gallina moribunda; y esto no es digno del rey de la creación, a cuyo servicio ha puesto Dios la naturaleza.57

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How to be a man (At the present time, the ills of society do not lie in the energy and virility of men, but in the effeminization of their customs. Now, as ever, and more than at other times, it is necessary to combat the weakness of spirit that makes us soft, and the terror before danger that leads us to cowardice. The man who cannot stare without trembling, without shuddering at the wrecked intestines of a horse, will end up being horrified by the death throes of a lamb, of the convulsions of a dying hen; and that is unworthy of the King of Creation, at whose service God has placed Nature.)

López’s reference to the effeminization of customs would suggest that the rules of polite society prevented men from fully realizing their virility, or more alarmingly, contributed to their growing effeminacy. The spectre of national emasculation was a common theme expressed by pro-bullfighting writers who warned that the collective masculinity of society was somehow at stake. ‘For many people who wrote about bullfighting,’ explains Adrian Shubert, ‘and particularly for those who defended it, the corrida was an eminently masculine spectacle that contributed to the virility of the nation.’58 It is easy to see why defenders of bullfighting would link the spectacle with masculinity. The dynamics of the corrida are steeped in masculine symbols. Indeed, the central action of the modern bullfight is a highly ritualized performance of masculinity: a battle to the death between the bull, considered the most virile of beasts, and the hyper-macho torero, whose ability to stand firm in the face of danger is often celebrated with stylized pelvic thrusts and other displays of bravado. The attributes that the bullfight honours – bravery, dominance, mastery of body, violence – are the very same qualities lauded in classic representations of manliness. And of course there is the climax: death inflicted by penetrating the bull with the phallic estoque. It is hard to imagine a more obvious glorification of masculinity than the modern bullfight. It is true that with such exaggerated displays of machismo the torero runs the risk of becoming a caricature, like the majo and braggart. But it is equally true that few professions have achieved the notoriety of bullfighting, with many bullfighters becoming something of national heroes. Of course not everyone considered the bullfighter worthy of praise or believed that violent sport had a place in civil society. For the author of ‘Fiesta de toros’ (1877), José Navarrete, bullfighting represented the antithesis of ‘la ley eterna del progreso’ (the eternal law of progress), arguing that ‘en vez de proyectar luz en las inteligencias, afinar los espíritus y mejorar las condiciones materiales de sus semejantes’ (instead of shedding light on the intellects, refining the spirit and improving the material condition of their fellows), which he considers mankind’s obligation, those who support bullfighting (whether as participants or spectators) choose to ‘avivar su ignorancia y acrecentar su fiereza’ (enliven their ignorance and increase their ferocity).59 This is a recurrent theme in antibullfighting rhetoric. In his history of the Spanish bullfight Shubert notes 163



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that ‘critics of the corrida had always portrayed themselves as the defenders of culture and civilization against the barbarism and irrationality of the bullfight and its defenders’.60 In the nineteenth century, to label something or someone as barbaric was a particularly strong condemnation. Thus when Navarrete describes the corrida as the ‘apoteosis de todos los espectáculos bárbaros’ (the apotheosis of all barbaric spectacles) (‘Fiesta de toros’, 32), we should read his words against the backdrop of a growing fear of criminality, moral decay and social deviance. Descriptions of bloodthirsty spectators who lose control of their wits were meant to illicit fear from readers who were by and large familiar with the theories of Cesare Lombroso and other leading criminologists: ‘En la plaza de toros el hombre se juzga relevado de respetar los derechos de sus semejantes, de cualquier sexo y condición que sean; su espíritu allí está negro, su inteligencia no funciona’ (In the bullring, man is considered relieved of his need to respect the rights of his fellows, of whatever sex or condition; there, his spirit is black, his intelligence does not function) (‘Fiesta de toros’, 35). Invoking the imagery of Lombroso’s degenerate, as described in his classic study of criminality L’uomo delinquente (1876), anti-bullfight writers peppered their arguments with adjectives like grosero, perverso, irracional, espantoso (vulgar, perverse, irrational, terrifying), the same words used to describe violent criminals in newspaper reporting. Degeneration is, as the name implies, a step backward on the evolutionary ladder, a fall from all that is modern and progressive. Thus when Navarrete warns that attending bullfights only serves to ‘aproximar al hombre a la condición de la bestia’ (bring man closer to the status of the beast) (‘Fiesta de toros’, 34), he is speaking literally. Progress was a key concept for opponents of the corrida, who argued that a nation’s treatment of animals offered one measure for its potential development: ‘las sociedades protectoras de los animales y de las plantas son reflejos de la aurora del porvenir; son precursoras de los tiempos, más allá del siglo XIX’ (societies for the protection of animals and plants are reflections of the dawn of the future; they are precursors of other times, beyond the nineteenth century) (‘Fiesta de toros’, 27). Navarrete was not alone in condemning the violent nature of bullfighting as atavistic. In a column for El Heraldo de Madrid, the author Cecilia Böhl de Fáber, writing under the pseudonym of Fernán Caballero, explains her opposition to bullfighting in terms of progress and civilization: ‘Deseáramos que los defensores de este sangriento pasatiempo oyesen a los hombres más sensatos y cultos de otros países, citar las corridas de toros como pruebas de nuestro atraso moral en la cultural europea’ (We would wish that the defenders of this bloody pastime would hear the more sensible and civilized men of other countries cite bullfights as proof of our moral backwardness in European culture).61 Antonio Méndez, in a letter to the editors of El Heraldo, makes a similar 164



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statement when he writes that the corrida was a ‘barrera terrible que se opone nuestra España a la marcha de la civilización moderna’ and should be viewed as an ‘anacronismo que nos cubre de baldón e ignominia a los ojos de la culta Europa’ (a terrible barrier that blocks Spain’s path in the march of modern civilization … an anachronism that covers us in disgrace and ignominy in the eyes of civilized Europe).62 This criticism would have been keenly felt by many members of the middle class who viewed themselves as quintessentially modern and civilized, and were making relentless efforts to fall in line with France, England and Germany. ‘Europeanism’, rather than nationalist fervour, concludes the historian Jesús Cruz in his study of the Spanish middle classes, ‘was a leitmotif omnipresent in the discourses and actions of Spanish bourgeois modernizers’.63 Despite the opposition, the bullfight remained a popular spectacle in Spain throughout the nineteenth century. Although it was rarely articulated as such, it seems to be the case the corrida offered spectators a vicarious stand-in for the violent warrior of the past – what López calls the ‘imagen de la guerra’ (image of war) – thereby becoming a cathartic substitute for the martial fervour that reigned during the Reconquista. Like fencing, hunting and other violent sports, bullfighting codifies violence in a way that is contained and symbolic, just within the boundary of civilization, what Goodhart and Chataway describe, in their War Without Weapons (1968), as ‘a healthy safety valve’ to drain away collective militant enthusiasm.64 Furthermore, López contends that far from harming society, the bullfight brings balance to individuals and the collective by allowing animals and men to delight in the exercise of their strengths and employ their natural faculties.65 In other words, bullfighting is in harmony with the theory of essential differences and merely allows the bullfighter – and, vicariously, the spectator – to fulfil innate instincts in a way that is natural to his sex. This argument was analogous to the broader argument for respectable masculinity. If the refined man was too submissive, rough masculinity gone unchecked could be equally problematic because he was too passionate, emotionally volatile and a danger to society. It was the principle of moderation, of violence with limits, through which masculinity achieved respectability, and this explains why symbolic violence remains prevalent even today. Sport makes violence palatable through codification, a process that Norbert Elias refers to as ‘sportization’.66 Much like hunting, bullfighting’s killing by proxy reduces crude slaughter to calculated, dexterous bloodshed. It removes violence from the uncontrollable public sphere and limits it to the highly controlled sports arena. This phenomenon, it has been argued, is not opposed to progress as Navarrete, Caballero and Méndez argue, but is part of the very same ‘civilizing process’ to which conduct literature belongs: in the words of some recent sociologists, ‘far from being simple antitheses, violence and 165



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“civilization” are characterized by specific forms of interdependence. More particularly, civilizing processes are related to the establishment of increasingly effective control over the use of violence.’67 Despite the fact that so many bullfighters emerged from the ranks of the working class, the ‘sportization’ of Spanish society in the nineteenth century, and European society in general, is a uniquely middle-class phenomenon. Upper-class men were viewed as effeminate because they supposedly overindulged in pleasures and recoiled in the face of danger. At the other extreme were hypermasculine figures such as the lower-class labourer, bandits and gypsies who were viewed as victims of their own lack of self-control, the most prone to violence and predisposed to degenerate behaviours. Middleclass masculinity, by contrast, was depicted as successfully straddling the line between refinement and gruff aggression. Of course, this new ideal was not really that new at all. While it is true that respectable masculinity exists precisely in the gap between refined and rough masculinities, borrowing from each of these traditions, it is above all an imitation of medieval chivalry. And in the same way that chivalric masculinity achieved hegemony during a period when specific gender ideals complimented a political agenda, middle-class men adopted a version of masculinity uniquely suited to their social advantages at a time when Spain’s power hierarchy was being realigned.

Conclusion: An evolving story

This description of how to be a man is admittedly incomplete. Sexuality, for instance, is a central component of gender expression, and future scholarship must flesh out this and other features of normative masculinity in addition to contrasting the hegemonic model with the reality of men’s lives.68 In so doing we must recall that the story of nineteenth-century Spanish masculinity is really several stories at once. Although we often refer to masculinity in the singular, it always exists in plural: urban/rural masculinity, immigrant masculinity, military masculinity, even female masculinity. The list goes on; there were many ways to be a man. But middle-class masculinity is a useful place to begin. Even though bourgeois men do not constitute the largest number of men in Spanish society, it is their lives that we find portrayed in Realist fiction, their opinions that we read in the newspapers, their tastes displayed in the shop windows; in short, it is their standard of masculinity by which every man of the period was measured. Notwithstanding its hegemonic status, respectable masculinity rested on a razor’s edge. Beards, black suits, bullfighting, hunting, fencing and the separation of public and private spheres combined to form a version of manliness that was little more than a diluted version of medieval, militaristic masculinity. Yet this recycled roughness was tempered by a new social real166



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ity and fear of degeneracy that demanded a high degree of decorum. The result was a roughness that was calculated and controlled, more a matter of appearance than substance. The respectable man possessed the qualities of Spain’s former heroes, but at a surface level. This all-bark-no-bite approach to masculinity is telling, indicative of a period that has been identified as being a slave to appearances.69 But this interpretation should be read as an observation and not as a condemnation of nineteenth-century masculinity. Modern masculinity was not born in a vacuum; it is a product of previous iterations. It may change and be modified, but gender identity, it is worth repeating, is always a reiteration, what Judith Butler describes as ‘a kind of imitation, a copy of a copy, for which there is no original’.70 At times gender identities come unstuck from their imagined moorings and enter into a state of free play, as they did between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During such periods previously established hierarchies break down and what was ‘known’ slips through our fingers. In these moments of change we inevitably return to the places where identity was thought to be secure in the hopes that we can recapture some sense of durability. For Spain that place of imagined stability was the period of the Reconquista and imperial conquest, when the gender binary was, in theory, clearly defined. Of course, the fact that gender is a cultural creation shaped by the changing nature of discourse means that such efforts to recapture a lost reality are futile, like building upon a sandy shore where the changing tide means that stability is only a temporary illusion at best.

Notes

  1 This chapter was written with support from the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender at Bucknell University and a John H. Daniels Fellowship from the National Sporting Library and Museum.  2 Richard Cleminson and Francisco Vázquez García, ‘Los Invisibles’: A History of Male Homosexuality in Spain, 1850–1940 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 99.  3 Mariano Rementería y Fica, El hombre fino al gusto del día, manual completo de urbanidad, cortesía y buen tono, 3rd edn (Madrid: Colegio de Sordo-Mudos, 1837), 1.  4 R.W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Michael Kimmel, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity’, in Men and Masculinity: A Text Reader, ed. Theodore Cohen (Toronto: Wadsworth, 2001), 29–41.  5 My use of this term is informed by Eva Copeland’s excellent article ‘Galdós’s El amigo Manso: Masculinity, Respectability, and Bourgeois Culture’, Romance Quarterly  54 (2007), 109–23, which explains that the concept of respectability carried connotations of social propriety and economic status, becoming

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synonymous with middle-class society and normative masculinity in nineteenthcentury Spain. For another recent study on the concept of ‘respectability’ in nineteenth-century Spain, see Angel Smith’s ‘The Rise and Fall of “Respectable” Spanish Liberalism, 1808–1923: An Explanatory Framework’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 22 (2016), 55–73, which explores the connection between liberalism and the establishment (the Catholic church, the monarchy, and the propertied elites).  6 Laura Miller, ‘Male Beauty Work in Japan’, in Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa, ed. James Roberson and Nobue Suzuki (London: Routledge, 2005), 37–58 (41).  7 Mac Marshall, Weekend Warriors: Alcohol in Micronesia (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1979); Robert Dentan, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1968).  8 Connell, Masculinities, 37.  9 Reyna Pastor, ‘Temática de las investigaciones sobre la historia de las mujeres medievales hispanas’, in Historia silenciada de la mujer: La mujer española desde la época medieval hasta la contemporánea, ed. Alain Saint-Saëns (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1996), 11–20 (16). 10 Louise Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men: Muslim, Jews, and Masculine Ideals in Medieval Castilian Epic and Ballad’, Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 169–86 (169). 11 Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men’, 169. 12 Kimmel, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’, 29. 13 For a discussion of El Cid’s masculinity and its connection to martial skill see Jack Weiner, ‘El poema de mio Cid’: el patriarca Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar transmite sus genes (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2001), 133–44. For a more general discussion of martial masculinity in Medieval literature see Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men’. 14 Cantar de mío Cid, transcription by Luis Guarner (Madrid: Edaf, 2007), 98. 15 For a discussion of a feudal lord’s role in medieval Europe see Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001), 108–41. 16 M.J. Trow, El Cid: The Making of a Legend (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007), 183–4. 17 One edition of the epic poem, titled El Cid (1848), included a dedication ‘Al heroico ejército español’ (To the heroic Spanish army). Similarly, scholar Richard Fletcher notes that Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s La España del Cid (1929) ‘became and long remained a set book for cadets at Spanish military academies’. See The Quest for El Cid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 204. 18 Connell, Masculinities, 77–81. 19 Connell, Masculinities, 187; Mirrer, ‘Representing “Other” Men’, 171–2. 20 Bartolomé de las Casas, In Defense of the Indians (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), 26–7. 21 Irving Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being and Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 13–14, 25.

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22 Collin McKinney, ‘Men in Black: Fashioning Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Letras Hispanas 8:2 (2012), 78–93. 23 Rebecca Haidt, Embodying Enlightenment (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998), 109. 24 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 4. 25 Carmen Martín Gaite, Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1981), 76. 26 Martín Gaite argues that the rise of majismo would be a reaction to the petimetre – Spanish versus French, masculine versus effeminate – although both the effete petimetre and the hypermasculine, posturing majo could hardly be taken seriously as they devolved into caricaturesque forms of gender expression (77). The same could be said for the extremely violent braggart (see Chapter 6, by Alison Sinclair in this book). 27 Ramón de la Cruz, ‘El petimetre’ in Sainetes, 2 vols (Barcelona: Biblioteca Arte y Letras, 1882), 169–92 (177–8). 28 Kimmel, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’, 29. 29 See, for instance: Bridget Aldaraca, El ángel del hogar: Galdós and the Ideology of Domesticity in Spain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Catherine Jagoe, Ambiguous Angels: Gender in the Novels of Galdós (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Jo Labanyi, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lou Charnon-Deutsch, Fictions of the Feminine in the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Press (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). 30 Pedro Felipe Monlau, Higiene del matrimonio; o El libro de casados (Paris: Carnier Hermanos, 1898), 145–6. 31 Jesús Cruz, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011), 20. 32 Şevket Pamuk and Jan-Luiten van Zanden, ‘Standards of Living’, in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Volume 1: 1700–1870, ed. Stephen Broadberry and Kevin O’Rourke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 217–34 (229). 33 Adrian Shubert, A Social History of Modern Spain (London: Routledge, 1990), 10–11; Paul Bairoch and Gary Goertz, ‘Factors of Urbanization in the NineteenthCentury Developed Countries: A Descriptive and Economic Analysis’, in Urban Studies 23 (1986), 285–305. For a more sympathetic view of Spain in the nineteenth century, which suggests that Spain’s sluggish progress has been exaggerated by historians, see David Ringrose, Spain, Europe, and the ‘Spanish Miracle’, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 34 Cruz, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain, 50–1. 35 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 5. 36 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, iii. 37 Benito Pérez Galdós, Trafalgar (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), 142. 38 Timothy Mitchell, Blood Sport: A Social History of Spanish Bullfighting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 58.

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39 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 13, 29. 40 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 25. 41 Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups (London: Nelson, 1969), 211. 42 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, viii, 2, 15–16. 43 Kimmel, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’, 32. 44 Geoffrey Gorer, The American People: A Study in National Character (New York: Norton, 1964), 57. 45 Cruz, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain, 36–7, 39. 46 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 76–7. 47 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 161. 48 Francisco Ramón Cilla y Pérez, ‘El sexo ¿fuerte?’ Madrid Cómico, 6 November (1897), 365 49 Benito Pérez Galdós, Tormento (Madrid: Alianza, 2002), 39. 50 Kimmel, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia’, 37. 51 Rementería, El hombre fino al gusto del día, 9–10. 52 Leigh Mercer, Urbanism and Urbanity: The Spanish Bourgeois Novel and Contemporary Customs (1845–1925) (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2013), 166. 53 Ángel Murciano, Prontuario del duelo: Indicaciones utilísimas para no vacilar jamás cuando hay que intervenir en lances de honor (Madrid: Depósito de la Guerra, 1902), 9–17. 54 Mercer, Urbanism and Urbanity, 166. 55 Rafael M. de Labra, Las armas en Madrid (Cartas sobre la esgrima) (Madrid: Aurelio J. Alaria, 1879), 7. 56 For an introduction on the topic of gender and bullfighting see: Mitchell, Blood Sport; Adrian Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 57 Miguel López Martínez, Observaciones sobre las corridas de toros, y contra la supresión oficial de las mismas (Madrid: M. Minuesa, 1878), 19–20. 58 Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon, 92. 59 José Navarrete, ‘Fiesta de toros’, Revista de Andalucía 4:8 (1877), 26–37. 60 Shubert, Death and Money in the Afternoon, 161. 61 Fernán Caballero, untitled article, El Heraldo, 8 August, 1852: section ‘Parte política’, 1. 62 Antonio Méndez, untitled article, El Heraldo, 12 August, 1852: section ‘Comunicados’, 4. 63 Cruz, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain, 224. 64 Christopher Chataway and Philip Goodhart, War Without Weapons (London: W.H. Allen, 1968), 146. 65 López Martínez, Observaciones, 21. 66 Eric Dunning and Norbert Elias, The Quest for Excitement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 21–2. 67 Patrick Murphy, Ken Sheard, and Ivan Waddington, ‘Figurational Sociology and its Application to Sport’, in Handbook of Sports Studies, ed. Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning (London: Sage, 2000), 92–105 (94).

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68 Collin McKinney, ‘“Enemigos de la virilidad”: Sex, Masturbation, and Celibacy in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Revista Prisma Social 13 (2014), 72–108. 69 Stephanie Sieburth, Inventing High and Low: Literature, Culture, Mass Culture and Uneven Modernity in Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 37. 70 Judith Butler, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 307–20.

References

Aldaraca, Bridget, El ángel del hogar: Galdós and the Ideology of Domesticity in Spain (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) Bairoch, Paul, and Gary Goertz, ‘Factors of Urbanization in the Nineteenth-Century Developed Countries: A Descriptive and Economic Analysis’, in Urban Studies 23 (1986), 285–305 Bishop, Morris, The Middle Ages (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001) Butler, Judith, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 307–20 Cantar de mío Cid, transcription by Luis Guarner (Madrid: Edaf, 2007) Caballero, Fernán, untitled article, El Heraldo, 8 August 1852: section ‘Parte política’, 1 Casas, Bartolomé de la, In Defense of the Indians (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992) Charnon-Deutsch, Lou, Fictions of the Feminine in the Nineteenth-Century Spanish Press (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000) Chataway, Christopher, and Philip Goodhart, War Without Weapons (London: W.H. Allen, 1968) Cilla y Pérez, Francisco Ramón, ‘El sexo ¿fuerte?’ Madrid Cómico, 6 November (1897), 365 Cleminson, Richard, and Francisco Vázquez García, ‘Los Invisibles’: A History of Male Homosexuality in Spain, 1850–1940 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007) Connell, R.W., Masculinities, 2nd edn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) Copeland, Eva, ‘Galdós’s El amigo Manso: Masculinity, Respectability, and Bourgeois Culture’, Romance Quarterly 54 (2007), 109–23 Cruz, Jesús, The Rise of Middle-Class Culture in Nineteenth-Century Spain (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011) Cruz, Ramón de la, ‘El petimetre’ in Sainetes, 2 vols (Barcelona: Biblioteca Arte y Letras, 1882), 169–92 Dentan, Robert, The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1968) Dunning, Eric, and Norbert Elias, The Quest for Excitement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) Fletcher, Richard, The Quest for El Cid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) Gorer, Geoffrey, The American People: A Study in National Character (New York: Norton, 1964)

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Haidt, Rebecca, Embodying Enlightenment (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998) Jagoe, Catherine, Ambiguous Angels: Gender in the Novels of Galdós (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) Kimmel, Michael, ‘Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity’, in Men and Masculinity: A Text Reader, ed. Theodore Cohen (Toronto: Wadsworth, 2001), 29–41 Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) Labanyi, Jo, Gender and Modernization in the Spanish Realist Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) Labra, Rafael M. de, Las armas en Madrid (Cartas sobre la esgrima) (Madrid: Aurelio J. Alaria, 1879) Leonard, Irving, Books of the Brave: Being and Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949) López Martínez, Miguel, Observaciones sobre las corridas de toros, y contra la supresión oficial de las mismas (Madrid: M. Minuesa, 1878) Marshall, Mac, Weekend Warriors: Alcohol in Micronesia (Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1979) Martín Gaite, Carmen, Usos amorosos del dieciocho en España (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1981) McKinney, Collin, ‘Men in Black: Fashioning Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, Letras Hispanas 8:2 (2012), 78–93 —, ‘“Enemigos de la virilidad”: Sex, Masturbation, and Celibacy in NineteenthCentury Spain’, Revista Prisma Social 13 (2014), 72–108 Mercer, Leigh, Urbanism and Urbanity: The Spanish Bourgeois Novel and Contemporary Customs (1845–1925) (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2013) Méndez, Antonio, untitled article, El Heraldo, 12 August 1852: section ‘Comunicados’, 4 Miller, Laura, ‘Male Beauty Work in Japan’, in Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa, ed. James Roberson and Nobue Suzuki (London: Routledge, 2005), 37–58 Mirrer, Louise, ‘Representing “Other” Men: Muslim, Jews, and Masculine Ideals in Medieval Castilian Epic and Ballad’, Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 169–86 Mitchell, Timothy, Blood Sport: A Social History of Spanish Bullfighting (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991) Monlau, Pedro Felipe, Higiene del matrimonio; o El libro de casados (Paris: Carnier Hermanos, 1898) Murciano, Ángel, Prontuario del duelo: Indicaciones utilísimas para no vacilar jamás cuando hay que intervenir en lances de honor (Madrid: Depósito de la Guerra, 1902) Murphy, Patrick, Ken Sheard, and Ivan Waddington, ‘Figurational Sociology and its Application to Sport’, in Handbook of Sports Studies, ed. Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning (London: Sage, 2000), 92–105

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Navarrete, José, ‘Fiesta de toros’, Revista de Andalucía 4:8 (1877), 26–37 Pamuk, Şevket, and Jan-Luiten van Zanden, ‘Standards of Living’, in The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Volume 1: 1700–1870, ed. Stephen Broadberry and Kevin O’Rourke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 217–34 Pastor, Reyna, ‘Temática de las investigaciones sobre la historia de las mujeres medievales hispanas’, in Historia silenciada de la mujer: La mujer española desde la época medieval hasta la contemporánea, ed. Alain Saint-Saëns (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1996), 11–20 Pérez Galdós, Benito, Tormento (Madrid: Alianza, 2002) —, Trafalgar (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003) Rementería y Fica, Mariano, El hombre fino al gusto del día, manual completo de urbanidad, cortesía y buen tono, 3rd edn (Madrid: Colegio de Sordo-Mudos, 1837) Ringrose, David, Spain, Europe, and the ‘Spanish Miracle’, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Shubert, Adrian, A Social History of Modern Spain (London: Routledge, 1990) —, Death and Money in the Afternoon: A History of the Spanish Bullfight (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) Sieburth, Stephanie, Inventing High and Low: Literature, Culture, Mass Culture and Uneven Modernity in Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994) Smith, Angel, ‘The Rise and Fall of “Respectable” Spanish Liberalism, 1808–1923: An Explanatory Framework’, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 22 (2016), 55–73 Tiger, Lionel, Men in Groups (London: Nelson, 1969) Trow, M.J., El Cid: The Making of a Legend (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2007) Weiner, Jack, ‘El poema de mio Cid’: el patriarca Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar transmite sus genes (Kassel: Edition Reichenberger, 2001)

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••

How to be a writer for the press – and how to write about it Rhian Davies

During the nineteenth century the press did more than act as a valuable source of communication and publicity. It had a dramatic impact upon how writers wrote. In considering this issue, I explore the potential avenues open as to how future scholars might read, research and write about the press, frequently and unduly regarded as being of secondary importance as an area for investigation. The two primary concerns of this chapter dovetail because how we now read and write about the nineteenth-century press needs to be shaped by how people went about writing for and publishing it.

The historical background: The rise of the press as an increasingly catalytic force

In 1883, the liberals, led by Sagasta, passed a new Ley de policía de imprenta (Law on the policy of the press), which introduced greater freedom. Thereafter, the number of ‘periódicos científicos y literarios’ (journals of scientific and literary interest), particularly those which appeared monthly, increased, while the number of political publications gradually decreased. A number of other developments benefited the press, including a decrease in the illiteracy rate and an improvement in communications, as the period saw Spain’s connection to the French telegraphic system in 1846, the opening of lines between Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, and the extension of the Spanish railway network. Other significant advances included the establishment of news agencies, such as the Agencia Fabra (founded by Nilo María Fabra in 1870) and the introduction of technical developments, such as stereotyping, the iron press, the application of steam power, mechanical typecasting and typesetting, and new methods of producing illustrations, together with the use of the rotary press, which helped to lower costs and hence increase output. Thus, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the press, less severely hampered now by issues such as political restrictions, 174



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illiteracy, technical backwardness and communication problems, came to play a crucial role in Spanish life.1 The press assumed multiple identities and was described as ‘[un] cuarto poder’ (a fourth estate), ‘un sacerdocio’ (a holy ministry), a form of daily bread, while, for the celebrated mid-century poet and writer Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, it was a valued friend, closely entwined with his intellectual life: Al periódico que todas las mañanas encontramos en Madrid sobre la mesa del comedor o en el gabinete de estudio se le recibe como a un amigo de confianza que viene a charlar un rato […]. Tan íntimamente está enlazada su vida intelectual con la nuestra, tan una es la atmósfera en que se agitan nuestras pasiones y las suyas.2 (One receives the newspaper that we find every day on the dining table or in our study in Madrid as one would a trusted friend who comes by for a brief chat […] so closely linked is its intellectual life to our own, to such an extent is the atmosphere in which our and its passions are stirred one and the same.)

It was an important outlet for the work of many writers during this period, often providing them with a much needed supplement to their income: in the words of the novelist Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘El periodismo [ …] es hoy, como el pan, alimento indispensable y diario’ (Journalism […] is these days, like bread, a necessary, daily food).3 The press encouraged writers to be flexible in their styles and ways of writing and fuelled their prolific tendencies, whilst frequently obliging them to write rapidly in order to meet stringent publication deadlines. Furthermore, it offered them the opportunity to practise and to experiment, serving, at the same time, as a valuable source of stimulation and an opportunity to publicize their works. As the established novelist Juan Valera noted, en él [el periódico] se anuncian, se avisan las cosas, se llama la atención con bombos, se chilla para llamar a los curiosos, etc. etc. El buen paño en el arca se vende; pero puesto en escaparate se vende más […]. La prensa es máquina de divulgación y de publicidad.4 (in the newspaper announcements are made, events listed, matters can be well publicized, one can shout out to draw the attention of those who might be interested etc. etc. Good wine needs no bush, but when it is placed in the shop window, it sells better […]. The press is a broadcasting and publicizing machine.)

Thus the late nineteenth-century thinker Miguel de Unamuno informed the influential novelist, Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) that writing for the press was ‘un modo de mantener fresca la firma y de obtener un suplemento al sueldo’ (a way of keeping one’s signed work fresh and of topping up one’s income)5 and the scholar Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo urged Valera to continue to send articles to the Revista de España: ‘porque de esta manera se obliga usted 175



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mismo a escribir y no siente tentación alguna de suspenderlo o dilatarlo […] Usted necesita el estímulo de la publicidad para no cansarse ni distraerse a otro asunto’ (because this way you make yourself write and you don’t feel tempted to stop or to put off writing […] You need the stimulus of exposure to the public so that you don’t get bored or distracted by something else).6 In many cases it is clear that contributing to the press was an opportunity for writers to record their thoughts and responses to a particular event or ideology contemporaneous with the period in which they were living, to reflect and share their concerns and views, be they in embryonic or mature form. It was an indispensable vehicle for communication between writers as they frequently urged each other to read and to respond to current events, to new ideas and opinions published in the press. In a sense it served as a kind of tertulia (literary get-together), or a meeting in a café that had managed to overcome the barrier of physical distance. On some occasions, the press served as a means of bridging the generational gap as younger writers sought the support of their mature counterparts, which might well lead us to question the long-established tendency to classify, if not simplify, the period in terms of ‘generations’. In 1903, for example, the group of younger writers associated with the Republican journal Alma Española (Spanish soul) enlisted the support and aid of the great novelist of the n ­ ineteenth-century, Benito Pérez Galdós, whose leading article ‘Soñemos, alma, soñemos’ (Let us dream, soul, let us dream) appeared in its first issue. More significantly, it was an important means of engaging with the wider reading public, in many cases in both Spain and overseas, notably in Spanish America, where it helped to promote a sense of joint identity and strengthened bonds. Thus both generational and geographical solidarity, which was increasingly defined by journalism, invested the press with an added authority. Whereas earlier in the century, particularly in the 1830s, the press had generally been associated with communicating (or even imposing) narrow political opinions upon its reading public, largely in order to open the doors to a career in politics7 (see Chapter 10 in this book), as the century advanced (from around the 1860s onwards), it became increasingly immersed in cultural matters. Many periodicals engaged in campaigns, some of which were of a charitable nature and thus they could arguably be regarded as examples of cultural preoccupations. For instance Galdós, in one of the cartas (open letters) written for La Prensa noted the charitable efforts of El Imparcial and El Liberal to raise money for those affected by the earthquake in 1884,8 and in La España Moderna, the collector and editor José Lázaro referred to the press’s support of the family of the deceased writer Eduardo de Lustonó.9 This continued into the twentieth century as the press became involved in campaigns to save the country’s heritage. In his article published in La España Moderna in 1913, for example, the writer Niceto Oneca urged readers to prevent a 176



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painting by Van der Goes from being sold to the German government.10 Many recognized that the press fostered Spanish culture and a good number regarded the role of the periodical press as being specifically associated with education. On the last page of its first issue, the editors of Revista Moderna wrote, ‘De todo corazón saludamos á nuestros compañeros en la prensa, á los escritores y artistas que con su talento y sus obras fomentan y engrandecen la cultura española’ (From the bottom of our hearts we salute our colleagues in the press, the writers and artists who nurture and magnify Spanish culture with their talent and their works).11 This association could perhaps be related to the shift from politics per se to cultural politics, possibly resulting from the widespread feeling that neither the political institutions nor the politicians were going to fulfil their promises nor would they introduce the necessary changes to guarantee Spain’s regeneration.12 ‘La prensa’, wrote the critic Edmundo González Blanco, ‘es hoy uno de los grandes resortes de cultura y uno de los medios más poderosos de educación y de divulgación popular’ (Today, the press is one of the great mechanisms of promoting our culture and one of the most powerful means of education and of dissemination among the wider populus).13 Embraced by politicians from all factions, philosophers and educators, liberals and conservatives, men and women, ‘the young’ and ‘the old’, the fin-de-siècle press could be regarded as a microcosm of Spanish society during this period. More importantly perhaps, it was frequently used by writers to influence and inspire their reading public to pursue directions that might have a decisive effect upon the country’s future. It often acted as a catalyst for new ideological currents and expressions of nationalist fervour, as noted by the twentieth-century historian Vicens Vives: en 1893, a raíz de una escaramuza con los marroquíes de Melilla, la prensa madrileña infló el incidente hasta tal punto que la capital quedó conmovida por un exceso de exaltación nacionalista que exigía el castigo de los ‘moros’.14 (in 1893, following a skirmish with the Moroccans of Melilla, the Madrid-based press blew the incident so far out of proportion that the capital city was up in arms in an excess of frenzied nationalist demands that the ‘Moors’ be punished.)

This is a striking instance of how the ‘cultural politics’ might not aid the situation since material interest, as the driver of political action, was here displaced by perceived interest, which was largely defined and mediated by the press. Furthermore, the press influenced what could be termed as the national mood, sometimes through its choice of particular cultural terms that assumed particular attitudes towards the ‘Moors’, which then served as the impetus for additional (not necessarily well-considered) policy decisions. The impact of the press on attitudes towards bullfighting was also noted by the journalist Eusebio Blasco: ‘De la afición rayana en la locura que hoy 177



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tiene el público a los toros, no se busque otra causa que la propaganda colosal hecha por los periódicos a esta fiesta, que hace diez o doce años estaba en decadencia’ (No one should look for any other cause for the near insane love the public has for bullfighting these days than the vast propaganda carried out by the newspaper press on behalf of that fiesta, which ten or twelve years ago was in decline).15

Re-evaluating the press

Notwithstanding its significance, and despite the fact that we have seen an evident surge in critical interest in periodical publications in recent years, the nineteenth-century Spanish press still presents the researcher with a vast treasure trove of resources that remain unexploited. This is partly due to the mindset that leads critics to underestimate its value. There is, for instance, a frequent tendency to regard the contribution of major writers to the press as a second-rate activity, a notion sometimes promoted by the writers themselves. Galdós, for example, contemptuously referred to his early press articles as ‘trabajillos’ (little jobs), whilst Clarín lamented the inferior quality of some of his contributions ¡Cuántas veces, por cumplir un compromiso, por entregar a tiempo la obra del jornalero acabada, me sorprendo en la ingrata faena de hacerme inferior a mí mismo, de escribir peor que sé, de decir lo que sé que no vale nada, que no importa, que sólo sirve para llenar un hueco y justificar un salario!16 (How many times, so as to make good on a promise, so as to hand in on time the work from this day job that will be the end of me, have I found myself in the unhappy game of demeaning myself, of writing material below my ability, of saying things I know are worthless, of no import, that serve only to fill a gap and provide a reason for paying me!)

Writers such as Menéndez Pelayo fuelled such contempt by highlighting the generally negative perception of the press, which was seen as being a frivolous money-making venture that often pandered to the demands of a superficial, fickle public. In his Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (History of heterodoxy among the Spanish), he described journalists as: mala y diabólica ralea, nacida para extender por el mundo la ligereza, la vanidad y el falso saber, para agitar estérilmente y consumir y entontecer a los pueblos, para halagar la pereza y privar a las gentes del racional y libre uso de sus facultades discursivas.17 (a wicked, devilish bunch, born to spread superficiality, vanity, and false knowledge across the world, to stir up sterile controversy, and consume and dumb-down peoples, to flatter laziness and deny populations the rational and free use of their discursive faculties.)

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This was, in some respects, typical of the attitude of this neo-Catholic historical polemicist in the early 1880s, since he was anxious to limit the prevailing cultural conversation in Spain, although he was, paradoxically, increasingly enjoying conversations with the likes of Galdós during this same period. However, if we add to such comments the frequent embroilment of journalists in duels and bribery, their associations with gossip, accusations of political onesidedness and their increasing attention to sensationalism through their focus on gory crimes, together with the growing desire to make money by whatever means, we can come to appreciate how the tabloid press of today was born. In addition to such negative perceptions, we often find that, rather than being regarded as material worthy of investigation in their own right, press articles are used by critics to fulfil some other purpose, usually to back up specific theories.18 Statements from particular articles are frequently taken out of context and the articles themselves, perhaps victims of their flexible, selfcontained nature, are rarely appreciated within the context of the publication in which they appeared. In adopting this approach, the press’s fundamental role and its strength as a product of collective activity is often disregarded. As noted previously, one of the unique characteristics of the press is its flexibility, especially as regards its identity. Journalists, in publishing their work in a particular periodical, did not solely retain their individuality but often additionally assumed the identity of a contributor to the Revista de X, in other words, they became a member of a ‘team’ and implicitly endorsed the collective mission of that particular publication. It could even be argued that writers’ knowledge that their piece was going to appear in a specific publication affected the very genesis of that work, both in terms of the style and contents of the work. There is, for instance, evidence to suggest that this might well have been the case with Galdós’s novel Torquemada en la hoguera (Torquemada at the Stake) (1889), which was written for, and first published in, La España Moderna.19 Every piece of work that is published in a periodical publication naturally gains some connection with the other articles published within that periodical, be this deliberate or not, and can, in the process, also acquire a new significance for the active reader who is prepared to reflect on this relationship. Some critics have noted that a number of authors tailored their works to meet the expectations of the relevant readers and adopted different styles for different publications. The biographer Pedro Ortiz Armengol, for example, claims that Galdós, whilst writing for La Prensa, adopted a particular style in his crónica (column): ‘Contra los socialistas austriacos y la supuesta conspiración terrorista que se les achaca’ (Against the Austrian socialists and the supposed terrorist plot of which they are accused): Está pareciendo, nos tememos, que para un público de un gran periódico burgués, Galdós acentúa el tono conservador, y que esto no es coherente con

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The same could be said of writers such as Clarín; the critic G.G. Brown has noted that ‘the tone of his [Clarín’s] articles in the left-wing, anticlerical Madrid daily El Solfeo is very different from that of the work he contributed at the same period to the conservative, provincial Revista de Asturias, for example’.21 Another striking example can be found in Unamuno’s articles, which were first published in the cultural review La España Moderna in 1895 and (retaining their subtitles) later became En torno al casticismo (About traditionalism). Although Unamuno was writing about socialism in La Lucha de Clases (The class struggle) and El Socialista during this period, he does not mention it in La España Moderna, yet En torno al casticismo still offers, according to Nicholas Round, ‘an account of Spain’s problems which made a Socialist remedy seem overwhelmingly relevant’.22 It may, of course, have been Unamuno’s strategy to encourage the readers of La España Moderna to read between the lines and come to that conclusion themselves.23 The periodical publication, thus, defines a public; the public and the author in a shared situation define a context; this context then predicates a conversation in which particular topics should be discussed in a particular manner. In the same vein, it could be argued that the press profoundly affected the ways in which writers wrote and, by the same token, the way in which readers read. In this light, then, are attempts to distinguish between authors such as Galdós as literato, in other words, a writer of novels, short stories, plays and so forth, and as periodista, a contributor to the press, justified? During this period the two terms were often interchangeable and many engaged in futile attempts to establish a clear distinction between literatura and periodismo. On several occasions the topic became a matter of debate in the Royal Academy. The journalist Eugenio Sellés, in his ‘Discurso de recepción’ (1895), for example, pronounced, ‘Es género literario [ …] la novela [ …]; es género literario la crítica […]; [ …]; ¿no ha de serlo el periodismo, que lo es todo en una pieza’. (The novel is a literary genre; criticism is a literary genre. Thus shouldn’t journalism also be a literary genre, since it encompasses everything in one 180



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place).24 Later, in his reply reply to Isidoro Fernández Flores’s Academy speech (1898), Valera proclaimed: El libro es un medio de publicidad y el periódico es otro. De ambos medios se vale ó puede valerse el escritor, pero no hay, en realidad, diferencia literaria entre ambos medios. De una serie de artículos se forma á menudo un libro, y de fragmentos ó pedazos de un libro, se hacen á menudo también no pocos artículos de periódicos.25 (Books are one form of publicity and newspapers another. The writer does or can make use of both media, but there is, in reality, no literary difference between the two media. A book is often made out of a series of articles, and no small number of newspaper articles are made out of fragments or pieces of books.)

To an extent, Valera’s description over-simplifies what was actually happening in the period in terms of the relationship between the press and literature: for instance, in some cases whole novels were published in serialized form or short stories appeared in their entirety, whereas in other cases, only fragments or sample chapters appeared, probably to encourage readers to then purchase the whole book.26 At the same time, it is important to recognize that some writers were more effective at writing (longer) literature than press articles (and vice versa). However, if we take into account Valera’s view that there was, in essence, no real difference between publishing in a book and publishing in the press during the fin de siècle, perhaps we should then also ask whether it might be possible to regard some authors’ fictional output as part of their journalistic output? It is evident that the boundaries between literature and the press were frequently blurred and the stylistic distinctions that one might expect to find in literary works and press contributions were not always visible. Thus both forms of writing were sufficiently similar to be subjected to many of the same kinds of critical interrogation. It is indeed possible that when these are applied as seriously to journalism as to the more recognized literary genres nowadays, we will encounter a revised canon in terms of writing from the period that is deemed to be deserving of lasting critical attention. There is, moreover, a general tendency to overlook what could be described as the ‘hidden histories’ of the periodical press, namely the roles of the general editors and their collaboration with the contributors, the extent to which the business concerns affected the lives of the periodicals and the contributors, the impact of technological developments, in particular that of the visual culture of the press. Even the generic characteristics of the different kinds of periodical publications – from newspapers and reviews to ilustraciones (illustrated Spanish reviews) and almacenes (magazines) – and the structures and styles of the articles published therein (for example the crónica) would appear to have been largely disregarded. 181



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Potential avenues for future research

While much valuable research has been conducted on the press, to date this has been somewhat haphazard in its direction and piecemeal in its content. Attempts to examine the role of individual authors in relation to the press are both scarce and insufficient, although it must be recognized that conducting such research constitutes no easy task, even in the case of well-known authors like Galdós. As Antony Percival writes: The problem facing investigators of Galdós’s journalism are manifold and complex, for the history of the Spanish press in its burgeoning, politically precarious stage in the latter part of the nineteenth century is imperfectly known, copies of many periodicals are difficult or impossible to locate, and, to make matters worse, Galdós made anonymous contributions to newspapers, neglected to keep copies and cuttings of many of his articles, and in later life liked to speak of his collaboration with important periodicals like La Nación, El Debate, Revista de España, and later La Prensa and La Nación, both of Buenos Aires, while remaining silent about his extensive collaboration with lesser-known periodicals like El Correo de España, La Ilustración de Madrid, and Revista del Movimiento Intelectual de Europa. Galdós’s vagueness and secretiveness concerning his early journalistic activities have led Leo J. Hoar to allege that the author’s ‘notorious memory and attitude toward certain phases of his early career border on intentionally selective amnesia’.27

Percival then proceeds to assert that ‘the critical work […] on Galdós’s nonnovelistic writings is markedly less substantial that that centring on his novels […] despite the fact that [Galdós] contributed articles to the press in Spain and abroad throughout the whole of his literary career’.28 Leo Hoar’s comment upon Galdós’s ‘intentionally selective amnesia’ highlights the possibility that one of the problems with which Galdós might have grappled was that writing for the press was public writing. In other words, what he wrote and published within the orbit of a particular journal committed him (and his reputation) to its ethos, reputation and ideology. He was also confronted with the dilemma that if he wished to gain or sustain a reputation or a regular income, he was essentially obliged to write for the press, even though, as noted previously, this also offered him the attractive opportunity to engage with contemporary issues and the public at a critical time when Spain embraced the challenges posed by modernity that both preoccupied and fascinated him. Much remains to be done in the way of detailed research on individual newspapers, reviews and magazines. It is fortunate that libraries such as the Biblioteca Nacional and the Hemeroteca of Madrid have invested in the digitization of many periodicals, enabling readers based outside Spain to access many of the important publications. Unfortunately, however, there are still no indexes of the majority of publications to highlight the contents 182



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of the publications to support researchers in their use of the press in order to trace particular ideological currents. There are also relatively few in-depth studies of specific periodicals of the turn of the century, even in the case of major publications such as Revista de España.29 As well as focusing on the contributors, contents and themes of such periodicals (work which could be usefully complemented by electronic indexes), such studies could include information on the overall ‘mission’ and the collective nature of the enterprise. Information on the history of the publication (for instance whether there were different general editors and an assessment of their influence), details as to whether articles are signed or not, or whether they are signed collectively, an analysis of the structure and style adopted (including details of the length of the publication, fixed sections, the role of illustrations and so on) and, where possible, an examination of influential elements such as readership, editors, sponsorship, advertising and so forth could be usefully integrated to enable readers to build up a full picture of the publication and its significance. Another approach could be to focus specifically on particular kinds of periodicals (namely whether they are reviews, newspapers or magazines, particularly since varying degrees of respect were accorded to each of these publications).30 The ilustraciones could well represent a fruitful area for research and the questions adopted could be centred on those posed in the previous section. The nature and role of specific elements in the press, for instance illustrations, offer further potential avenues for research, and could either involve the analysis of the illustrations printed in one particular publication or a combined study of those based on a particular topic or theme. Works such as Lou Charnon-Deutsch’s Hold That Pose (2008) could be regarded as models for such an approach. As she notes, ‘The weekly magazine became an important ingredient of the collective life of the city, acting like a visual and discursive testimonial to its current heterogeneity as well as a kind of souvenir of its idealized urbanity.’31 Alternatively, research could be centred on illustrations or photographs of particular individuals, adopting the methodology fruitfully employed by Maryellen Bieder in relation to Emilia Pardo Bazán,32 and applying it to other major writers of the period. A fourth possibility would be to centre on particular themes in the press, for example the depiction of women, Spanish America or crime (for the latter, see Chapter 6). It would also be possible to focus on particular authors, possibly, as a cross-bearing, highlighting the significance of particular works in the context of the periodical in which they appeared. In a similar vein, one could study the reception of particular authors and their works in the press. An evaluation of critics’ reviews on Galdós’s work, notably on his plays, including Electra has already been particularly enlightening in this regard.33 Of equal worth would be studies on the role of particular editors, something that has often been undervalued, despite the fact that, as Gómez 183



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Aparicio points out, during the Restoration period, ‘cada periódico … era, en realidad, un hombre’ (each periodical publication … was, in reality, one man).34 Writers such as Unamuno also recognized the crucial role played by general editors, writing that ‘en la historia de la cultura humana hay editores que significan muchísimo más que los más de los autores a que editaron’ (in the history of human culture there are editors who matter much, much more than the authors that they published).35 Whether this is tackled on an individual or a collective basis, it is likely that we will encounter two main types of editor in the late nineteenth century: first, the politically motivated editors, the literary enthusiasts, those seeking personal influence and promotion and, second, the businessmen, who, during a period that saw the employment of full-time reporters and staff,36 recognized the potential to make money and cash in on the press’s development as a commercial industry.37 Others, such as José Lázaro Galdiano, were keen to use their publications to embark on the ambitious mission of regenerating Spain and, as such, engage with ventures that might be aligned with the general preoccupation with charitable missions during this period (particularly those relating to the need for social and moral improvement), albeit with the aim of addressing cultural, rather than practical and social concerns (such as those which Concepción Arenal, for example, addressed in relation to the subject of prison reform).38 As might be expected, the role of the general editor could be positive (as it was in the case of Lázaro Galdiano) or it could be negative, since some editors were dogmatic and exploitative in their dealings with writers.39 The publisher Rafael Calleja, in his lecture on ‘El editor’, wrote about: Un hombrecillo sórdido y abyecto, rapaz inculto, sin entrañas, podrido de millones atesorados y guardados con avaricia insaciable, que tiraniza sin piedad al pobre escritor, querubín purísimo, infelice avecilla, víctima escuálida del atroz vampiro, de quien por necesidad o por longanimidad, se deja chupar la sangre mansamente.40 (A sordid, abject little man, an uncultured youth, heartless, rotten with the millions he has stored up and kept in his insatiable greed, mercilessly tyrannizing the poor writer, that purest of cherubs, that unhappy little bird, squalid victim of the dread vampire, letting his own blood be gently sucked away out of need or forbearance.)

Whatever the case, the general editor had the final say regarding what was or what was not published in ‘his’ periodical,41 although this could be justified on the basis that the general editor was probably more preoccupied by financial issues and more acutely aware of the need to satisfy public demand.42 Related studies could usefully involve an analysis of the legal and business matters of running a periodical, perhaps in the style of Maryse Villapadierna’s work on the financial concerns of La España Moderna, where she highlighted José Lázaro’s 184



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valiant but futile attempts to ‘break even’ when devoting his publication to the mission of promoting Spain’s regeneration.43 It goes without saying that this should include analyzing any surviving business correspondence. Researchers could likewise consider the press from a historical perspective and, taking into account its role within the more general publishing industry, attempt to map the development of periodicals in relation to books or to consider collective responses to individual crisis points, for instance responses to the 1898 war. Although research on this aspect is more advanced than in some other dimensions of the nineteenth-century press, to date it has generally taken the form of articles and essays rather than whole books. Critics could also usefully engage in studies comparing and contrasting the press in other countries. It is notable that nineteenth-century French periodicals often served as models for Spanish publications during this period (La España Moderna, for example, explicitly set out to model itself on Revue des Deux Mondes)44 and a comparison between the two, attempting to elucidate the extent to which there was a specifically Spanish press could be fascinating. It would be worthwhile to take into account the importance of reporting on articles first published in other publications via pieces such as the ‘Revista de revistas’ (Review of reviews) section of La España Moderna, where we gain a sense that the contributors were comparing notes, possibly modifying the way in which particular issues were reported and encouraging readers to take into account different views before arriving at their own conclusions. Additionally, it would be worth looking at whether the practices of second-hand reporting in themselves alter the ways in which texts are perceived. Additional comparative studies could be conducted in relation to the work of particular journalists, for instance it would be possible to compare Dickens’s journalistic career with that of Galdós. Finally, it would be possible to adopt an ‘outsider’ perspective and, focusing on literary materials as primary sources, analyse the portrayal of the press and journalists in fiction, for example in particular novels. This could be related to the image of ‘the writer in the garret’ and the controversies associated with journalists, which sometimes led to duels.45 Whatever methodology is adopted, as is the case with the press in other European countries,46 it is clear that the Spanish press is an indispensable vehicle for enhancing our understanding of this period. The influence it exerted upon writers, readers, if not the whole country, was substantial, to the extent that it could even be argued that all research on this century will, in some way or another, explicitly or implicitly, have to take into account the role of the press or it might well be missing a central part of the jigsaw.

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Notes

 1 All translations are mine or by the editors. See chapter 1 of my book, La España Moderna and Regeneración: A Cultural Review in Restoration Spain (Manchester: Cañada Blanch Publications, 2000).  2 Gustavo Bécquer, Cartas desde mi celda, II (1864), cited in Pedro Gómez Aparicio, Historia del periodismo español (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981), I: 505. Regarding the association between the press and the priesthood, see, for example, Edmundo González-Blanco, Historia del periodismo: Desde sus comienzos hasta nuestra época (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1919), 251.  3 Emilia Pardo Bazán, ‘Presentación’, Nuevo Teatro Crítico 1 (January 1891), 9–10.  4 Letter to Menéndez y Pelayo, dated 26 April 1887, in Epistolario de Valera y Menéndez y Pelayo, 1877–1905, ed. M. Artigas Ferrando and P. Sainz Rodríguez (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1946), 371.  5 Letter dated 25 March 1900, in Epistolario a Clarín: Menéndez y Pelayo, Unamuno, Palacio Valdés, ed. Adolfo Alas (Madrid: Escorial, 1941), 72.  6 Letter dated 22 December 1886, in Epistolario de Valera a Menéndez Pelayo, 335.  7 See Ramón Martínez de la Riva, Luca de Tena: La obra magnífica de una poderosa voluntad y una gran inteligencia (Madrid, n.d.), 56–7.  8 Benito Pérez Galdós, ‘Fenómenos sismólogicos’ (Madrid, 17 January 1885), in Obras inéditas, ed. Alberto Ghiraldo (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1924), vol. 6: Cronicón (1883–86), 137–8.  9 José Lázaro, ‘Crónica general’, La España Moderna 8 (August 1889), 187. 10 Niceto Oneca, ‘El cuadro de Van der Goes’, La España Moderna 293 (1913), 62. 11 Revista Moderna 1 (6 March 1897), 16. 12 According to Jaime Vicens Vives, out of the 296 practical plans proposed, only about thirty were actually carried out. Coyuntura económica y reformismo burgués, y otros estudios de la historia de España, 4th edn (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1974), 203. 13 González-Blanco, Historia del periodismo, 251. 14 Vicens Vives, Coyuntura económica y reformismo burgués, 183. 15 La Época (1 August, 1888), cited in María Cruz Seoane, Oratoria y periodismo en la España del siglo XIX (Valencia: Castalia, 1977), 408. 16 Cited in José María Martínez Cachero, ‘Introducción a Palique de Leopoldo Alas, Clarín’, in Leopoldo Alas, Palique (Barcelona: Labor, 1973), 10. 17 Cited in César Antonio Molina, Medio siglo de prensa literaria española, 1900–50 (Madrid: Endymion, 1990), 17. 18 With the exception of Yvan Lissorgues’ Clarín político (Oviedo: KRK, 2004), even in the case of admirable scholarly studies, for instance the work of Lily Litvak and Celma Valero, attention is mainly placed upon the contents of the periodical publications, which communicates the sense that articles appear to be regarded as source materials rather than pieces that are worthy of attention in, for example, stylistic and structural terms. See Lily Litvak, España 1900: Modernismo, anarquismo y fin de siglo (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990); María Pilar Celma Valero,

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Literatura y periodismo en las revistas del fin de siglo: Estudio e índices, 1888–1907 (Madrid: Júcar, 1991). 19 See Rhian Davies, ‘The Background to Torquemada en la hoguera’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Glasgow) 76 (1999), 399–413, and Galdós y Lázaro: Una breve y fructífera colaboración (1889–91) (Madrid: Fundación Lázaro Galdiano/Ollero y Ramos, 2002). 20 Pedro Ortiz Armengol, Vida de Galdós (Barcelona: Crítica, 1996), 411. 21 G.G. Brown, ‘Introduction’ to Clarín, Cuentos escogidos (Oxford: The Dolphin Book, 1964), 10. 22 See Nicholas G. Round, ‘Approaches to the 1898 Generation’, Vida Hispánica 24:2 (1976), 12. 23 See Round, ‘Approaches to the 1898 Generation’ and also Rafael Pérez de la Dehesa, Política y sociedad en el primer Unamuno (Madrid: Ciencia Nueva, 1966). 24 Eugenio Sellés, Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española en la recepción pública de Don Eugenio Sellés el día 2 de junio de 1895 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Revista de Navegación y Comercio, 1895), 10. 25 Cited in Josep Francesc Valls, Prensa y burguesía en el XIX español (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988), 25. 26 One fascinating example is Azorín’s ‘Impresiones españolas’. These were the first two chapters of his La voluntad (Barcelona, 1902), which appeared in La España Moderna in February 1902. Surprisingly, there was no evidence nor would the unknowing reader recognize that they formed part of a larger work. 27 Antony Percival, Galdós and His Critics (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985), 281. 28 Percival, Galdós and His Critics, 12. 29 One of the relatively few studies of this major periodical includes Brian Dendle, Los artículos políticos en la Revista de España, 1871–72 (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 1982). 30 According to Gómez de Baquero, the review was accorded some of the respect previously reserved for the book and this contrasted with the contempt that contemporaries expressed for the newspaper: ‘Escritores hay que por nada del mundo citarían en sus libros á un periódico. Para dar á un pensamiento el dignus est intrare, preciso es que haya nacido en un libro ó siquiera en una revista.’ E. Gómez de Baquero, ‘Crónica literaria’, La España Moderna 231 (March 1908), 164. 31 Lou Charnon-Deutsch, Hold That Pose: Visual Culture in the Late-NineteenthCentury Spanish Periodical (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 2. 32 See, for example, Maryellen Bieder, ‘Imágenes visuales de Emilia Pardo Bazán en la prensa periódica: Estudio comparativo de Sarah Bernhardt y Pardo Bazán’, in Actas del Congreso Internacional: Literatura hispánica y prensa periódica (1875–1931), ed. Javier Serrano Alonso et al. (Lugo: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2008), 221–35. 33 See Percival, Galdós and His Critics, 248ff. 34 Gómez Aparicio, Historia del periodismo español, II: 252.

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35 Antonio R. Rodríguez-Moñino, Don José Lázaro visto por Rubén Darío y Unamuno (Valencia: Castalia, 1951), 18. 36 Jean-Michel Desvois, La prensa en España 1900–31 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1977), 3. Desvois notes that from 1887 to 1913, the total number of journals rose from 1128 to 1980, and the ratio of population to journals fell likewise from 1:15106 to 1:10076. 37 Greater attention was accorded to advertising, which had advanced considerably since Émile de Girardin’s early success in using advertisements to subsidize the cost of La Presse in 1836. 38 See, for example, Concepción Arenal, ‘El Congreso Internacional de Amberes, 1890. Informe de Concepción Arenal. (Segunda sección)’, La España Moderna 27 (March 1891), 28–52. 39 See Rafael Cansinos Assens, La novela de un literato: Hombres, ideas, efemérides, anécdotas, 1882–1936, 3 vols (Madrid: Alianza, 1982–95). 40 Rafael Calleja, ‘El editor’, in Conferencia de la serie organizada por la Cámara Oficial del libro en la Feria de Muestras de Barcelona en marzo de 1922 (Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1922), 20. 41 Armengol, for example, notes that ‘aquel artículo elogiando Tormento, que finalmente Clarín escribió para El Día, no fue publicado por este diario porque su director, el marqués del Riscal, no gustó de ciertos párrafos del mismo’, Vida de Galdós, 388. As regards my use of the term his, it would appear that the number of female general editors was extremely small, including writers such as Emilia Pardo Bazán, who was effectively the general editor of the Nuevo Teatro Crítico (1891–93), even though she was also its sole contributor. 42 In the ‘Revista de revistas’ section of La España Moderna we read, ‘Sería pretensión vana querer transformar la prensa; pero cambiemos nosotros, y ella cambiará. Un periódico es un negocio, y ningún comerciante vende en su tienda lo que no gusta á sus clientes’. See F. Araujo, ‘Revista de revistas’, La España Moderna 130 (October 1899), 190. 43 See, for example, Maryse Villapadierna, ‘José Lázaro Galdiano (1862–1947) et La España Moderna (1889–1914) ou une entreprise culturelle et ses implications économiques et commerciales’, in Culture et Société en Espagne et en Amérique Latine au XIXe siècle. Textes réunis par Claude Dumas (Lille: Centre d’Etudes Ibériques et Ibéro-américaines du XIXe siècle de l’université Lille III, 1980), 93–106. 44 In the ‘Prospecto’ of La España Moderna, which appeared in the first issue (January 1889) we read, ‘han carecido los lectores españoles de una publicación que sea a nuestra patria … lo que a Francia la Revue des Deux Mondes: suma intelectual de la edad contemporánea, sin perder por eso, antes cultivándolo y extremándolo hasta donde razonablemente quepa, el carácter castizo y nacional’. 45 See, for instance, Azorin’s reference to the controversy provoked by the article published in chapter 13 of La voluntad. For more information on this topic see the section entitled ‘El honor y sus lances’ in Antonio Espina, El cuarto poder: Cien años de periodismo español (Madrid: Libertarias/Prodhufi, 1993), 113–22. 46 This has been notably highlighted with respect to France in the work of Marie-Ève

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How to be a writer for the press Thérenty. See, for example, her article ‘Pour une histoire littéraire de la presse au XIXe siècle’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 103 (2003), 625–35.

References

Alas, Adolfo (ed.), Epistolario a Clarín: Menéndez y Pelayo, Unamuno, Palacio Valdés (Madrid: Escorial, 1941) Araujo, F., ‘Revista de revistas’, La España Moderna 130 (October 1899), 161–98 Arenal, Concepción, ‘El Congreso Internacional de Amberes, 1890. Informe de Concepción Arenal. (Segunda sección)’, La España Moderna 27 (March 1891), 28–52 Artigas Ferrando, M., and P. Sainz Rodríguez (eds), Epistolario de Valera y Menéndez y Pelayo, 1877–1905 (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1946) Bieder, Maryellen, ‘Imágenes visuales de Emilia Pardo Bazán en la prensa periódica: Estudio comparativo de Sarah Bernhardt y Pardo Bazán’, in Actas del Congreso Internacional: Literatura hispánica y prensa periódica (1875–1931), ed. Javier Serrano Alonso et al. (Lugo: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 2008), 221–35 Brown, G.G., ‘Introduction’, in Leopoldo Alas, Cuentos escogidos (Oxford: The Dolphin Book, 1964), 1–36 Calleja, Rafael, ‘El editor’, in Conferencia de la serie organizada por la Cámara Oficial de libro en la Feria de Muestras de Barcelona en marzo de 1922 (Madrid: Saturnino Calleja, 1922) Cansinos Assens, Rafael, La novela de un literato: Hombres, ideas, efemérides, anécdotas, 1882–1936, 3 vols (Madrid: Alianza, 1982–95) Celma Valero, María Pilar, Literatura y periodismo en las revistas del fin de siglo: Estudio e índices, 1888–1907 (Madrid: Júcar, 1991) Charnon-Deutsch, Lou, Hold That Pose: Visual Culture in the Late-Nineteenth-Century Spanish Periodical (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) Cruz Seoane, María, Oratoria y periodismo en la España del siglo XIX (Valencia: Castalia, 1977) Davies, Rhian, ‘The Background to Torquemada en la hoguera’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 76 (1999), 399–413 —, La España Moderna and Regeneración: A Cultural Review in Restoration Spain (Manchester: Cañada Blanch Publications, 2000) —, Galdós y Lázaro: Una breve y fructífera colaboración (1889–91) (Madrid: Fundación Lázaro Galdiano/Ollero y Ramos, 2002) Dendle, Brian, Los artículos políticos en la Revista de España, 1871–72 (Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 1982) Desvois, Jean-Michel, La prensa en España 1930–31 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1977) Espina, Antonio, El cuarto poder: Cien años de periodismo español (Madrid: Libertarias/ Prodhufi, 1993) Gómez Aparicio, Pedro, Historia del periodismo español (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981) Gómez de Baquero, E., ‘Crónica literaria’, La España Moderna 231 (March 1908), 164–70

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González-Blanco, Edmundo, Historia del periodismo: Desde sus comienzos hasta nuestra época (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1919) Lázaro, José, ‘Crónica general’, La España Moderna 8 (August 1889), 185–90 Lissorgues, Yvan, Clarín político (Oviedo: KRK, 2004) Litvak, Lily, España 1900: Modernismo, anarquismo y fin de siglo (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1990) Martínez Cachero, José María, ‘Introducción a Palique de Leopoldo Alas, Clarín’, in Leopoldo Alas, Palique (Barcelona: Labor, 1973), 7–40 Martínez de la Riva, Ramón, Luca de Tena: La obra magnífica de una poderosa voluntad y una gran inteligencia (Madrid, n.d.) Molina, César, Antonio, Medio siglo de prensa literaria española, 1900–50 (Madrid: Endymion, 1990) Oneca, Niceto, ‘El cuadro de Van der Goes’, La España Moderna 293 (May 1913), 50–84 Ortiz Armengol, Pedro, Vida de Galdós (Barcelona: Crítica, 1996) Pardo Bazán, Emilia, ‘Presentación’, Nuevo Teatro Crítico 1 (January 1891), 5–20 Percival, Antony, Galdós and His Critics (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1985) Pérez de la Dehesa, Rafael, Política y sociedad en el primer Unamuno (Madrid: Ciencia Nueva, 1966) Pérez Galdós, Benito, ‘Fenómenos sismólogicos’ (Madrid, 17 January 1885), in Obras inéditas, ed. Alberto Ghiraldo (Madrid: Renacimiento, 1924), vol. 6: Cronicón (1883–86), 120–40 Rodríguez-Moñino, Antonio R., Don José Lázaro visto por Rubén Darío y Unamuno (Valencia: Castalia, 1951) Round, Nicholas G., ‘Approaches to the 1898 Generation’, Vida Hispánica 24:2 (1976), 5–14 Sellés, Eugenio, Discursos leídos ante la Real Academia Española en la recepción pública de Don Eugenio Sellés el día 2 de junio de 1895 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Revista de Navegación y Comercio, 1895) Thérenty, Marie-Ève, ‘Pour une histoire littéraire de la presse au XIXe siècle’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 103 (2003), 625–35 Valls, Josep Frances, Prensa y burguesía en el XIX español (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988) Vicens Vives, Jaime, Coyuntura económica y reformismo burgués, y otros estudios de la historia de España, 4th edn (Barcelona: Ariel, 1974) Villapadierna, Maryse, ‘José Lázaro Galdiano (1862–947) et La España Moderna (1889–1914) ou une entreprise culturelle et ses implications économiques et commerciales’, in Culture et Société en Espagne et en Amérique Latine au XIXe siècle. Textes réunis par Claude Dumas (Lille: Centre d’Etudes Ibériques et Ibéro-américaines du XIXe siècle de l’université Lille III, 1980), 93–106

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9

••

How to be a cultural entrepreneur

1

Henriette Partzsch

One of the most fascinating aspects of the nineteenth century is the growth and transformation of literary cultures in emerging modern, capitalist societies. Despite its rather patchy record as far as industrialization is concerned, Spain was no exception to this development, as even the most cursory glance at the digital archives of the historical press in Spain or Simón Palmer’s monumental handbook Escritoras españolas del siglo XIX (Spanish women writers of the nineteenth century) confirms.2 With the benefit of hindsight, this situation of change is usually described as the period which gave rise to the professional roles of publisher and author.3 While this perspective traces an important long-term development, the focus on literary authorship can obscure some of the complex practices developed by people with a stake in the literary sector of nineteenth-century Spain. This chapter uses the case of Faustina Sáez de Melgar (Villamanrique de Tajo, 1834–Madrid, 1895) to explore these complexities through the more flexible lens of cultural entrepreneurship, with the aim of developing a better understanding of the many ways in which people intervened in and thus shaped literary culture, an approach inspired by Jo Labanyi’s suggestion that ‘more work is needed in Spanish cultural studies on practices rather than texts’.4 Together with Pilar Sinués de Marco and Ángela Grassi, Sáez was rediscovered in the 1990s as a female author whose literary texts had been highly popular during her own lifetime, but had later fallen into oblivion. Research into this group of authors frequently interweaves biographical information with textual analyses that focus on the representation of the ideological ideal embodied by the angel of the house, possible attempts at the subversion of this ideal, and the apparent conundrum of women who went public with texts that celebrated domesticity.5 Although this approach can lead to sophisticated interpretations, it struggles to account for the place of these writers in literary culture because of the barriers it erects between text and context. If we categorize somebody like Sáez as a female writer 191



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of ­domesticity, we lose sight of her impact as a cultural entrepreneur who worked to build and sustain a professional career in a dynamic environment and through a network of relations that stretched from Madrid, to Paris, to Caracas, Lima and beyond.6 What makes Sáez’s case particularly suited to a focus on practices, rather than texts, is the fact that there is enough information available about her to undertake a study in the first place, something that distinguishes her from many of her contemporaries, male as well as female. This is thanks to the efforts of some of her descendants and to the new lease of life that the large digitizing initiatives of the twenty-first century have given to nineteenthcentury literature and the historical press.7 Her case shows that in order to survive in the literary sector – and this includes surviving financially – she and her contemporaries had to become businesspeople as much as writers, in the sense that they had ‘to develop a business arising from an existing creative practice or to understand how to create the infrastructure and environment for new creative businesses’.8 The challenges of this situation are evident in one of Sáez’s most ambitious projects, the weekly magazine La Violeta: Revista Hispano-Americana, Literatura, Ciencias, Teatros y Modas (The violet: Spanish-American magazine of literature, the sciences, theatre and fashion) (1862–66), which forms the focal point of the present study.9 After a brief overview of Sáez’s beginnings, I analyse in detail the more entrepreneurial side of La Violeta, with special attention to finances and logistics, before turning to the strategic networking that allowed Sáez to embark on new activities after the demise of her first magazine.10 The picture that emerges complicates our understanding of how people engaged in the literary sector intervened in society. This has the potential to complement, and question, our current understanding of the cultural imaginary in nineteenth-century Spain, based as it often is on the interpretation of individual literary texts against the background of historical contextualization.

The beginnings: From the village to the capital

Like many of her contemporaries, Faustina Sáez came from a rural background: her family were local landowners in Villamanrique de Tajo, a small municipality in the province of Madrid that had gained some prominence, thanks to the nearby royal salt works of Carcavallana.11 Her immediate environment did not encourage her precocious literary vocation, so Sáez took matters into her own hands and joined the growing number of aspiring writers who turned to the press for an opening. Her efforts were successful. In the early 1850s, El Correo de la Moda (The fashion post) (1851–92, under different titles), a periodical for women with a relatively large percentage of female contributors, accepted her poem ‘La paloma torcaz’ (The wood pigeon).12 192



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Sáez had submitted it unbeknownst to her parents. Nevertheless, the young writer seems to have been aware that this achievement was only the very first, and probably the least difficult step toward a career in the literary world. In order to continue on her chosen path, she had to create a more congenial environment than that offered by her family in Villamanrique de Tajo.13 For a young woman in the 1850s, getting married was one obvious, though risky, solution to at least part of this problem. Sáez chose Valentín Melgar y Chicharro, who made a living as a businessman and agent before he entered the Spanish civil service in 1868;14 later in life, he climbed the ranks in the colonial service, retiring as Interventor General (Auditor General) in Havana, according to his death notice.15 When Sáez married in 1855, not only did the young bride move from a provincial backwater to the capital, Madrid, but Valentín also supported his wife’s early cultural and entrepreneurial activities, providing almost ideal conditions for Sáez to start building the all-important network that would underpin her many initiatives, which eventually stretched to Paris, Portugal, Latin America and the Philippines. Indeed, from this perspective, the marriage was so successful that when Valentín died, the obituary published in the Diario de Córdoba (The Cordoba daily) marked him out as of interest precisely because he was her husband.16 It seems unlikely, therefore, that Sáez’s successful networking and, as a consequence, her professional career were only possible thanks to her husband’s family connections.17 Like many ambitious women writers, Sáez approached the Queen for patronage.18 Isabel II graciously accepted the dedication of Sáez’s main collection of poetry, La lira del Tajo (The lyre of the Tagus) (1859), perhaps because it contained a poem celebrating the Queen’s inauguration of the Canal de Isabel II as well as two laudatory poems addressing the Prince of Asturias.19 Subsequently, many influential people, including the powerful businessman José de Salamanca, followed their sovereign’s example and patronized the publication.20 Sáez’s next major step toward recognition was the publication of her first novel, which met with considerable success. La pastora del Guadiela (The shepherdess of the Guadiela river), apparently first published in instalments in 1860, enjoyed an enthusiastic reception. The text would eventually see at least six editions in book form and even be republished in the feuilleton of the Cuban newspaper El Siglo (The century).21 As author of La pastora del Guadiela, Sáez was distinguished from the mass of aspiring poets and occasional contributors to magazines with some literary content and this enabled her to embark on her next, much more ambitious enterprise: the creation of La Violeta: Revista Hispano-Americana, Literatura, Ciencias, Teatros y Modas (Madrid, December 1862–December 1866), a periodical of her own that would not only provide a platform for promoting her work but would also transform Sáez into a cultural entrepreneur. 193



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Once more, the Queen accepted the dedication of the publication, this time during a personal audience granted to Sáez on Thursday, 18 December 1862. Readers of La Violeta were informed of the meeting and the resulting royal patronage in a deferential note signed by Francisca Carlota del Riego Pica, an assiduous contributor to the first issues of La Violeta. Praise for Isabel II and the monarchy abound in La Violeta, although Sáez de Melgar denied this allegiance after the fall of the Queen in 1868.22

The business of publishing

To understand the scope of Sáez’s initiative, it is necessary to study what exactly it entailed in some detail, with special attention to the financial, legal and logistical aspects of running a magazine in the 1860s. Although the Spanish print market of the time was growing and increasingly perceived as a business opportunity, it was by no means easy to establish a new periodical and many titles disappeared extremely quickly.23 That La Violeta managed to survive for 209 issues was no small achievement. During the years in which the magazine was published, and according to the (not necessarily complete) Registro de Contribución Industrial (Register of industrial taxes), 60 scientific and literary (i.e. non-political) periodicals registered as contributors in Madrid at the beginning of 1863 but only 43 were still registered at the end of the same year. In 1864, it was 60 to 48; in 1865, 74 to 42; and 70 to 36 in 1866, the final year of La Violeta’s existence; the difference between the two numbers allows us to appreciate the high fluctuation and extremely short life of many publishing projects that competed on the Spanish print market for the custom of a limited pool of readers.24 Primarily geared toward a female readership, La Violeta’s market was even more restricted due to the very low literacy rates among women in nineteenth-century Spain.25 Nevertheless, this specific segment was attractive thanks to the fact that upper- and uppermiddle class women had more money and leisure time at their disposal than most other Spaniards.26 The main income stream for periodicals in the 1860s were subscriptions: advertisements were slow to acquire financial importance.27 It was therefore essential to build a large pool of committed readers during the very first months of a magazine’s life, with the aim of recouping the initial investment and covering the running costs. La Violeta’s launch was professionally planned with a view to maximizing its visibility among potential customers. A leaflet describing the periodical was distributed to prospective subscribers, accompanied by a complimentary copy of the publication, and the launch of the magazine was announced and advertised in a wide range of important and ideologically diverse daily newspapers.28 Furthermore, inspection copies were available in selected bookshops in the capital as well as in the provinces. 194



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This promotional material clearly centred on the person of Faustina Sáez de Melgar, singled out as the directora propietaria (director and owner) of the new magazine. Her importance was further highlighted by the title design of the front and cover page of the publication where her name and function were prominently displayed; a similar layout would be used in Pilar Sinués de Marco’s slightly later magazine El Ángel del Hogar (The angel of the hearth) (1864–69). Moreover, Sáez’s picture accompanied the third issue of the magazine (31 December 1862), apparently the only time that a portrait was distributed with the magazine. This focus on Sáez’s name suggest that she was identified as the strategic selling point of La Violeta, setting the publication apart from other women’s periodicals offering a similar mix of fashion, entertainment and educational content in the French tradition of fashion magazines.29 By identifying herself as the owner of La Violeta, Sáez also drew attention to the fact that she had an important stake in liberal society.30 The ideal of full individual property was one of the pillars of nineteenth-century liberalism and the contemporary mechanism of census suffrage clearly shows that full citizenship was intrinsically linked to the accumulation of individual assets.31 But the all-important bourgeois ideal of ownership did not only define who could determine the composition of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, it also shaped the figure of the modern author in Western society.32 The very concept of intellectual property, which was legally established in Spain in 1847, empowered women writers such as Sáez to participate in the market of literary culture as officially recognized owners/authors of literary works.33 In this context, it is important to remember that married women in Castile needed their husband’s explicit authorization to contract, although women in Spain never lost the possibility of holding property in their own right.34 In practice, this meant that Sáez needed her husband to assume legal responsibility for the magazine that was created around her name and that broadcast her achievements as an author. It is therefore Valentín Melgar who appears as editor responsable (responsible editor) in the small print of the magazine.35 This solution was not unique to La Violeta. At a time when women’s involvement in the production of women’s magazines was growing, female directors seem to have been frequently paired with male editors, often members of their own family. Jiménez Morell’s research on nineteenth-century women’s magazines seems to support this hypothesis, though in many cases the business structures of periodicals remain unknown.36 The complexity of these arrangements makes it difficult to identify the real driving forces behind periodical publications, at least in the absence of a business archive. However, Sáez explicitly took responsibility for all unsigned contributions in the issues 1–99 (23 October 1664), a clear indication that she was much more than just the figurehead of La Violeta.37 Such details do not 195



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support Sánchez Llama’s assessment that the ‘inexperiencia de sus valedores masculinos en el mercado editorial hispánico hace necesario … traspasar siempre la titularidad de la revista a un editor profesional que mantiene, no obstante, a las escritoras isabelinas en sus cargos directivos’ (the lack of experience of their male backers in the Hispanic publishing market, meant that it was necessary … to make over the ownership of the magazine to a professional editor who would nevertheless maintain the women authors of the Isabelline period in their directorship roles).38 Although further research into the managerial arrangements of magazines would enhance our understanding of how these complex business were run,39 it is evident that women carried out more professional work in the publishing industry than previously thought.

Managing subscriptions

The scale of the evolving enterprise certainly demanded energetic full-time leadership and organizational expertise, if only to manage the all-important subscriptions. In the early days of the magazine, in particular, this task would have fallen to Sáez, given that a secretary (first Enrique Doménech and then Juan de Molina) was only employed from issue 100 onwards. No official data documenting the circulation of women’s magazines in mid-nineteenthcentury Spain have been discovered so far,40 but as Espigado points out, at least one source exists that allows researchers to trace, at least partially, the geographical distribution of this kind of publication: the section dedicated to correspondence with subscribers.41 In La Violeta this correspondence was printed in the unnumbered pages of the publication; in the material available through the National Library of Spain the section appears for the first time in issue 97 (9 October 1864). From then on correspondence is included in most, but not all, of the numbers of the periodical. La Violeta used this section to publish short answers to queries from subscribers, a practice which probably allowed the editorial office to reduce the volume of their business correspondence. These answers provide a sense of a widespread community growing around the magazine.42 The addressees were identified by abbreviated title and initials, followed by the place of residence and a message, usually brief. Typically, the messages were of a practical nature, for example confirmation of payments received and length of individual subscriptions, information about re-delivery of lost issues or rectifications of misconceptions, such as when subscribers erroneously assumed that they had a right to one of the loyalty gifts offered by the periodical. The correspondence section provides us with a fascinating insight into the range and sheer scope of the magazine’s readership, although it only provides a partial snapshot since the team did not directly address any subscribers in 196



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Madrid or overseas. The fact that we do not know how many subscribers wrote to La Violeta means that it is impossible to ascertain the extent to which this snapshot is representative of the readership as a whole. The all but universal use of the titles Don and Doña paints a picture of middle-class respectability, while the unusually haphazard proof-reading of the section, with inconsistent use of initials and abbreviations, produces an additional layer of ambiguity. Nevertheless, the data allow us to establish the lowest possible number of different people with whom the editorial office corresponded at some point between December 1862 and December 1866: a minimum of 720 subscribers living in at least 320 different locations outside Madrid. A few, such as Sres. H. de F. and D.J.P. in Seville, were official correspondents of La Violeta; these were middlemen, often booksellers, who managed several clients, but there were also individuals who shared a subscription or convinced their friends to take the magazine too. Doña M.B. de J. from Tortosa, for example, received ‘mil gracias por las suscripciones que nos ha proporcionado de sus amigas’ (very many thanks for the subscriptions you have passed on from your female friends).43 Arguably the most fascinating aspects of the material relate to the geographical spread of the magazine. The nature of the correspondence section draws attention to the statistically more unlikely readers, those who lived at the periphery of the literate world but nevertheless participated in the literary culture of their time. In almost two-thirds of the locations mentioned in the correspondence only one person was contacted, and the section seems to have been particularly important for isolated subscribers in rural areas of the Iberian peninsula with limited access to the official middlemen. That they could be reached at all shows that La Violeta had penetrated the market to a considerable degree, serving customers not only in urban centres such as Cadiz, Seville, Valencia, Barcelona or A Coruña but also in the rural district of Sierra de Gata in Extremadura, to give just one striking example. The periodical was sent from Madrid to Galicia as well as Gibraltar and Ceuta, to the Catalan Pyrenees as well as the Balearic and Canary Islands, despite a very problematic infrastructure. The unreliability of the postal service was a recurrent complaint in the correspondence, with the editorial office insisting that all issues were dispatched with due care and attributing any irregularities to the mail. The bitterness that often shines through these explanations highlights the seriousness of the problem for a business that staked its reputation, and indeed depended for its survival, on a reliable and punctual service to a widespread net of customers. In a country with a large surface area, thin population density and rough, mountainous landscapes the creation of an efficient infrastructure represented a formidable challenge. Despite the first railway boom, which produced a total of 2,750 km of tracks before leading to the financial crisis of 1866,44 the situation would only significantly improve 197



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thanks to the further extension of the railways from 1872 onwards and the development of the road network between 1890 and 1910.45 Notwithstanding earlier measures that furthered the distribution of the press, such as special postal tariffs for printed products,46 the formation of a national market proved to be a slow and difficult process. Transportation was not the only problem. A business such as La Violeta also needed an efficient way to make payments and to collect subscriptions from its customers outside Madrid.47 Readers in the provinces could settle their bills through the magazine’s official correspondents or use the payment orders provided through the Spanish Treasury and facilitated by the postal services.48 The giro mutuo (mutual transfer) allowed people to transfer amounts of 4 to 600 reales between authorized points of the network, with the Treasury receiving a fee of 2 per cent.49 Readers were instructed that if they wished to use other payment orders they should be easy to cash in. As a last resort the magazine also accepted stamps but warned their subscribers that they should be sent by registered mail only.50 However, this payment infrastructure was not strong enough to weather the financial crisis which engulfed debt-ridden Spain in 1866 after the burst of the railway bubble.51 The editorial office had to dispense with the services of several correspondents because they failed to settle their obligations with the business. As a consequence, those subscribers in the provinces who had previously relied on middlemen had to undertake the paperwork for their subscriptions themselves.52 Furthermore, the giro mutuo was affected by the crisis of fiduciary circulation. In March 1866, rumours were already circulating about the Treasury’s inability to promptly serve the money orders.53 Later in the year, transfers to the capital below a threshold of 100 reales were suspended. Apparently, small transactions through the giro mutuo had been used as a creative way of getting rid of banknotes and acquiring coins, contributing to the decrease of banknote circulation in Madrid.54 While recognizing the dangers created by speculation, newspapers like La Época (The epoch) warned of the dire consequences for the public of suspending smaller transfers, and pressed for a different solution to the problem, whereas the reactionary La Esperanza (The hope) defended the measure, predicting its quick success and therefore expecting its imminent cancellation.55 As with other newspapers, however, La Esperanza had to find alternative channels to receive payments from its readers, thus effectively confirming that the press was hard hit by the suspension of smaller transfers. After a stabilization of the price of banknotes, business as usual resumed toward the middle of October.56 In the case of La Violeta the measure meant that readers could not settle subscriptions of less than a year’s duration, which is why the editorial office had to take the initiative and send out demand bills (‘girar letras contra los abonados’) to all readers whose shorter-term subscriptions had expired.57 198



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Although this instrument had been used previously, especially during the early days of the publication, the magazine had always emphasized the extra costs associated with this form of payment; therefore, it tended to use it in a much more targeted way. Furthermore, demand bills could not be served in all locations.58 In an already difficult economic environment in which many readers must have reconsidered their commitment to the magazine, any additional obstacles would have significantly increased the threat to the viability of the business. The editorial office tried to stem the tide by offering a discount for all those who subscribed in December for a whole year to the magazine, paying the full amount in advance, that is to say either paying directly or covering any commissions that might be applicable to their preferred form of payment.59 The discount was presented as a special gesture toward those longterm readers who had already collected every loyalty gift on offer. We do not know how many readers took up this opportunity, only that there were not enough of them. On 11 January 1867, the end of La Violeta was announced in the Diario Oficial de Avisos de Madrid (Madrid official gazette), which also informed readers that pending subscriptions would be transferred to El Correo de la Moda. Sáez herself would later attribute the demise of the magazine to the revocation of its status as officially accredited school material.60

Building a transnational market and strategic networking

For all the intrinsic interest of the correspondence section, it is essential not to lose sight of the transnational dimensions of Sáez’s entrepreneurial initiatives. This was all the more important for the business because the volatile economic context in Spain made diversification very prudent. The most evident link leads to Paris, the nineteenth-century capital of Western fashion for women. La Violeta was a publication that prided itself on bringing to its readers reliable information on the most recent sartorial developments, and, in order to be able to compete, it had to source high-quality fashion plates directly from a renowned Parisian provider.61 Attempts to establish close connections to other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, however, are more easily missed, despite the constant reminder of the subscription costs overseas. The printed product itself preserves only faint traces of these overseas links, mostly hidden in the advertisements for booksellers and the occasional mention of an American distributor. Thus we know that La Violeta worked with an agent in Gualeguaychú in Entre Ríos, Argentina, because the editorial office distanced itself from his services for failing to pay for a considerable number of subscriptions.62 Readers were advised to use instead the services of the bookshop Medina Hermanos (Medina Brothers) in Buenos Aires. Intriguingly, the owners of the bookshop Ambos Mundos (Both Worlds) in Madrid were also called Medina Hermanos. They were the most regular 199



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advertisers in La Violeta. And there are more hints pointing toward the existence of a strong, transatlantic network in the book market that may have facilitated the wider circulation of La Violeta. For example, the magazine was available in Antonio Pérez Dubrull’s bookshop and printing house in Madrid while Juan Pérez Dubrull acted as a correspondent for the magazine from his bookshop in Santiago de Cuba.63 Unfortunately, many aspects of this professional infrastructure that facilitated the circulation of ideas are still unknown today.64 A conscious effort to reach out to Latin America is also reflected in the contributions to the magazine. As with the advertisements and miscellaneous information, they are often the only tangible traces of the network that made Sáez’s enterprise possible in the first place. However, this indirect information has to be approached with caution, given that it was standard practice to appropriate content from other periodicals without acknowledgement.65 According to the indices, there are around 130 different signatures in the magazine, about 80 male, 40 female and 10 that do not indicate a gender. The diversity was greatest in the second year of the publication, with around 60 different signatures. By far the biggest group (over fifty) contributed only one piece, whereas the number of regular writers was relatively small. They were led by La Violeta’s main fashion columnist, Joaquina de Carnicero (present in 127 issues); the prolific Ángel Leandro Herrero, with signed pieces in 130 issues; and the poet and novelist Rogelia León from Granada, whose signature appears 154 times in the magazine. Sáez herself signed contributions in only 67 issues, but her works dominated the serialized novels distributed with La Violeta as well as the loyalty gifts for subscribers and the special offers that could be purchased at the editorial office. At first glance, American participation is disappointingly small. A closer look, however, reveals conscious efforts to foster the transatlantic dimension. Thus, the story ‘El guante negro’ (The black glove) by Argentine author Juana Manuela Gorriti opens five issues of La Violeta.66 Its publication was preceded by a presentation of the author by Colombian writer, journalist and diplomat José María Torres Caicedo, editor-in-chief of the influential El Correo de Ultramar (The overseas post) (Paris, 1842–86), where the piece had been published previously in 1863.67 We do not know what prompted the reprint but it is likely that it was the result of active collaboration rather than an act of appropriation, given that Sáez’s professional relationship with El Correo de Ultramar would survive well beyond the demise of her first magazine. In 1867, she claimed that the Parisian publication had serialized La pastora del Guadiela. We know that it did publish the novel’s sequel La marquesa de Pinares (The marchioness of Pinares) in the same year.68 Sáez would continue to work with the Parisian magazine until late in her life, for instance contributing society columns from Madrid while Mercedes Cabello de 200



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Carbonera reported from Lima.69 This development throws a different light on the decision to publish Gorriti following Caicedo’s lead: not only did it help La Violeta build American credentials through the publication of relevant content, but it also strengthened and expanded Sáez’s professional network, thanks to the collaboration with Torres Caicedo and El Correo de Ultramar. Sáez never travelled overseas herself. Instead, she made the most of her connections in Paris and nurtured contacts with Latin American travellers or expatriates. Unfortunately, we do not have access to letters or personal papers documenting how these relationships unfolded, hence the importance of the occasional hints in her publication that point toward the strategic networking going on behind the scenes. An excellent example are the passing references to the Venezuelan lawyer and writer Ricardo Ovidio Limardo, one of the many Latin American professionals living for long periods in Paris. He was introduced to the readers of La Violeta in September 1865 on the occasion of a brief stay in Madrid: the miscellaneous section informed readers of his travelling plans, his excellent intellectual reputation and professional contacts, for instance with the important French publishing house Hachette, but also with Spanish intellectual and professional circles.70 The note ends with the hope that Limardo would not forget the welcome received on that, and another earlier occasion. In the following issue readers learned that Limardo had bought the rights to translate Sáez’s works into French, starting with La marquesa de Pinares.71 Five issues later, a poem by Limardo’s nephew José María Pérez Limardo appeared in the magazine, introduced by a very flattering note about the young writer.72 Not long before it folded, La Violeta celebrated Ricardo Ovidio Limardo’s admission as corresponsal extranjero (corresponding foreign member) to the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy), pointing out that he was the third Venezuelan whose achievements were thus recognized.73 The links to Venezuela seem to have been particularly important for La Violeta. There are very few contributions by identifiably Latin American authors and, with the exception of Torres Caicedo and Gorriti, all of them are linked to Caracas. Interestingly, the brief introduction accompanying a poem by Juan Vicente Mendible points toward a direct relation, since it mentions explicitly that ‘Recuerdos de mi madre’ (Memories of my mother) was sent by the poet himself from Caracas to the magazine. The editors use the opportunity to thank ‘las ilustradas hijas de aquella república que, con tanta bondad reciben nuestro semanario’ (the enlightened daughters of that Republic, who with so much goodness receive our weekly); this is one of the rare explicit indications that La Violeta did indeed circulate on the other side of the Atlantic.74 On the other hand, the essay ‘El matrimonio’ (On marriage) by military man, diplomat and writer Jacinto Regino Pachano, dated Caracas 1863, is more likely to be an appropriated text.75 201



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From a business point of view, perhaps the most relevant Venezuelan contributor was Evaristo Fombona, another distinguished American friend whose journey to Spain in 1865 led to the publication of five short, moralizing essays in the pages of La Violeta.76 Incidentally, this series of articles illustrates once more the transnational formation of the discourse centring on women and domesticity in the nineteenth century.77 The works by Fombona in the catalogue of the National Library of Venezuela suggest that the writer shared Sáez’s interest in education, but more importantly, he was the director of the newspaper La Concordia (The harmony) (1866–) and its printing press, the Imprenta de ‘La Concordia’ in Caracas. As in the case of Torres Caicedo with El Correo de Ultramar, Sáez had thus featured a fellow editor in the pages of her magazine, building a strategic alliance that opened new horizons for her work, this time in the form of society columns from Madrid that were published in both La Violeta and La Concordia.78 There is some evidence of the impact of such connections. We know for instance that two essays from La Violeta were reproduced in the Peruvian magazine La Bella Limeña (The beautiful woman from Lima) in 1872.79 The fact that Sáez’s novel La bendición paterna (A father’s blessing) was published in the Philippine publication series Biblioteca del ‘Diario de Manila’ (The library of the ‘Manila Daily’), as a gift to the subscribers of the newspaper, reminds us of the possibility that she had links with the other side of the Pacific, too.80 In this context the presence of a contribution by Francisco de Paula Entrala in La Violeta is highly relevant,81 given that the author would become an active participant in the Spanish-language culture of the Philippines (apparently with strong links to the press and the theatre), eventually describing himself as aplatanado (somebody who has ‘gone native’).82 This connection may have been reinforced thanks to Valentín Melgar’s later career as a colonial civil servant, with destinations in the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico (1878–93).83 The painstaking search for printed references to personal connections illustrates the difficulty of tracing the networks that shaped the professional activities of a cultural entrepreneur like Sáez. In a society in almost constant political reconfiguration, many contacts were established and nurtured in the semi-private spaces of sociability. These were the places where the not so clearly delimited private and public spheres overlapped and significant contacts were established.84 Many were open to men only but private tertulias (regular meetings for the purpose of conversation), receptions or the theatre allowed men and women of letters to mix.85 Sáez frequented, for instance, the Liceo Piquer (Piquer Licaeum). Founded by the sculptor José Piquer,86 this private theatre became a recognized meeting place for artists, actors and writers; it was particularly welcoming to women and thus a major node in their networks.87 The very nature of these meetings means that they are 202



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difficult to document. Thus, guest lists, programmes and gossip acquire a new significance because they allow us to peep into intimate salons and illuminated ballrooms in the hope of recognizing some of the guests and understanding their relationships with each other – a position not dissimilar to that of the provincial readers who followed the society columns about life in Madrid in La Violeta. The section about social events in the Spanish capital clearly demonstrates that Sáez and her team enjoyed excellent access to relevant celebrations, even if some of the descriptions of aristocratic balls and receptions may have been copied from other press sources. Although ideologically speaking the coverage of some events may come across as ‘servil fascinación ante el boato de las fiestas aristocráticas’ (servile fascination with the pomp of the aristocracy),88 they also testify to the full extent of Sáez’s social connections, which effectively bridged the whole spectrum of society, from the upper echelons to young, obscure writers or a marginalized utopian socialist like María Josefa Zapata. The emphasis Sáez gives to certain people and institutions throws a light on her more personal network and allegiances. Her frequent contact with Joaquina Balmaseda, actress, director of the literary feuilleton in La Correspondencia (The correspondence) and later director of El Correo de la Moda, shows her proximity to another of the great facilitators in Spanish literary culture,89 whereas Pilar Sinués de Marco is conspicuous by her (almost complete) absence. Particularly noteworthy is an apparently long-standing acquaintance with the notorious anti-clerical writer Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco, another example of an author who went into publishing and became a cultural entrepreneur in the process.

Cultural making90

Although La Violeta folded in December 1866, Sáez’s career as a writer and cultural entrepreneur did not end at that point. She started several other publication projects, first from Madrid and later from Paris, where she moved before October 1880 in order to further her daughter Gloria’s professional education as well as her own prospects.91 Her activities included not only the launch of new periodicals, among them a second period of La Violeta (apparently starting in 1884 in Paris),92 but also a collaboration with the Catalan editor Juan Pons on the costumbrista collection Las españolas, americanas y lusitanas pintadas por sí mismas (Spanish, American and Portuguese women, painted by themselves). Significantly, the editors approached Sáez with the idea because she was considered an ideal person to organize this vast project. In its course, she personally contacted 92 women writers and published advertisements in Portuguese and Latin American periodicals calling for contributions.93 203



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Sáez’s drive and organizational talent likewise came to the fore in her attempts at improving women’s education, for instance as the president and founder of the first Ateneo de Señoras (Ladies’ Athenaeum) in Madrid in December 1868. While the ideological foundations of the initiative have been discussed by scholars,94 much less has been said about the sheer organizational prowess required to establish a new educational institution in then-revolutionary Spain. Once more, Sáez showed her skills by bringing together a dedicated team that, during the first half of 1869, organized memberships, classes and seminars, rooms, exams, prizes, book donations for a dedicated library as well as the accounts of the association.95 The Piquer family obliged by offering the use of their private theatre, while Sáez’s acquaintance with the Duquesa de la Torre helped with funding and securing classrooms.96 Although that initiative was short-lived, Sáez would build on this experience around 1885, when she founded with a group of Latin American women simultaneously in France and Spain a school of applied arts for young women.97 While Sáez never stopped being a reader and writer, she would not have prospered in the literary sector without deploying skills that are taught today on Masters programmes in cultural entrepreneurship, rather than in creative writing classes. She certainly had the necessary determination to succeed, a knack for creating opportunities and the willingness to take risks, together with formidable networking and organizational skills. Her writing was the starting point of a life in cultural entrepreneurship but her intervention in society can only be partially understood through the lens of the texts that she wrote during her lifetime. The move away from the study of the finished cultural products and toward the complex processes of cultural making allows us to appreciate the impact of what we can – with hindsight – call the moderate feminism of nineteenth-century Spain. Close readings of selected texts help us see the inherent ideological contradiction of women who publicly endorsed domestic virtues, although the juxtaposition of texts with differing worldviews in periodical publications already introduced fissures into any attempt to establish a monolithic discourse.98 The focus on practices reveals a fuller picture of Sáez’s contribution to the cultural imaginary. From the title page of each issue of La Violeta, the proud owner and director of the magazine signalled to her many readers across the Spanish-speaking world that it was possible, at least for white middle-class women, to ‘have it all’, that is to create and sustain a professional career in the literary sector without directly confronting their environment. Sáez was not very subversive or revolutionary in her writing but that does not mean that she did not broaden the boundaries of women’s agency in nineteenth-century Spain.

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Notes

  1 This chapter was written in the context of the research project Prácticas culturales y esfera pública: editoras españolas y latinamericanas contemporáneas. Some of the ideas were previously discussed in Henriette Partzsch, ‘Mujeres de letras y de negocios. Faustina Sáez de Melgar y el mercado de las revistas de modas isabelinas’, Ínsula 841–2, special issue: Por ser mujer y autora …, ed. Pura Fernández (January–February 2017), 8–12.  2 María del Carmen Simón Palmer, Escritoras españolas del siglo XIX: Manual biobibliográfico (Madrid: Castalia, 1991).  3 For a recent account, see Cecilio Alonso, ‘La imprenta y la edición’ and ‘La emancipación del escritor’, Historia de la literatura española, vol. 5: Hacia una literatura nacional, 1800–1900, ed. José-Carlos Mainer (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010), 61–81 and 83–104.  4 Jo Labanyi, ‘Doing Things: Emotion, Affect, and Materiality’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 11 (2010), 229.  5 Henriette Partzsch, ‘Autorschaft auf Raten: Gender, Öffentlichkeit und Presse im Spanien des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel von Faustina Sáez de Melgar’, in Strategien von Autorschaft in der Romania: Zur Neukonzipierung einer Kategorie im Rahmen literature-,kultur- und medienwissenschaftlich basierter Geschlechtertheorie, ed. Claudia Grohnemann, Tanja Schwan and Cornelia Sieber (Tübingen: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012), 55–56.  6 For a recent overview of Sáez’s life, see Carlos Dorado, ‘Faustina Sáez de Melgar: Liberación sin rupturas’, Arbor 190:767 (2014): http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/ arbor.2014.767n3006 (accessed 5 March 2017). Solange Hibbs provides insights into her activities as a translator: ‘Faustina Sáez de Melgar (1834–95): Una escritora y traductora fronteriza entre sombras y luces’, in Autores traductores en la España del siglo XIX, ed. Francisco Lafarga and Luis Pegenaute (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2016), 345–58.  7 For a recent discussion of digitizing initiatives and their consequences in the Spanish-speaking context see Amelia Sanz, ‘Lentes electrónicas sobre la prensa española del siglo XIX: En busca de escritoras que vienen de Francia’, in Redes de comunicación: Estudios sobre la prensa en el mundo hispanohablante, ed. Yvette Bürki and Henriette Partzsch (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 351–79. For the British context, see James Mussell, ‘Digitization’, in The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers, ed. Andrew King, Alexis Easley and John Morton (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 17–28.  8 These are the intended learning outcomes of the MA in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths College, University of London: www.gold.ac.uk/ pg/ma-creative-cultural-entrepreneurship/ (accessed 29 March 2017).  9 For a technical description of the magazine, see Carmen Díaz de Alda Heikkilä, ‘Análisis de la revista decimonónica La Violeta’, Arbor 190:770 (2014): http:// dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2014.770n6014 (accessed 24 March 2017). The interpretation of the data often relies on hypotheses already present in previous studies,

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especially Íñigo Sánchez Llama, Galería de escritoras isabelinas: La prensa periódica entre 1833 y 1895 (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000), 164–209. Subsequent references to specific issues of the magazine provide issue number and date. Page numbers are included for all issues that were paginated. 10 Women writers’ networks in the Spanish-speaking world have been attracting increasing interest, see for instance Pura Fernández (ed.), No hay nación para este sexo. La Re(d)pública transatlántica de las Letras: Escritoras españolas y latinoamericanas (1824–1936) (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2015) and Judith Rideout, ‘Woman Writers’ Networks in Spanish Magazines around 1900’ (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2017): http://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/7859. 11 Virginia Seguí Collar, ‘La Salina de Carcavallana en la literatura’, in Virginia Segú Collar and others, Historia de la Salina de Carcavallana en Villamanrique de Tajo (Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Villamanrique de Tajo and Comunidad de Madrid, 2015), 257–7. 12 Simón Palmer, Escritoras españolas, 607. 13 Virginia Seguí Collar, ‘Doña Faustina Sáez de Melgar y Villamanrique. En memoria de una mujer que se forjó a sí misma’, Fernando Cana. Blog de historia (2008): http://fernandocana.es/faustina-saez/ (accessed 4 November 2016). 14 Virginia Seguí Collar, Gloria Melgar Sáez (1859–1938) (Madrid: Ediciones del Orto/Biblioteca de Mujeres, 2002), 12. 15 Flores y abejas 6:230 (22 January 1899). 16 Diario de Córdoba, 24 January 1899. 17 This often repeated assertion seems to stem from María del Carmen Simón Palmer, Revistas femeninas madrileñas (Madrid: Ayuntamiento; CSIC, 1993), 8. 18 See María del Carmen Simón Palmer’s research into manuscripts held at the Real Biblioteca. ‘En busca del mecenazgo real: Autoras románticas y Palacio’, Anales de Literatura Española 23 (2011), 289–308. 19 Faustina Sáez de Melgar, La lira del Tajo (Madrid: Imprenta de Bernabé Fernández, 1859), 108–11, 133, 146–9. 20 See the list of subscribers in Sáez de Melgar, La lira del Tajo, 181–4. 21 Elisa Martí-López, ‘Historia literaria y análisis cuantitativo: Ediciones, éxitos de venta y novela en España, 1840–1900’, Bulletin Hispanique 103 (2001), 681; Araceli Tinajero, ‘El Siglo, La Aurora y la lectura en voz alta en Cuba 1865–1868’, Revista Iberoamericana 72:214 (2006), 175. Tinajero does not include an exact date for the publication of Sáez’s novel in the Cuban newspaper. According to Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, La pastora del Guadiela was already published in 1858. See ‘Doña Faustina Sáez de Melgar’, La Violeta 199 (16 October 1866), 298. The novel could still be purchased in the 1880s at the offices of the daily newspaper La Iberia as well as in select bookshops, together with other works by Sáez. See for instance La Iberia 33:9815 (19 November 1886), 4. 22 Faustina Sáez de Melgar, ‘A “La Igualdad ”’, in Antología de la prensa periódica isabelina escrita por mujeres (1843–1894), ed. Íñigo Sánchez Llama (Cadiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 2001), 158–9. 23 For a general overview see Gloria Espigado, ‘Women and Publishing in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, in Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century

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Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, ed. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig and Alastair Owens (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 96–109. 24 Jean-François Botrel, ‘Estadística de la prensa madrileña de 1858 a 1909, según el Registro de Contribución Industrial’, in Prensa y sociedad en España (1820–1936), ed. Manuel Tuñón de Lara, Antonio Elorza and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1975), 37. For a discussion of statistical sources about Spanish nineteenth-century press see José-Vidal Pelaz López, ‘Registradores, recaudadores y notarios. Fuentes para la historia de la empresa periodística en España’, Investigaciones Históricas: Época Moderna y Contemporánea 20 (2000), 169–82. 25 This point has already been made by Inmaculada Jiménez Morell in her seminal study La prensa femenina en España (desde sus orígenes a 1868) (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1992), 20–1. For a nuanced analysis of the distribution of literacy skills in Spanish society, see Manuel Santirso, España en la Europa liberal (1830–1879) (Barcelona: Ariel, 2012), 300–3. 26 Juan Francisco Fuentes, ‘El público del libro y la prensa (1808–1868)’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España, 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes, François López and Jean-François Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 728. In 1864, a one-month subscription to the weekly La Violeta in Madrid costed 8 reales, three months 23 reales, six months 44 reales and a whole year 88 reales, while readers in the provinces were charged 9, 27, 52 and 100 reales. The prices for readers abroad were differentiated, too. Subscribers in Portugal paid 34 reales for three months, 66 for six and 130 for a full year; readers in any other European country 40, 80 and 160 reales. See La Violeta 67 (13 March 1864). 27 Josep Francesc Valls, Prensa y burguesía en el XIX español (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988), 168. 28 See La Discusión, 12 and 23 December, 1862, 3; Diario de Córdoba, 27 November, 1862, 4; La Correspondencia de España, 9 and 27 December, 1862, 4; La Época, 8 December, 1862, 4; Diario Oficial de Avisos de Madrid, 9 December, 1862, 4; La España, 22 October and 9 December, 1862, 4. The earlier note published in La España mentions Emilia Serrano de Wilson as co-director of La Violeta; however, the name of the famous writer and traveller did not appear in the magazine. 29 Annemarie Kleinert, Die frühen Modejournale in Frankreich: Studien zur Literatur der Mode von den Anfängen bis 1848 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1980). 30 See also Partzsch, ‘Autorschaft auf Raten’. 31 Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca, ‘La mujer en el discurso legal del liberalismo español’, in La mujer en los discursos de género: Textos y contextos en el siglo XIX, ed. Christine Jagoe, Alda Blanco and Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca (Barcelona: Icaria, 1998), 245. 32 An essential reference in this context is Martha Woodmansee, The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 33 The relevant Real decreto sobre propiedad literaria was published in the Gaceta de Madrid (15 June 1847), 1–2, available online in the digital archive of the Boletín Oficial del Estado: www.boe.es/buscar/gazeta.php. For an overview of the regulations concerning intellectual property see Raquel Sánchez, ‘La propiedad

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intelectual en la España contemporánea, 1847–1936’, Hispania 62:212 (2002), 993–1019. 34 Enríquez de Salamanca, ‘Discurso legal’, 239–46. 35 The details of the legislation can be found in the famous Ley de imprenta presented by Cándido Nocedal (Gaceta de Madrid, 14 July 1857, 1–2). For a brief summary see María Cruz Seoane, Historia del periodismo en España, vol. 2: El siglo XIX (Madrid: Alianza, 1983), 242–4. 36 Jiménez Morell, Prensa femenina. For a discussions of the arrangements between Ángela Grassi, her brother Carlos Grassi and the Correo de la Moda, see María del Carmen Simón Palmer, ‘La mujer en el mundo editorial español’, in Escribir en España entre 1840 y 1876, ed. Marie-Linda Ortega (Madrid: Visor, 2002), 44. 37 This fact is also mentioned in Díaz de Alda Heikkilä, ‘Análisis’. 38 Sánchez Llama, Galería, 166. 39 For ongoing research on this aspect, see the ERC project Agents of Change: Women Editors and Socio-Cultural Transformation in Europe, 1710–1920, led by Marianne Van Remoortel: www.wechanged.ugent.be/. 40 Simón Palmer, ‘Mundo editorial’, 46. 41 Gloria Espigado, ‘Editoras de prensa en España a mediados del siglo XIX: El caso de las fourieristas’, in Redes y espacios de opinión pública: De la Ilustración al Romanticismo: Cádiz, América y Europa ante la Modernidad, 1750–1850, ed. Marieta Cantos Casenave (Cadiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 2006), 365. 42 See Henriette Partzsch, ‘Connecting People, Inventing Communities: Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta between National(ist) Ideologies and International Allegiances’, in Women Telling Nations, ed. Suzan van Dijk, Amelia Sanz and Francesca Scott (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), 353–67. 43 La Violeta, 166 (8 February 1866). 44 Santirso, España en la Europa liberal, 255. 45 Jean-François Botrel, ‘La difusión del libro’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes de Miguel, François Lopez and JeanFrançois Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 613. 46 Botrel, ‘La difusión del libro’. See also Francisco Fuentes, ‘El público del libro’, 730–1. 47 Pelaz López, ‘Registradores’, 177–8. 48 La Violeta 12 (22 February 1863), 2. 49 ‘Real decreto rebajando el premio de las cantidades que se giren por Correos’, Gaceta de Madrid 1118 (26 January 1856), 1 (reference BOE-A-1856–967). 50 La Violeta 146 (17 September 1865). 51 For a classic account of the crisis see Gabriel Tortella-Casares, Banking, Railroads, and Industry in Spain 1829–1874 (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 420–505. 52 La Violeta 189 (30 July 1866). 53 See for instance La Discusión, 28 March 1866. 54 See Tortella, Banking, 470. 55 La Época, 1 September 1866, 2 (quoting El Pensamiento) and La Esperanza, 3 September 1866, 2. 56 See for instance the note to its readers in Gil Blas, 25 October 1866.

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57 La Violeta 195 and 197 (16 and 30 September 1866). 58 In June 1865 this form of payment was not available for readers in Alcoy, Arévalo, Belmonte, Borquiñeni, Checa, Castrejón, Carral, Echauri, Enguera, Hellín, Lisbon, Las Cabezas de San Juan, Lumpiaque, Orihuela, Puentedeume, Peñafiel, Quiroga, Rivadavia and Villanueva del Ariscal. See La Violeta 133 (18 June 1865). 59 La Violeta 206 (8 December 1866). 60 Partzsch, ‘Mujeres de letras’, 10. 61 For a discussion about how different fashion magazines in the 1860s used almost identical fashion plates for different purposes, see Henriette Partzsch, ‘“Venid, elegantes”: Seducción, información y control en las crónicas de modas españolas durante los años 1860’, in Redes de comunicación: Estudios sobre la prensa en el mundo hispanohablante, ed. Yvette Bürki and Henriette Partzsch (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 281–303. 62 La Violeta 89 (14 August 1864). 63 La Violeta 166 (8 February 1866). 64 This under-researched area is addressed in the recent project Editores y Editoriales Iberoamericanos (siglos XIX–XXI) – EDI-RED, led by Pura Fernández. See www. cervantesvirtual.com/portales/editores_editoriales_iberoamericanos/. 65 On the challenge of reconstructing the networks centring around periodical publications, see Rideout, Woman Writers, 22–6. 66 La Violeta 165, 166, 167, 169 and 170 (1866). The same story had been published in El Correo de Ultramar 22:561 and 562 (1863). 67 El Correo de Ultramar 22:561 (1863); La Violeta 160 and 161 (1865). On Torres Caicedo, see Emilio Carrilla, ‘José María Torres Caicedo, “descubridor” de la literatura argentina’, Thesaurus 44:2 (1989), 334–68. 68 Sáez mentions the publication in El Correo de Ultramar in the prologue to the fourth book edition of La pastora (Seville: Imprenta La Andalucía, 1867), 2. The last instalment of La marquesa de Pinares was published in El Correo de Ultramar 26:746 (1867). 69 Mónica Cárdenas, ‘Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera y Faustina Sáez de Melgar en la prensa francesa decimonónica: El Correo de Ultramar y El Correo de París como espacio de encuentro transatlántico’, paper presented at the international symposium Por ser mujer y autora … Redes culturales de escritoras españolas y latinoamericanas (1824–1936) (Madrid, 23–25 November 2015). 70 La Violeta 144 (3 September 1865). The connection has been established through Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, who occasionally contributed to La Violeta and actively supported Sáez, as evidenced by his bibliographical article about her in La Violeta 199 (16 October 1866). A letter by Limardo to Hartzenbusch written in Madrid and dated 28 March 1866 is preserved at the Biblioteca Nacional (MSS/20807/344). Susan Kirkpatrick discusses how Hartzenbusch acted as a mentor to Carolina Coronado and Fernán Caballero: Las románticas. Women Writers and Subjectivity in Spain, 1835–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), passim. 71 La Violeta 145 (10 September 1865). I have found no evidence that these ­translations were published.

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72 La Violeta 149 (8 October 1865). 73 La Violeta 198 (8 October 1866). 74 La Violeta 151 (22 October 1865). 75 La Violeta 196 (24 September 1866). 76 ‘La mujer’, La Violeta 143 (27 August 1865); ‘La vanidad’, La Violeta 144 (3 September 1865); ‘Madre’, La Violeta 147 (24 September 1865); ‘Maternidad’, La Violeta 149 (8 October 1865); ‘El amor conyugal’, La Violeta 150 (15 October 1865). These were followed by ‘Autoridad paternal’ in La Violeta 190 (8 August 1866). 77 See Henriette Partzsch, ‘The Complex Routes of Travelling Texts: Fredrika Bremer’s Reception in Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Transnational Dimension of Literary History’, Comparative Critical Studies 11 (2014), 281–93. 78 Footnote in La Violeta 199 (16 October 1866). 79 Esther Castañeda Vielakamen and Elizabeth Toguchi Kayo, ‘Las románticas en un semanario del siglo XIX. La Bella Limeña (1872)’, Revista Historia de las Mujeres 4:41 (2003), footnote 3: www.cemhal.org/publicaciones1f.html (accessed 17 March 2017). 80 Faustina Sáez de Melgar, La bendición paterna. Novela original (Manila: TipoLitografía de Ramírez y Giraudier [no date]). Reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library. 81 Francisco de Paula Entrala, ‘El esclavo de oro’, La Violeta 181 and 182 (30 May and 8 June 1866). 82 Francisco de Paula Entrala, Olvidos de Filipinas: Fraterna / que al autor de los libros recuerdos de Filipinas y las islas Filipinas Sr. D. Francisco Cañama dirije su humilde hermano en letras Francisco de P. Entrala (español aplatanado) (Manila: Ramírez y Giraudier, 1881). This information is provided in the catalogue entry of the HATHI Trust. 83 Seguí Collar, ‘Doña Faustina Sáez de Melgar’. 84 For some reflections about blurred boundaries with reference to gender, see Raúl Mínguez Blasco, Evas, Marías y Magdalenas. Género y modernidad católica en la España liberal (1833–1874) (Madrid: Asociación de Historia Contemporánea/ Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2016), 61–4. On women and citizenship, see Gloria Espigado, ‘Las mujeres en el nuevo marco político’, in Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina, ed. Isabel Morant, vol. 3: Del siglo XIX a los umbrales del XX, ed. Guadalupe Gómez-Ferrer et al. (Madrid: Cátedra, 2006), 27–60. 85 On the institution of the tertulia, see Andreas Gelz, Tertulia: Literatur und  Soziabilität im Spanien des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2006). 86 Ana María Freire, Literatura y sociedad. Los teatros en casas de particulares en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Ayuntamiento, 1996), 13–16. 87 Ana I. Simón Alegre, ‘Diez cartas y una escritora. Concepción Gimeno’, XIV Premio de Investigación SIEM, Universidad de Zaragoza: wzar.unizar.es/ AnaSimonConcepcionGimenoXIVPremioSIEMB (accessed 5 April 2017). 88 Sánchez Llama, Galería, 194.

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89 Dolores Thion Soriano-Mollá, ‘Joaquina García Balmaseda: Una escritora isabelina al servicio de la mujer’, Anales 23 (2011), 381–403. 90 I borrow the term from Joel Gehman and Jean-François Soublière, ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship: From Making Culture to Cultural Making’, Innovation: Organization and Management 19:1 (2017), 61–73. 91 Seguí Collar, Gloria Melgar Sáez, 22–3. 92 A digitized copy of the first issue is available through the National Library of France: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb328902264/date (accessed 24 March 2017). Interestingly, the correspondence section of the issue seems to suggest that Sáez had developed a side-line in facilitating Spaniards to shop in Paris. 93 Virginia Seguí Collar, ‘Análisis de la tipología femenina a través del costumbrismo III’: https://seguicollar.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/analisis-de-la-tipologia-feme​ nina-a-traves-del-costumbrismo-iii/, and ‘Análisis de la tipología femenina a través del costumbrismo IV’: https://seguicollar.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/ analisis-de-la-tipologia-femenina-a-traves-del-costumbrismo-iv/ (accessed 24 March 2017). Only the first volume of the collection was published in 1881. 94 Sánchez Llama, Galería, 195. 95 Faustina Sáez de Melgar, Memoria del Ateneo de Señoras, leída en junta general celebrada el día 27 de junio de 1869 (Madrid: Imprenta de los señores Rojas, 1869). My thanks go to Virginia Seguí Collar, who gave me a copy of the brochure. 96 The name of the duchess was also mentioned in the context of Sáez’s anti-slavery initiative, although any involvement by this leading aristocrat was quickly disclaimed. See Henriette Partzsch, ‘Violets and Abolition: The Discourse on Slavery in Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta (Madrid, 1862–66)’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 89 (2012), 859–75. 97 Seguí Collar, Gloria Melgar, 29–30. 98 Partzsch, ‘Violets and Abolition’, 861–2.

References

Agents of Change: Women Editors and Socio-Cultural Transformation in Europe, 1710– 1920, ERC project led by Marianne Van Remoortel: www.wechanged.ugent.be/ Alonso, Cecilio, ‘La imprenta y la edición’ and ‘La emancipación del escritor’, Historia de la literatura española, vol. 5: Hacia una literatura nacional, 1800–1900, ed. JoséCarlos Mainer (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010), 61–81, 83–104 Botrel, Jean-François, ‘Estadística de la prensa madrileña de 1858 a 1909, según el Registro de Contribución Industrial’, in Prensa y sociedad en España (1820–1936), ed. Manuel Tuñón de Lara, Antonio Elorza and Manuel Pérez Ledesma (Madrid: Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1975), 25–45 —, ‘La difusión del libro’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes de Miguel, François Lopez and Jean-François Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 609–18 Cárdenas, Mónica, ‘Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera y Faustina Sáez de Melgar en la prensa francesa decimonónica: El Correo de Ultramar y El Correo de París como espacio de encuentro transatlántico’, paper presented at the international

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symposium Por ser mujer y autora … Redes culturales de escritoras españolas y latinoamericanas (1824–1936) (Madrid, 23–25 November 2015) Carrilla, Emilio, ‘José María Torres Caicedo, “descubridor” de la literatura argentina’, Thesaurus 44:2 (1989), 334–68 Castañeda Vielakamen, Esther, and Elizabeth Toguchi Kayo, ‘Las románticas en un  semanario del siglo XIX. La Bella Limeña (1872)’, Revista Historia de las Mujeres  4:41 (2003): www.cemhal.org/publicaciones1f.html (accessed 17 March 2017) Cruz Seoane, María, Historia del periodismo en España, vol. 2: El siglo XIX (Madrid: Alianza, 1983) Díaz de Alda Heikkilä, Carmen, ‘Análisis de la revista decimonónica La Violeta’, Arbor 190:770 (2014): http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2014.770n6014 (accessed 24 March 2017) Dorado, Carlos, ‘Faustina Sáez de Melgar: Liberación sin rupturas’, Arbor 190:767 (2014): http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2014.767n3006 (accessed 5 March 2017) Editores y Editoriales Iberoamericanos (siglos XIX–XXI) – EDI-RED, project led by Pura Fernández: www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/editores_editoriales_iberoamericanos/ Enríquez de Salamanca, Cristina, ‘La mujer en el discurso legal del liberalismo español’, in La mujer en los discursos de género: Textos y contextos en el siglo XIX, ed. Christine Jagoe, Alda Blanco and Cristina Enríquez de Salamanca (Barcelona: Icaria, 1998), 219–52 Entrala, Francisco de Paula, ‘Francisco de Paula Entrala, Olvidos de Filipinas: Fraterna / que al autor de los libros recuerdos de Filipinas y las islas Filipinas Sr. D. Francisco Cañama dirije su humilde hermano en letras Francisco de P. Entrala (español aplatanado) (Manila: Ramírez y Giraudier, 1881) —, El esclavo de oro’, La Violeta 181 and 182 (30 May and 8 June 1866) Espigado, Gloria, ‘Editoras de prensa en España a mediados del siglo XIX: El caso de las fourieristas’, in Redes y espacios de opinión pública: De la Ilustración al Romanticismo: Cádiz, América y Europa ante la Modernidad, 1750–1850, ed. Marieta Cantos Casenave (Cadiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 2006), 359–70 —, ‘Las mujeres en el nuevo marco político’, in Historia de las mujeres en España y América Latina, ed. Isabel Morant, vol. 3: Del siglo XIX a los umbrales del XX, ed. Guadalupe Gómez-Ferrer et al. (Madrid: Cátedra, 2006), 27–60 —, ‘Women and Publishing in Nineteenth-Century Spain’, in Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, ed. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig and Alastair Owens (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006), 96–109 Fernández, Pura (ed.), No hay nación para este sexo. La Re(d)pública transatlántica de las Letras: Escritoras españolas y latinoamericanas (1824–1936) (Madrid and Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2015) Freire, Ana María, Literatura y sociedad. Los teatros en casas de particulares en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Ayuntamiento, 1996) Fuentes, Juan Francisco, ‘El público del libro y la prensa (1808–1868)’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España, 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes, François López

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and Jean-François Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 724–34 Gehman, Joel, and Jean-François Soublière, ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship: From Making Culture to Cultural Making’, Innovation: Organization and Management 19:1 (2017), 61–73 Gelz, Andreas, Tertulia: Literatur und Soziabilität im Spanien des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Vervuert, 2006) Hartzenbusch, Juan Eugenio, ‘Doña Faustina Sáez de Melgar’, La Violeta 199 (16 October 1866), 296–9 Hibbs, Solange, ‘Faustina Sáez de Melgar (1834–1895): Una escritora y traductora fronteriza entre sombras y luces’, in Autores traductores en la España del siglo XIX,  ed.  Francisco Lafarga and Luis Pegenaute (Kassel: Reichenberger, 2016), 345–58 Jiménez Morell, Inmaculada, La prensa femenina en España (desde sus orígenes a 1868) (Madrid: Ediciones de la Torre, 1992) Kirkpatrick, Susan, Las románticas. Women Writers and Subjectivity in Spain, 1835–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) Kleinert, Annemarie, Die frühen Modejournale in Frankreich: Studien zur Literatur der Mode von den Anfängen bis 1848 (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1980) Labanyi, Jo, ‘Doing Things: Emotion, Affect, and Materiality’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 11 (2010), 223–33 Limardo, Ricardo Ovidio, Letter to Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (Madrid, 28 March 1866), Biblioteca Nacional de España, MSS/20807/344 Martí-López, Elisa, ‘Historia literaria y análisis cuantitativo: Ediciones, éxitos de  venta y novela en España, 1840–1900’, Bulletin Hispanique 103 (2001), 675–94 Mínguez Blasco, Raúl, Evas, Marías y Magdalenas. Género y modernidad católica en la España liberal (1833–1874) (Madrid: Asociación de Historia Contemporánea/ Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2016) Mussell, James, ‘Digitization’, in The Routledge Handbook to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers, ed. Andrew King, Alexis Easley and John Morton (London: Routledge, 2016), 17–29 Partzsch, Henriette, ‘Autorschaft auf Raten: Gender, Öffentlichkeit und Presse im Spanien des 19. Jahrhunderts am Beispiel von Faustina Sáez de Melgar’, in Strategien von Autorschaft in der Romania: Zur Neukonzipierung einer Kategorie im Rahmen literature-,kultur- und medienwissenschaftlich basierter Geschlechtertheorie, ed. Claudia Grohnemann, Tanja Schwan and Cornelia Sieber (Tübingen: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012), 55–70 —, ‘Violets and Abolition: The Discourse on Slavery in Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta (Madrid, 1862–66)’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 89 (2012), 859–75 —, ‘Connecting People, Inventing Communities: Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta between National(ist) Ideologies and International Allegiances’, in Women Telling Nations, ed. Suzan van Dijk, Amelia Sanz and Francesca Scott (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014), 353–67

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—, ‘The Complex Routes of Travelling Texts: Fredrika Bremer’s Reception in Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Transnational Dimension of Literary History’, Comparative Critical Studies 11 (2014), 281–93 —, ‘“Venid, elegantes”: Seducción, información y control en las crónicas de modas españolas durante los años 1860’, in Redes de comunicación: Estudios sobre la prensa en el mundo hispanohablante, ed. Yvette Bürki and Henriette Partzsch (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 281–303 —, ‘Mujeres de letras y de negocios. Faustina Sáez de Melgar y el mercado de las revistas de modas isabelinas’, Ínsula 841–2, special issue: Por ser mujer y autora…, ed. Pura Fernández (January–February 2017), 8–12 Pelaz López, José-Vidal, ‘Registradores, recaudadores y notarios. Fuentes para la historia de la empresa periodística en España’, Investigaciones Históricas: Época Moderna y Contemporánea 20 (2000), 169–82 Rideout, Judith, ‘Woman Writers’ Networks in Spanish Magazines around 1900’ (PhD diss., University of Glasgow, 2017): http://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/7859 Sáez de Melgar, Faustina, La lira del Tajo (Madrid: Imprenta de Bernabé Fernández, 1859) —, La pastora del Guadiela (Seville: Imprenta La Andalucía, 1867) —, Memoria del Ateneo de Señoras, leída en junta general celebrada el día 27 de junio de 1869 (Madrid: Imprenta de los señores Rojas, 1869) —, La bendición paterna. Novela original (Manila: Tipo-Litografía de Ramírez y Giraudier [no date]) —, Faustina, ‘A “La Igualdad”’, in Antología de la prensa periódica isabelina escrita por mujeres (1843–1894), ed. Íñigo Sánchez Llama (Cadiz: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad, 2001), 158–9 Sánchez, Raquel, ‘La propiedad intelectual en la España contemporánea, 1847–1936’, Hispania 62:212 (2002), 993–1019 Sánchez Llama, Íñigo, Galería de escritoras isabelinas: La prensa periódica entre 1833 y 1895 (Madrid: Cátedra, 2000) Santirso, Manuel, España en la Europa liberal (1830–1879) (Barcelona: Ariel, 2012) Sanz, Amelia, ‘Lentes electrónicas sobre la prensa española del siglo XIX: En busca de escritoras que vienen de Francia’, in Redes de comunicación: Estudios sobre la prensa en el mundo hispanohablante, ed. Yvette Bürki and Henriette Partzsch (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2016), 351–79 Seguí Collar, Virginia, and others, Historia de la Salina de Carcavallana en Villamanrique de Tajo (Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Villamanrique de Tajo and Comunidad de Madrid, 2015) Seguí Collar, Virginia, Gloria Melgar Sáez (1859–1938) (Madrid: Ediciones del Orto/ Biblioteca de Mujeres, 2002) —, ‘Doña Faustina Sáez de Melgar y Villamanrique. En memoria de una mujer que se forjó a sí misma’, Fernando Cana. Blog de historia (2008): http://fernandocana.es/ faustina-saez/ (accessed 4 November 2016) —, ‘Análisis de la tipología femenina a través del costumbrismo III’: https:// seguicollar.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/analisis-de-la-tipologia-femeninaa-traves-del-costumbrismo-iii/, and ‘Análisis de la tipología femenina a través del

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costumbrismo IV’: https://seguicollar.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/analisis-de-latipologia-femenina-a-traves-del-costumbrismo-iv/ (accessed 24 March 2017) Simón Alegre, Ana I., ‘Diez cartas y una escritora. Concepción Gimeno’, XIV Premio de Investigación SIEM, Universidad de Zaragoza: wzar.unizar.es/ AnaSimonConcepcionGimenoXIVPremioSIEMB (accessed 5 April 2017) Simón Palmer, María del Carmen, Escritoras españolas del siglo XIX: Manual biobibliográfico (Madrid: Castalia, 1991) —, Revistas femeninas madrileñas (Madrid: Ayuntamiento; CSIC, 1993) —, ‘La mujer en el mundo editorial español’, in Escribir en España entre 1840 y 1876, ed. Marie-Linda Ortega (Madrid: Visor, 2002), 35–56 —, ‘En busca del mecenazgo real: Autoras románticas y Palacio’, Anales de Literatura Española 23 (2011), 289–308 Soriano-Mollá, Dolores Thion, ‘Joaquina García Balmaseda: Una escritora isabelina al servicio de la mujer’, Anales 23 (2011), 381–403 Tinajero, Araceli, ‘El Siglo, La Aurora y la lectura en voz alta en Cuba 1865–1868’, Revista Iberoamericana 72:214 (2006), 171–84 Tortella-Casares, Gabriel, Banking, Railroads, and Industry in Spain 1829–1874 (New York: Arno Press, 1977) Valls, Josep Francesc, Prensa y burguesía en el XIX español (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1988) Woodmansee, Martha, The Author, Art, and the Market: Rereading the History of Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994)

Nineteenth-century Spanish periodicals

Boletín Oficial del Estado La Correspondencia de España El Correo de Ultramar Diario de Córdoba Diario Oficial de Avisos de Madrid La Discusión La Época La España La Esperanza Gaceta de Madrid Gil Blas La Iberia El Pensamiento La Violeta: Revista Hispano-Americana, Literatura, Ciencias, Teatros y Modas

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How to be a man of letters Raquel Sánchez

Nineteenth-century writers played an important part in the process of building an open, liberal society in which they acted as conscious citizens and as active participants in the public sphere. The end of the eighteenth century had seen a series of novelties in the public projection of the ‘man of letters’.1 On the one hand, there had been a shift from the cosmopolitanism of the Republic of Letters to the national Parnassus. On the other hand, writers gradually asserted the value and utility of their job, which implied the acknowledgement of their public personas. In addition, the new forms of sociability proved to be effective mechanisms for personal validation and self-acknowledgement as members of a homogeneous group, reinforcing writers’ sense of their social and professional identity. Finally, the progressive disappearance of literary patronage, parallel to the development of the modern notion of authorship, brought about a wider independence of the creator who was, from that moment on, part of the market structure and of the bureaucratic activities of the state.2 The period between 1834 and 1874 is paramount in re-defining the status of these men of letters in Spain. Political and economic factors favouring the autonomy and independence of the writer coalesced with legal and sociological arguments.3 A further reason for the emergence of the modern man of letters is to be found in the existence of legislation which widely supported the freedom of speech. In addition, during this period, the diverse personifications of the literary figure were clearly outlined; the figure’s functions were specialized and, at the same time, several roles were performed by the same person. Thus, the development of the role of the literary figure took shape around a variety of practices and complex activities. Furthermore, the reign of Isabel II (1834–68) saw the reinforcement of group identity among literary figures at the same time as tensions among the men of letters grew, because the latter were immersed in a highly competitive context in which important extra-literary elements also played their part. The development of 216



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such a group identity consolidated a repertoire of practices associated with the literary guild, which, at the same time, enabled recognition of writers’ value within the context of bourgeois society. Moreover, there were hierarchical distinctions between writers just as there were between different layers of the middle classes. Thus, the collective of men of letters behaved according to modes which were common to all of them and could be described as the identifying features of the group as a whole, while, at the same time, they were subject to vertical socio-economic constraints which led them to act in ways common to other social groups. Finally, it is important to highlight a phenomenon clearly evident in all Europe, not just in Spain: the transformation of literary figures into political, moral or aesthetic reference points, on the same level as politicians, military heroes and other celebrities. This process began in the eighteenth century, with effects lasting to the present day. The emergence of literary figures as celebrities is indicative of their role in the new social and political order.4

How to be a literary figure

The ‘man of letters’ is a plural category. As a member of the bourgeois social order, the writer played different roles: poet, journalist, playwright, translator, intellectual, professor, among others. In some cases, the same person performed several roles developing different practices that went beyond those specific individual roles. This underlines the elasticity of the boundaries of a man of letters’ activities. I focus here on a series of key roles of the man of letters: poet, journalist, playwright and lecturer. My central interest is in the political projection of the author and his message, the author as an agent in the new social order. I emphasize the relationship between the author and the public. Romero Tobar has pointed out that the figure of the writer begins to show signs of further change during the 1850s, but it is only from the mid1870s that the term ‘professional novelist’ acquires any real relevance.5 In this text, I will use the terms ‘literary figure’ and ‘man of letters’ interchangeably, therefore going beyond a more narrow use of the historical phrase ‘man of letters’. This is because I am fundamentally interested here in accounting for key aspects of the work and practices of the men of letters, and especially their social projection and their conversion in ‘intellectuals’ in the last part of the century.6

The man of letters as poet

Famously, Paul Bénichou defined the writer, and particularly the poet, as the new lay power in contemporary societies.7 This idea of the poet as a messenger of moral ideas which, in many cases, turned into political slogans, established 217



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a dialogue with other notions that were well established in European thinking by the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth (theorized by Kant and Herder, for example) which identified the poet as an artist attributed with the status of genius. The genius/poet is essentially creative; he produces ‘from himself’ and is the symbol of the profound unity between art and nature. In Romanticism, the poet is the artist par excellence.8 The notion that the poets were ‘special beings’ linked to essential truths was the trait which made them different from the rest of the population. This, in turn, bestowed their messages with unique and arcane significance. Their language, therefore, was necessarily metaphoric because, through it, they were able to communicate a message, found in the realm of the moral and aesthetic ideal, which was otherwise highly difficult to transmit.9 The genius was also emotional, for emotion constituted a mode of communication free from the constraints that words impose. In this way, emotion formed a universal language. Poets, on the other hand, were conceived as beings in conflict with the world due to their free social character and, at the same time, their enlightened nature. The ineluctable task of true poets was to fulfil their mission on earth. Mission is one of the great words associated with Romantic poets, a fact which sheds light upon the role they performed in the public sphere. Through the century, the idea of a mission was coloured with political significance, especially in French Romanticism,10 but it also preserved its original moral meaning. In this respect, it is worth recalling the words of the then-celebrated poet Gaspar Núñez de Arce in a speech given in 1887. Here, towards the end of the century, Núñez de Arce observed the materialist and mercantilist nature of European society of his age and wondered: ‘¿Qué nos queda ya de nuestro patrimonio divino? Nada más que la incierta vida; todo lo demás nos ha sido arrebatado y estamos reducidos a la última indigencia’ (What is left of our divine patrimony? Nothing but this uncertain life; everything else has been taken away from us and we are reduced to the very depths of indigence).11 In this way, poets act as the perfect counterbalance to the market in a materialistic world. They are in turn the spokespeople of human dignity as a moral value in a political or in a religious sense. On the other hand, the famous poet and dramatist José Zorrilla’s written contribution to Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (1843) (Spaniards painted by themselves) poses some more practical questions as regards the professionalization of writing and the proliferation of poets. Zorrilla’s text stresses the lack, in the eyes of the layman, of a solid basis to legitimize, and of a professional cursus honorum for, an activity that – integrated as it was within fine arts – was supposedly qualitatively different from all others. The Royal Academy (Real Academia Española) could be considered one such legitimizing institution, although the political character of many of the appointments to it cast a shadow of doubt upon any claim that 218



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literary values prevailed over other considerations. In this respect, it is worth noting the difference between the world of literature and the world of art. In the latter case, it was the liberal state which established, through the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Royal Academy of Beaux Arts), a cursus honorum to be followed by sculptors and painters, and which authorized periods of residence abroad and national exhibitions. The literary world did not follow the same path.12

The man of letters as playwright

The nineteenth-century playwright was one of the most important channels of communication between creative activity and the wider public. A great deal of the theatrical production of the nineteenth century used verse as the supporting element of forms of discourse so varied and plural as to render any generalizations problematic. The theatre was, in the nineteenth century, the entertainment par excellence. Its wide variety of formats, plots and speeches enabled it to reach all social classes. I consider here two major dimensions of the playwright’s role in society. The first revolves around the relationship between theatrical production and the market. The second focuses on its connections with power. Both inform two of the main elements which underpin the very existence of the theatre: leisure (and its practices) and ideology (and its channels of expression). As far as the first is concerned, it is important to stress the private character of a great number of the nineteenth-century theatres, all the more important given the aforementioned connection between production and market. At the same time, in line with the widespread discussion during the century of the importance of having public theatres (a debate beyond the scope of this chapter), it is significant to note the creation of the Teatro Español (Spanish [National] Theatre) as a cultural institution bound to the identifying symbols of the nation. Of especial importance was the relationship between theatrical creation and power. This is precisely where the public projection of the author was most marked because plays often became ways of expressing political opinions. The point is underlined by the fact that the state established instruments to control them, especially from 1849, with the passing of the Real Decreto de los Teatros del Reino (Royal Decree on the Theatres of the Kingdom) and the regulations of the Teatro Español, together with the creation of a Junta de Censura Nacional (National Censorship Board).13 From 1833, playwrights used the stage for a variety of aims: political and social. Above and beyond the literary text itself, at stake here was the writer’s conscious stance as a member of political society, in favour or against the dominant values of their time. The historical drama was the preferred medium in a context in which Romanticism imposed the rules of 219



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aesthetic expression. Through exaggerated sentimentalism and plots, and sensationalist scenes, the playwright of the first years of liberalism posed important moral and political questions to his audience and showed a new way to understand the self.14 The first category includes plays such as Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835) (Don Alvaro, or, The Force of Destiny) by the Duke of Rivas, who led his audience to reflect on matters such as suicide, racial differences and the value of human existence in a hostile context. The scandal occasioned by the play’s opening night is indicative of an overwhelming Catholic majority in the country not being ready to admit this kind of subject matter. Another type of moral challenge was presented by authors such as Antonio García Gutierrez and Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch – in El Trovador (1836) (The Troubadour) and Los amantes de Teruel (1836) (The Lovers of Teruel) respectively – who were particularly interested in the issue of freedom, understood as free will, in a world full of constrictions as far as the independence and autonomy of individuals was concerned. The figures of the rebel and the misfit served the playwright of the 1830s as a mechanism to criticize dominant worldviews. Those existential heroes of the first Spanish liberal theatre would give way to other heroes, more accessible and agreeable for audiences, such as Don Juan Tenorio (1844) by Zorrilla, a prototype of the gentrification of theatre. As noted, the historical drama was, moreover, a vehicle for political comment. By choosing historical periods which presented parallels with the present day (or with the most recent past), the playwright offered the audience a mirror and, at the same time, what we might call an interactive game. In a time when the passion for history was so widespread, the historical references provided by playwrights implied and expected from the audiences a set of reactions and answers according to the problem posed. The use of historical drama implied the existence of a series of cultural reference points widely shared by those who took part in the performance (either active or passively) that is, author, actors and audience. By the 1840s, the use of historical drama by the man of letters evolved in two directions. On the one hand, it became a platform for a form of nationalism that was linked to the most conservative positions, where the Spanish nation is understood in essentialist terms, with the Catholic religion and monarchy as the two identifying pillars of the homeland. Without denying the existence of nationalist plays with other ideological nuances (such as the pro-Republican Eusebio Asquerino’s Españoles sobre todo (1844) (Spaniards above all)), the tendency personified in politics by the Moderate (that is, conservative) party was dominant. It was represented by those plays written by conservative authors such as Manuel Tamayo y Baus and José Zorrilla. The other direction taken by the historical drama was political criticism of current affairs, once more, using a similar set of cultural referents.15 220



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The aesthetic saturation created by Romantic sentimentalism gave way to the use of other forms of communication with the audience from the second half of the 1840s. Playwrights started to use a type of comedy or tragedy that can be termed ‘realistic’ which, in a way, had already been initiated by Manuel Bretón de los Herreros in 1840 with El pelo de la dehesa (Can’t take the farm out of the boy). This is the so-called ‘high comedy’ (alta comedia). Through these works, set in the Spain of the time, the playwright presented the audience with the moral deviations of the enriched bourgeoisie. In a time of large-scale economic speculation, corruption and ostentation, the playwright wished to play the part of the moral censor of society. Tomás Rodríguez Rubí demonstrates this in his plays El arte de hacer fortuna (1845), El hombre feliz (1848) or ¡El gran filón! (1874) (The art of making a fortune, The happy man, The great goldmine!). The same can be said of one of the leading individuals of the 1868 revolution, Adelardo López de Ayala, author of El tejado de vidrio (1856) and El tanto por ciento (1861) (The glass roof, X per cent). The majority of these authors did not question the social system. They just criticized its immoral deviations. However, another type of theatre existed, a sort of prelude to the political theatre of the end of the century, which has been termed the ‘social drama’ because it closely parallels the melodramatic novels (the ‘social novel’) of the time.16 The authors devoted to social melodrama were, in general terms, a long way from the bourgeois aspirations of other playwrights. Most of them were searching for a real social transformation through the raised political awareness of the lower classes. Very close to the ideological premises of utopian socialism was a group of intellectuals linked to the Democratic Party, among them Sixto Cámara, Fernando Garrido or Pablo Avecilla. In consequence, it is possible to see the theatre as the place in which the literary figure established a dialogue with the public and with critics in order to make key topics of discussion visible in the public sphere and to contribute to social and political debate.

The man of letters as journalist

In the nineteenth century, the term public writer was frequently used to mean a journalist, which implies that, for people of the time, the true man of letters within the public sphere was the journalist, a figure endowed with an indisputable social function. From the eighteenth century, such writers’ work was highly valued as it drew attention to those aspects of society which needed improvement. Throughout the nineteenth century, all the tasks performed by the journalist would acquire a different tone, much more typical of societies with representative governments: the surveillance and guarantee of decency in politics. The close connection between journalism and politics 221



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grew ­ exponentially through the century, developing a deep multifaceted relationship at the heart of which was the newspaper: a useful tool to provoke social unrest, raise political consciousness, push for individuals to be future members of the government, exert opposition, and so forth.17 In this respect, the popular writer and reformer, Ramón Mesonero Romanos, was wont to say that the newspaper of his time had two main functions: on the one hand, it was the way the public writer obtained social and professional promotion as it was the fastest method of becoming famous in a crowded literary world.18 On the other hand, Mesonero pointed out the huge power the press possessed in open societies in a context of large-scale proliferation of and competition between newspapers and magazines. In Mesonero’s words: ‘El periodista es una potencia social, que quita y pone leyes, que levanta los pueblos a su antojo, que varía en un punto la organización social’ (The journalist is a social power who passes and repeals laws; who stirs peoples up at his will; who varies, in a moment, the way society is organized).19 This prototypical image of the journalist exactly fitted the most outstanding writer of the opening decades of nineteenth-century Spain: Mariano José de Larra, who combined the Enlightenment aspiration to improve social behaviour with the nineteenth-century analysis of society in order to study its discordant elements. For Larra, the writer’s role was to act as a link between the liberal vanguard and the masses.20 It has been noted that both Mesonero Romanos and Larra used humour, laughter and satire to twin ends: censoring behaviour while remaining appealing to the public.21 The satirical stance enabled the journalist to reach a general audience which included men and women, high, middle and lower classes alike. It was also a link between the role of man of letters and that of the intellectual (see Chapter 11), because political analysis became a major second strand in nineteenth-century journalism. It is true that, in the time of Isabel II, this dimension of journalism was not yet solidly established, but the political analysis provided by writers, required and demanded by readers, opened the way to the future modern intellectual. This further way of being a man of letters is found not only in the ephemeral party journals but also, and especially, in more intellectually robust publications in which the journalist-politician signed articles on a daily basis or obtained public recognition due to his ongoing connections with certain publications. Newspapers such as El Heraldo, La Época, El Clamor Público, or later El Imparcial and Revista de España, offered the reader an analysis of the political reality of the country undertaken by journalists who were, in turn, well known through their public image, linked to the Congress (the lower house of Parliament), the Senate, the Government or the Opposition. The public whom this man of letters is addressing is not the general public of the satirical genre of costumbrismo (studies of moeurs), but rather a more limited audience: that of the bourgeois man at the summit of the ruling social class, 222



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a smaller public in whose hands lay the taking of political decisions which affected the rest of the community. As with poets, so among public writers there existed what contemporaries described as ‘the amateur mob’. The spread of journalism was extraordinary due to the growth of the press in a society avid for information. Whatever the future career plans of the novice journalist, working in a newspaper was almost compulsory for those who intended to make their name in the world of letters, especially if they meant to enter the world of politics. No mechanisms, established either by the profession or the state, regulated the quality of their work, which meant that the journalist defined quality as what happened to interest the readership, who were the main court in these matters. At the same time, analysis of the role of the writer as journalist shows us, more still than in the roles examined earlier in this chapter, the consolidation of some practices associated with journalism that ultimately became hallmarks of the man of letters: a life outside bourgeois schedules; contacts with all kinds of people; an irregular and unconventional way of working.

The man of letters as intellectual

When speaking of intellectuals in 1834–74, I am referring to a wide variety of men of letters who, independently of their role as poets, playwrights or journalists, devoted part of their public life to political and social analysis in the new fora created by the liberal revolution.22 (For the stricter use of the term intellectual in the latter part of the century, see Chapter 11.) The prototypical man of letters found in these environments fitted with the bourgeois character of liberal society and with a modern concept of citizenship to a greater extent than did the roles examined thus far. By the term fora, I mean not only the cultural societies, lyceums and similar organizations which arose in Isabeline Spain (some with deep roots in the eighteenth century) but also universities. Classrooms were not only spaces to train future professionals but also milieux open to discussion and debate. The world of the university lecturer was, generally speaking, imbued with a respectability alien to the other, diverse manifestations of the man of letters. The professional restraint of the lecturer’s habitus, the academic’s characteristic tendency to reflection, clarity and order endowed this role with gravitas and honour. In addition, the cursus honorum of the lecturer entailed a longer process than others we have seen, and one less subject to the whims of public and market. The lecturer had to pass through a series of filters from the end of their university studies and the completion of a dissertation to passing public examinations. During Isabeline times, only a few such individuals – for example, the politician and thinker Emilio Castelar – had a full role as public intellectuals in the sense in which the term was subsequently used.23 223



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The most lively educational forum of the period was, undoubtedly, the Ateneo in Madrid. The courses and lectures imparted there between 1835 and 1874 were the basic pillars for both the further development of the theoretical and political corpus associated with liberalism, and for the rise of robust debates about topics of current interest. In a century of increased productivity and professional specialization, it was evident that the growing difficulty and complexity of much subject matter meant it could only be explained by experts who, in turn, were forced to render such topics accessible to a varied audience with a range of educational backgrounds. Furthermore, some of the courses of lectures at the Ateneo became major society events, reinforcing the public role of the men of letters associated with that institution. In this way, attendance at such events became a significant act replete with political meaning. The related process of intellectual specialization would grow subsequently during the Restoration period (after 1875).24 The Ateneo and similar debating societies played a key role in generating political and intellectual controversy. On a number of occasions, the tribunes of these organizations became fora for discussion where key issues were addressed prior to publication in the press. Similarly, issues were taken up in the papers after being raised in these para-academic fora. The interplay between intellectual debate and political decision-making was a key element in matters such as the polemic between supporters of free trade and of protectionism, the debate on abolitionism, or the social problem (that is, the question of inequality and poverty) and socialism. These fora for debate constituted the perfect setting for discussions of public matters in which the man of letters played an essential role as the master of ceremonies, officiant and protagonist. It is clear that the diversity and richness of these debates was directly connected to the passing of the laws permitting freedom of speech and association.25

Group identity

It is remarkable to observe the proliferation of galleries (that is, biographical anthologies) of authors, portraits of famous writers, catalogues of contemporary authors and other similar publications between 1834 and 1874. In these publications, writers introduced themselves to the public as a recognizable collective, professionally and socially defined, with a clear group identity, irrespective of the divergences and internal rivalry of a professional world that, like others, had its own working rules and its own practices.26 Writers themselves, to a great extent, built and managed their public image through costumbrista narratives among other literary formats. Similarly, it is possible to observe the presence of this collective not only in written contexts but also in a great variety of iconographic representations suggestive of a desire to be 224



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portrayed for posterity, like any aristocrat or bourgeois. This is clear in the individual portraits, whether in the form of engravings or paintings, which can be found in museums and contemporary publications. Significantly, not only do we find individual, but also collective representations of writers which reinforce the sense of belonging to a group. There are many well-known examples: the painting Los poetas contemporáneos (Contemporary poets) and the sketch Ventura de la Vega leyendo una obra a los actores del Teatro Príncipe (Ventura de la Vega reading a work to the actors of the Príncipe Theatre), both executed in 1846 by Antonio María Esquivel. Moreover, images referring to the world of literature, the stage, the press and the tribune were frequently disseminated in magazines, newspapers and collections, and contributed to ensuring wider society was acquainted with the functioning of the world of letters and its spaces of work and of sociability. In this way, a series of images became more and more familiar to the wider public: the writer working at his desk, reading poems to an audience, speaking in cafés, pontificating in a debating society or thinking of a new project. At the same time, a series of forms of sociability came to the fore that were characteristic of this collective and which revolved around coteries where ideas were exchanged, criticisms accepted or rejected, new compositions introduced. The Liceo Artístico y Literario (Artistic and Literary Lyceum) was one of these circles in which the worlds of literature and painting came together, as in other settings such as the Ateneo in Madrid and the ateneos of other cities, theatres, musical societies, private salons and cafés. The latter provided surroundings for more informal kinds of sociability and activity, somewhat distinct from with those found in the other spaces mentioned here. In most of those places, men of letters (together with painters, musicians and other cultural producers) exhibited freer behaviour than had been seen in old-fashioned salons, behaviour that, with the passing of time, would enable the term ‘literary brotherhood’ to be coined, a term imbued with a rather Romantic flavour and cast around the myth of the poet. This brotherhood, understood as an essentially masculine fellowship, did not exclude the presence of women, although the latter attended only as spectators or hostesses in most cases. The existence of a model of writing conceived in terms of gender is clearly evident here. On the other hand, in a context that highly valued feeling as the basis of creativity, but denied men any public expression of sentimentality, those spaces of male sociability allowed men to adopt sensitive attitudes towards their friends and express them freely without any restriction.27 Finally, there were public events that served to underline the public presence of the men of letters as a homogenous collective, making its existence visible to the rest of society. Among these were the burials of Larra (1837), Espronceda (1842) and Quintana (1857), the foundation of the Ateneo of Madrid (1835), the crowning of poets, the opening nights of some plays such 225



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as El trovador by García Gutiérrez (1835) or the welcoming of Zorrilla upon his return from America in 1866.

The state and the men of letters

From embassies to the government and the ministries, in nineteenth-century Spain the man of letters was omnipresent, whether in the administration (that is, the civil service) or in politics, as Zorrilla noted in his autobiography Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (1880) (Recollections of old times).28 At the same time, working for the state, as Zorrilla or the influential poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer did, was a new form of patronage. It is clear that politics, whether in support of the party in government or the opposition, provided men of letters with an additional way to consolidate their public presence. The public projection of men of letters was not only achieved through their written production, but also through their belonging to a specific political faction, enabling a degree of visibility which facilitated the writer’s escape from anonymity. The thirst for notoriety led the poet and thinker Ramón de Campoamor to write his Historia crítica de las Cortes Reformadoras (1845) (Critical history of the Reform Parliament), a preamble to his rapprochement with the conservative Moderate party, which, in turn, enabled him to be nominated as Civil Governor in Castellón, Alicante and Valencia, as well as to hold a seat in Parliament for several terms of office.29 The man of letters had other means too to establish links with the state: his participation, as a citizen, in establishing the political reference points of the nation itself. Numerous scholars have pointed to the role of culture in constructing the archetype of the modern Spanish nation.30 The recreation of the national past through the historical novel is a significant instance of how an extraordinarily successful literary genre contributed to the reclaiming of a distinctive national past, at the very moment when a transformation of the publishing sector was taking place and access to books was widening. The theatre fulfilled a similar function in a context of growing audiences. Thus, the man of letters felt it a matter of duty to perform a patriotic role associated with a given ideal of Spanish nationhood. These words, published by Zorrilla in 1843, explain how the poet understood the duty he had towards society: Canta sus glorias [de su país] en inspirados poemas, ensalza sus héroes en históricas producciones dramáticas y celebra o critica en satíricas comedias las virtudes y ventajas o los vicios y manías de las costumbres de su sociedad y de su siglo.31 (He sings the glories of his country in inspired poems, glorifies its heroes in historical dramatic productions and celebrates or criticizes in satirical comedies the virtues and merits or the vices and obsessions of the customs of his society and his century.)

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This does not mean that men of letters offered an uncritical and purely optimistic view of the past and the present of the nation. On the contrary, the reflections of men of letters between 1834 and 1874 looked forward to the most important issues of the fin de siècle: the causes of Spanish underdevelopment and the lack of national cohesion. The historian of Spanish art, Carlos Reyero, has accurately summarized the values of those writers most closely linked to the liberal state: they expressed themselves in the language of national identity; their public notoriety, untainted by prior political links, enabled them to appear as an instrument of national harmony and understanding; the word was their weapon – an ‘instrumento sagrado del debate culto’ (sacred instrument of cultured debate) – and their image was that of a grandiose, individual expression of personal freedom which sometimes reached heroic levels.32 As a result, in the period between 1834 and 1874 the establishment of the category of the national writer, the representative of the cultural essence of the country, developed in similar ways to those seen in other nations, pre-national entities or nationalist movements in the rest of Europe. At times, the public projection of the man of letters served a clear political agenda; the writer was thereby inserted into the social rituals of the liberal régime itself. This was particularly evident in the celebration of events, such as the crowning and the funerals of famous literary figures, which had a clear political message. Organized by private entities on many occasions – especially in the case of crownings – or by the state, these events strengthened the ties between public and author. The splendour of these ceremonies rose to greater heights still during the Restoration period, but back in 1834–74 it is possible to observe some episodes of special importance such as the crowning and funeral of Manuel José Quintana, the great reference point of the progressive liberal tradition.33

Conclusion: The role of the man of letters

The role played by the man of letters in the period between 1834 and 1874 was enriched and updated, as it adapted to the needs of bourgeois society. The new reality the man of letters had to face opened up new paths to follow in his dialogue with society; the writer had a role of his own to play as a member of the political community. The role of man of letters involved having, and using for specific purposes, expertise in specific areas of specialized professional knowledge, such as the arts, history or law. In this way, the generalist and, to a certain extent, holistic knowledge of the man of letters of the eighteenth century gave way to the nineteenth-century professional. On the other hand, the man of letters performed a fundamental role in the formative process of active, participant citizenship (on a variety of levels) to which 227



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liberalism aspired. The political and social agitation and commentary by the press, by academic tribunes or on the stage would be the main mechanisms of this function, which acquired ever greater importance. In short, bourgeois society developed spheres of understanding, with an audience among diverse social classes, that were to be filled by writers’ literary products. Bourgeois leisure incorporated a series of practices associated both with the pleasures of the upper classes (opera, theatre, concerts, public readings) and those of the lower classes (popular music and theatre). All these developed in spaces in which the man of letters had a leading role, whether as creator or performer (or both). Of particular importance for the public projection of the man of letters was the latter’s role in the construction of an ideal of conscious citizenship. This chapter has emphasized the fact that the man of letters, in a range of diverse manifestations, performed that role before the end of the century, within a largely non-democratic, liberal context (the exception being the post-revolutionary régime and then First Republic between 1869 and 1873) but one characterized by political competition and freedom of speech. (Freedom of speech was certainly not absolute in this period, but equally the laws governing it were discussed, mocked or approved by literary figures.) The mobilization of public opinion after Castelar published a series of celebrated articles in the journal La Democracia in 1865 exemplified writers’ capacity to arouse the public.34 In the period between 1834 and 1874, men of letters occupied a widening sphere of activity and became a catalyst for a broad range of collective actions. The use of words as weapons and as a way to criticize power would become ever more frequent. By the end of the century their role developed fully into that of intellectuals. The trials of Montjuic (1896) and the crisis of 1898 were the two main events in which this public persona would be validated.

Notes

 1 All translations in this chapter are mine, or by the editors.  2 Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, Los hombres de letras en la España del siglo XVIII: Apóstoles y arribistas (Madrid: Castalia, 2006).  3 Jesús A. Martínez Martín, Vivir de la pluma. La profesionalización del escritor, 1836–1936 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009); José Carlos Mainer, ‘Vivir de la literatura. El oficio de escribir y el mercado literario’, in Ganarse la vida en el arte, la literatura y la música, ed. Javier Gomá Lanzón (Barcelona: Galaxia GutenbergCírculo de Lectores, 2012), 93–113.  4 Edward Berenson and Eva Giloi (eds), Constructing Charisma. Celebrity, Fame and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010); Antoine Lilti, Figures publiques. L’invention de la célébrité, 1750–1850 (Paris: Fayard, 2014).

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 5 Leonardo Romero Tobar, ‘El campo de la producción intelectual’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España, 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes, François López and Jean-François Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 531–44.  6 Some information about the meaning of men of letters in the Spanish context is to be found in Juan F. Fuentes Aragonés, ‘Escritor’, in Diccionario político y social del siglo XIX español, ed. Juan F. Fuentes Aragonés and Javier Fernández Sebastián (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002), 280–3. The word ‘intellectual’ was used in Spain for the first time with the current meaning by Unamuno in 1896.  7 Paul Bénichou, La coronación del escritor, 1750–1830 (Mexico: F.C.E., 1981).  8 Esperanza Guillén, Retratos del genio. El culto a la personalidad artística en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Cátedra, 2007), 119.  9 Luigi Pareyson, Conversaciones de estética (Madrid: Visor, 1987), 155. 10 Roger Picard, El romanticismo social (Madrid: F.C.E., 2004). 11 Gaspar Núñez de Arce, Discurso leído por el Excmo. Sr. D. Gaspar Núñez de Arce en el Ateneo Científico y Literario de Madrid (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1887), 55. 12 Tomás Pérez Viejo, ‘Géneros, mercado, artistas y críticos en la pintura española del siglo XIX’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. 5th ser: Historia contemporánea 24 (2012), 27–48. 13 David T. Gies, El teatro en la España del siglo XIX (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 247–64. 14 Andrew Ginger, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012). 15 Jesús Rubio Jiménez, ‘Melodrama y teatro político en el siglo XIX. El escenario como tribuna política’, Castilla. Revista de Literatura 14 (1989), 136–7. 16 Rubio Jiménez, ‘Melodrama y teatro político en el siglo XIX’, 129–49. 17 Juan Rico y Amat, Diccionario de los políticos (Madrid: Imprenta F. Andrés, 1855), 185–6. 18 Ramón Mesonero Romanos, ‘Contrastes. Tipos hallados, tipos perdidos’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: Visor, 2002), 487. Not only did the press allow young male literates to obtain fame but also women writers who used to find in the periodicals, particularly from 1840, a way to shed light on their texts, either novels or essays. See Susan Kirkpatrick, Las Románticas. Escritoras y subjetividad en España, 1835–1850 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991), 81. 19 Mesonero Romanos, ‘Contrastes. Tipos hallados, tipos perdidos’, 487. 20 Susan Kirkpatrick, Larra, el laberinto inextricable de un liberal (Madrid: Gredos, 1997), 197. 21 Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, ‘Proyecto literario y oficio de escritor en Larra’, in Larra en el mundo. La misión de un escritor moderno, ed. Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, José Maria Ferri Coll and Enrique Rubio Cremades (Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante, 2011), 18. 22 Francisco Villacorta, Burguesía y cultura: Los intelectuales españoles en la sociedad liberal, 1808–1931 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980). 23 Carmen Llorca, Emilio Castelar. Precursor de la democracia cristiana (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1966).

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24 Rafael María Labra, El Ateneo de Madrid (Madrid: Ateneo, 2010); Francisco Villacorta Baños, El Ateneo científico, literario y artístico de Madrid (1885–1912) (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1985). 25 Demetrio Castro Alfín, Los males de la imprenta: Política y libertad de prensa en una sociedad dual (Madrid: CIS, 1996). See also: María Antonia Peña, ‘Escritura y política en la España del siglo XIX’, in La España liberal, 1833–1874, ed. María Cruz Romeo and María Sierra (Madrid: Marcial Pons-Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2014), 163–87. 26 Cecilio Alonso, Historia de la literatura española. V: Hacia una literatura nacional 1800–1900 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010), 204–8. 27 María Sierra Alonso, Género y emociones en el Romanticismo. El teatro de Bretón de los Herreros (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2013), 24. 28 José Zorrilla, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (México: Porrúa, 1998), 116. 29 Manuel Lombardero, Campoamor y su mundo (Barcelona: Planeta, 2000), 103. 30 José Álvarez Junco, Mater dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus, 2004). 31 José Zorrilla, ‘El poeta’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: Visor Libros, 2002), 156. 32 Carlos Reyero, ‘La conmemoración pública de los escritores del siglo XIX’, Ínsula 772 (2011), 3. 33 Although along the century some ceremonies to laureate poets were celebrated, only two of those poets were considered ‘national poets’: Quintana (in 1855) and Zorrilla (in 1889). See Marta Palenque Sánchez, ‘La coronación de Manuel José Quintana (1855)’, Ínsula 744 (2008), 26–9; Raquel Sánchez, ‘Los funerales de Quintana’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 17 (2011), 1–13 and ‘La coronación de José Zorrilla in 1889: Política, negocio y espectáculo en la España de la Restauración’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 41–2 (2011), 185–203. 34 Llorca, Emilio Castelar, 88–90.

References

Alonso, Cecilio, Historia de la literatura española. V: Hacia una literatura nacional 1800–1900 (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010) Álvarez Barrientos, Joaquín, Los hombres de letras en la España del siglo XVIII: Apóstoles y arribistas (Madrid: Castalia, 2006) —, ‘Proyecto literario y oficio de escritor en Larra’, in Larra en el mundo. La misión de un escritor moderno, ed. Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos, José Maria Ferri Coll and Enrique Rubio Cremades (Alicante: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante, 2011), 17–41 Álvarez Junco, José, Mater dolorosa. La idea de España en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Taurus, 2004) Bénichou, Paul, La coronación del escritor, 1750–1830 (Mexico: F.C.E., 1981) Berenson, Edward, and Eva Giloi (eds), Constructing Charisma. Celebrity, Fame and Power in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010)

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Castro Alfín, Demetrio, Los males de la imprenta: Política y libertad de prensa en una sociedad dual (Madrid: CIS, 1996) Fuentes Aragonés, Juan F., ‘Escritor’, in Diccionario político y social del siglo XIX español, ed. Juan F. Fuentes Aragonés and Javier Fernández Sebastián (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2002), 280–3 Gies, David T., El teatro en la España del siglo XIX (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Ginger, Andrew, Liberalismo y romanticismo: La reconstrucción del sujeto histórico (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2012) Guillén, Esperanza, Retratos del genio. El culto a la personalidad artística en el siglo XIX (Madrid: Cátedra, 2007) Kirkpatrick, Susan, Las Románticas. Escritoras y subjetividad en España, 1835–1850 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1991) —, Larra, el laberinto inextricable de un liberal (Madrid: Gredos, 1997) Labra, Rafael María, El Ateneo de Madrid (Madrid: Ateneo, 2010) Lilti, Antoine, Figures publiques. L’invention de la célébrité, 1750–1850 (Paris: Fayard, 2014) Llorca, Carmen, Emilio Castelar. Precursor de la democracia cristiana (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1966) Lombardero, Manuel, Campoamor y su mundo (Barcelona: Planeta, 2000) Mainer, José Carlos, ‘Vivir de la literatura. El oficio de escribir y el mercado literario’, in Ganarse la vida en el arte, la literatura y la música, ed. Javier Gomá Lanzón (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg-Círculo de Lectores, 2012), 93–113 Martínez Martín, Jesús A., Vivir de la pluma. La profesionalización del escritor, 1836–1936 (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2009) Mesonero Romanos, Ramón, ‘Contrastes. Tipos hallados, tipos perdidos’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: Visor, 2002), 483–505 Núñez de Arce, Gaspar, Discurso leído por el Excmo. Sr. D. Gaspar Núñez de Arce en el Ateneo Científico y Literario de Madrid (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1887) Palenque Sánchez, Marta, ‘La coronación de Manuel José Quintana (1855)’, Ínsula 744 (2008), 26–9 Pareyson, Luigi, Conversaciones de estética (Madrid: Visor, 1987) Peña, María Antonia, ‘Escritura y política en la España del siglo XIX’, in La España liberal, 1833–1874, ed. María Cruz Romeo and María Sierra (Madrid: Marcial Pons-Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2014), 163–87 Pérez Viejo, Tomás, ‘Géneros, mercado, artistas y críticos en la pintura española del siglo XIX’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. 5th ser: Historia contemporánea 24 (2012), 27–48 Picard, Roger, El romanticismo social (Madrid: F.C.E., 2004) Reyero, Carlos, ‘La conmemoración pública de los escritores del siglo XIX’, Ínsula 772 (2011), 3–6 Rico y Amat, Juan, Diccionario de los políticos (Madrid: Imprenta F. Andrés, 1855) Romero Tobar, Leonardo, ‘El campo de la producción intelectual’, in Historia de la edición y de la lectura en España, 1472–1914, ed. Víctor Infantes, François López

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and Jean-François Botrel (Madrid: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 2003), 531–44 Rubio Jiménez, Jesús, ‘Melodrama y teatro político en el siglo XIX. El escenario como tribuna política’, Castilla. Revista de Literatura 14 (1989), 129–49 Sánchez, Raquel, ‘La coronación de José Zorrilla in 1889: Política, negocio y espectáculo en la España de la Restauración’, Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez, 41–2 (2011), 185–203 —, ‘Los funerales de Quintana’, Cuadernos de Ilustración y Romanticismo 17 (2011), 1–13 Sierra Alonso, María, Género y emociones en el Romanticismo. El teatro de Bretón de los Herreros (Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico, 2013) Villacorta, Francisc, Burguesía y cultura: Los intelectuales españoles en la sociedad liberal, 1808–1931 (Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980) Villacorta Baños, Francisco, El Ateneo científico, literario y artístico de Madrid (1885– 1912) (Madrid: CSIC, 1985) Zorrilla, José, Recuerdos del tiempo viejo (México: Porrúa, 1998) —, ‘El poeta’, in Los españoles pintados por sí mismos (Madrid: Visor, 2002), 150–7

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How to be an intellectual Luis G. Martínez del Campo

The term ‘intellectual’ started to be commonly used to describe a new social figure who emerged in Europe in the 1890s. Until then, men of letters had fulfilled seemingly similar functions that responded to the configuration of public opinion in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 10). However, the birth of the intellectual was a response to a society that was changing in the long term, in which the figure of the public writer was to play a slightly different role in the political field and enjoy a different relationship with public opinion through his or her reactions to specific short-term events.1 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the implementation of national education systems in most European countries, the rise of mass society, the modernization of the media and the professionalization of politics promoted the establishment of this new social actor: the intellectual. In the manner of men of letters, they were still spiritual guides of the nation, but they achieved their aims through different practices, using modern strategies, addressing a wider audience and using alternative means to intervene in the political field. Since the popularization of the term ‘intellectual’ as a noun in the 1890s, sociologists, historians and writers have tried to identify the aspects that define this new social group: their commitment to the defence of universal system of values (such as justice or truth), their prominent social status (they were educated men or women in largely illiterate societies), their moral authority (based on the perception of their professional success) and, most significantly of all, their intervention in public affairs. This chapter focuses on analysing the main events that contributed to the making of the Spanish intellectuals from the 1890s into the early years of the twentieth century. It considers the conditions that prevailed at the birth of this new social actor, but it also deals with their defining characteristics and the practices that they shared. I argue that the emergence of the intellectual in Spain resulted from a combination of long and short-term factors, such 233



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as long-term structural changes in Spanish society but also specific political events that unfolded around the turn of the nineteenth century. Crucially, this chapter traces the ways in which Spanish intellectuals intervened in public affairs, especially to denounce militarism and colonialism, and to defend their fellow intellectuals.2

The baptism of the Spanish intellectuals

The term ‘intellectual’ comes from the Latin word ‘intellectuālis’ meaning mental capacity and understanding. Although the adjective ‘intellectual’ has been used since time immemorial, its use as a noun evolved in reference to a new social actor who emerged in several European countries in the nineteenth century.3 In Britain, Lord Byron described a group of important people as intellectuals as early as 1813. However, other similar expressions were also frequent, such as ‘cultivated persons’ and ‘men of culture’.4 The new noun did not become common until the end of the Victorian era. Although in France and in other European countries, the term was not used as a noun until the 1890s, a similar word had previously appeared in Eastern Europe: the ‘intelligentsia’. Introduced to the Russian language by the novelist Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin around 1860, the term was soon applied to different groups of Russian writers and artists, active in the 1830s and 1840s, who had been associated with German idealism. In France, Stendhal and Balzac had used the word ‘intellectuel’ in the early nineteenth century, but the noun became popular in the 1890s, after Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer with Jewish ancestors, was convicted of spying. In January 1898, Émile Zola published his famous article ‘J’accuse …!’ in the Parisian newspaper L’Aurore, defending Dreyfus and causing a political scandal. George Clémenceau was the first to use the term ‘intellectual’ to describe Zola and other professionals who were protesting against the French government. The word was helpful in defining ‘the new situation of the intellectual field at the end of the century’, and the figure who emerged in this context, a ‘model of critical intellectual, who offered his capacities for getting justice and fairness’.5 The meaning of the term was still changing in the early twentieth century, when, owing to French and Russian influences, it was ‘associated with “intervention” in politics, especially on behalf of a radical or even revolutionary cause’.6 In short, over the course of a few years, this noun was popularized and applied to those who participated in politics, but not through parliamentary activities or through elections. As a group, intellectuals did not necessarily share a well-defined political agenda, but they did participate collectively in attempts to influence public opinion and denounce a variety of injustices. In Spain, the noun was first adopted by a collection of individuals as a term they 234



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could use to refer to themselves. As in France, its use became common in the context of a series of responses to a political scandal. After the explosion of a bomb in Canvis Nous street in Barcelona on 7 June 1896, the Spanish police detained around 400 people, most of whom were teachers, journalists and professionals who were connected to anarchism. They were arrested and held in the Montjuïc fortress, and criminal proceedings were initiated. Those who were released started a campaign denouncing the torture of the detainees and alleging that most of the arrests had been carried out despite legal irregularities.7 Within this context, Miguel de Unamuno sent a letter to the Spanish Prime Minister, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, on 28 November 1896 asking for mediation in favour of Pere Corominas, who was under arrest in the Montjuïc fortress. In his letter, the Basque writer described his friend Corominas as an intellectual: Estimo que el sacrificar a Corominas, que es lo que suele decirse un anarquista platónico, por el natural deseo de servir a una opinión pública, que, tan justamente alarmada como grandemente extraviada, pide caiga algún intelectual, llevaría a un acto de escasa justicia y de menos caridad.8 (I consider that sacrificing Corominas, who is what one might call a platonic anarchist, through a natural desire to serve a public opinion which, as justifiably alarmed as it is greatly misplaced, is asking for the head of an intellectual, will lead to an act of scant justice and even less charity.)

The term was thus included in a private letter, but used to make reference to, and intervene in, a public controversy. Furthermore, Miguel de Unamuno, who was considered a model for the Spanish intellectuals, used the noun to describe his colleague because Corominas had worked with him on the Catalan anarchist newspaper, Ciencia Social. Other members of the Spanish cultural elite (Amadeo Hurtado, David Ferrer, Gumersindo de Azcárate, Emilio Riu, Azorín, Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Rafael Altamira and Joaquín Costa) similarly demanded the freedom of the prisoners in Montjuïc fortress. After some time, this pressure contributed to the release of Corominas and other prisoners, reducing to five the number of death penalties.9 In November 1897, Juan Montseny, one of the released prisoners, implemented a propaganda campaign to instigate a review of the trial at Montjuïc. His initiative was supported by writers such as Azorín, Unamuno and Blasco Ibáñez. Several public meetings were organized to denounce the torture of detainees, and the lawyer Rodrigo Soriano even tried to persuade Émile Zola to attend one of the protests in San Sebastián. In short, through these actions, the Spanish intellectuals, who were now identifying themselves as such, were intervening in the public sphere.10 The intellectuals who participated in public meetings and published their work in newspapers were normally well known. Most were writers who had 235



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achieved success. They met each others at social gatherings, in editorial offices, and came together to defend a writer or colleague. For instance, some of those involved in the protests against the Montjuïc trial had supported Joaquín Dicenta, who had been criticized by ecclesiastical and political sectors when his play Juan José premiered in Madrid in October 1895. While Unamuno and Azorín wrote articles eulogizing Dicenta’s play, Maeztu organized a banquet in his honour. These protests, defences and common activities all fostered the development of the collective identity of the individuals that came to be known as intellectuals.11 Although they criticized the ruling classes and were not directly involved in parliamentary politics, the private letter that Unamuno sent to Cánovas suggested that intellectuals were relatively well connected to politicians. Defined in contrast to the illiterate multitude and able to lay claim to exceptional qualifications or expertise, they could mingle with the ruling classes. Access to education was limited in Spain, and it was generally accepted that academic training and literary success could be taken as distinguishing characteristics. Doctors, lawyers and other liberal professions inspired respect and admiration. Thus, writers (Miguel de Unamuno), scientists (Santiago Ramón y Cajal) and historians (Rafael Altamira) were considered national treasures. In other words, intellectuals were seen as a select minority. In the late nineteenth century, a Spanish journalist used the expression ‘aristocracia de los intelectuales’ (aristocracy of intellectuals) to refer to the members of the Ateneo (Athenaeum) in Madrid, where the Spanish cultural elite held their meetings. An editorial in El Liberal described a lecture by Emilia Pardo Bazán in the Madrid Ateneo as follows: ‘La aristocracia social ha respondido al llamamiento de la aristocracia de los intelectuales’ (The social aristocracy has responded to the call of the aristocracy of intellectuals).12 Thus, Paul Aubert has highlighted: L’émergence précoce d’une vocation des élites intellectuelles – une petite minorité à l’intérieur d’une minorité éclairée qui s’exprime dans un pays à la culture écrite peu développée – à ejercer un rôle dirigeant et normatif.13 (The early emergence of the vocation of intellectual elites – a small minority within an enlightened minority who expressed themselves in a country where written culture was underdeveloped – to play a leading and prescriptive role.)

The elitist and aristocratic elements elicited a hostile response from workers, who recognized the role of intellectuals, but denied them a place among the people. The working class considered this new social actor as part of a nineteenth-century elitist movement. This rejection annoyed Ramiro de Maeztu, who demanded that the Basque socialists pay more attention to the Spanish intelligentsia. In 1897, he said ‘repróchesele también el tacto de codos contra los intelectuales que aparta de sus filas a multitud de corazones 236



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generosos’ (they [Marxist-socialists from Bilbao] should also be reprimanded for the way they elbow away the intellectuals; because it removes a multitude of generous hearts from their ranks).14 Some members of the Spanish cultural elite did not welcome this new figure either. For instance, the university professor Urbano González Serrano was a detractor of the Spanish intelligentsia, although he himself participated in opposition movements, including Krausism. He thought that intellectuals frequently pointed out the problems of the system, but did not do anything to change it. González Serrano claimed that this cultural elite were giving their opinions from a position of superiority and that their relations with politicians kept them at a remove from the people: ‘El intelectual se siente superior a la línea media y sueña con Renán en una nueva aristocracia, la del talento, o en la inmortalidad privilegiada que al genio concedía Goethe’ (the intellectual feels himself to be above the average and he dreams with Renan of a new aristocracy, one of talent, or of the privileged immortality that Goethe granted to genius).15 Frequently, Spanish intellectuals were born into middle-class families or were members of the aristocracy, for example Emilia Pardo Bazán. Most of them went to university, were highly qualified professionals or were involved in academia. They did not belong to the working class, neither were they members of the political elite. They preferred to be against the establishment, adopting ‘new strategies to influence the course of the new mass-society that was slowly coming into being’.16 The article, the essay, the public meeting or the manifesto were some of the methods used by Spanish intellectuals to act upon the political sphere.17 The figure of the intellectual, and the use of the term to designate a particular group of individuals and practices, arose in part as an immediate response to the events surrounding the Montjuïc trial, and in part due to the impact of the Dreyfus affair in the Spanish press. Zola and his J’accuse were a model for Spanish intellectuals who, however, emerged out of their own political and social conflicts. This chapter shows that the reaction of the Spanish elite to the political crisis of 1898 was also key. While the Montjuïc trial helped to spread the use of the term ‘intellectual’ as a noun in Spain, the events of 1898 encouraged particular Spanish professionals (writers, teachers, doctors) to participate in the public sphere in specific ways.18

Intellectuals and the regeneration of the Spanish nation

No somos más que los llamados, con más o menos justicia, intelectuales y algunos hombres públicos los que hablamos a cada paso de la regeneración de España.19 (Only those of us who are called, with or without good reason, intellectuals and some public men speak at every step about the regeneration of Spain.)

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In 1898, US battleships defeated Spanish naval forces in the SpanishAmerican War. This event meant the end of the Spanish Empire and represented a considerable shock to Spain’s national identity. A year earlier, Cánovas del Castillo, the founder of the Restoration system, had been killed by the Italian anarchist Angiolillo. The lack of political leaders and the narrowness of available channels for participation in politics encouraged writers, professors and other liberal professionals to publish articles and organize public meetings in order to instigate change. The reaction to the perceived decline of the Spanish nation resulted in the birth of a new intellectual and political movement: Regenerationism. Some years later, Santiago Ramón y Cajal recalled how the Disaster of 1898 had affected him and others who had started to participate in the public sphere: Aquel desfallecimiento de la voluntad sacome del laboratorio, llevándome después, cuando la conciencia nacional sacudió su estupor, a la palestra política. La prensa solicitaba apremiantemente la opinión de todos, grandes y chicos, acerca de las causas productoras de la dolorosa caída, con la panacea de nuestros males. Y yo, al igual de muchos, jóvenes entonces, escuché la voz de la sirena periodística. Y contribuí modestamente a la vibrante y fogosa literatura de la regeneración, cuyos elocuentes apóstoles fueron, según es notorio, el gran Costa, Macías Picabea, Paraíso y Alba. Más adelante sumáronse a la falange de los veteranos algunos literatos brillantes: Maeztu, Baroja, Bueno, Valle Inclán, Azorín, etc.20 (That weakness of the will brought me out of the laboratory, later taking me, when the national consciousness shook itself out of its stupor, to the political arena. The press urgently sought the opinion of everyone, young and old, on the causes that produced our painful decline, as well as the panacea for our illnesses. And I, like many other young men at that time, listened to the voice of that siren, the press. And I contributed modestly to the exciting and passionate literature of the regeneration, whose eloquent apostles were, as is well known, the great Costa, Macías Picabea, Paraíso and Alba. Later, other brilliant writers joined the phalanx of these veterans: Maeztu, Baroja, Bueno, Valle Inclán, Azorín, etc.)

Writers, scientists, lawyers and scholars promoted the regeneration of the Spanish nation in what has been described as the ‘birth of intellectual power’ in Spain.21 This movement did not follow the paths traditionally used to intervene in politics because most of these intellectuals were not involved in parliamentary parties. The one exception was the Unión Nacional (National Union), an unusual political association that Joaquín Costa, Basilio Paraíso and Santiago Alba had founded in 1900 to gather together Spanish productive forces. Intellectuals were opinion leaders who were appreciated for their professional success. They had the moral authority to convince their audiences how Spain should be changed. What was the mission they set out to accomplish? During the reaction to the Disaster of 1898, Miguel de Unamuno wrote an article called ‘Los futuros’ 238



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about the role that the ruling classes and intellectuals should play within these circumstances. He asked them to avoid a rushed regeneration. In his opinion, they should think about ‘el fin de su propia Patria’ (the objective of their own country) and, above all, they should study Spanish society in order to ‘sacarle su inconsciente ideal de vida’ (discover its unconscious ideal of life). Political and cultural elites should allow society to lead the way. Leaders had to understand their nation; they must be examples, but not guides, according to Unamuno. In short, the intellectual and ruling classes should study their country to discover its needs and how to help it bring about the ‘felicidad temporal y eterna de sus hijos’ (the temporal and eternal happines of its children). Unamuno summarized his article as follows: El deber de los intelectuales y de las clases directoras estriba ahora, más que en el empeño de modelar al pueblo bajo en éste o el otro plan, casi siempre jacobino, en estudiarle por dentro, tratando de descubrir las raíces de su espíritu.22 (Today, the duty of the intellectuals and ruling classes consists in studying its inner workings, in order to find the roots of its spirit, more than in an effort to shape the lower classes through this or that plan, almost always Jacobin.)

Unamuno encouraged intellectuals to search for the essence of Spain. However, there was a considerable difference between this goal and the remedies proposed by other intellectuals and articulated as the Europeanization of Spain. Writers, scientists and other members of the Spanish elite promoted the Europeanization of the country and the education of the Spanish upper class as a means of solving the problems of Spain which Lucas Mallada had spoken about almost a decade earlier in his Los males de la patria y la futura revolución española (The ills of the Patria and the future Spanish revolution) (1890).23 The trio comprised of Baroja, Azorín and Maeztu, wanted to bring together the idea of Europeanization and the search for the essence of Spain in their journal, Juventud (Youth), in which Unamuno had previously published articles. In 1901, they recommended following the ‘espíritu europeo’ (European spirit) and, at the same time, they wanted a ‘restauración sobre la base de lo existente’ (a restoration built on the base of what existed).24 Most intellectuals thought that Spanish regeneration should begin with reform of the national education system. The idea was to elevate the tone of the Spanish elite and imitate the so-called ‘naciones cultas’ (cultivated nations),25 in particular the major European countries and the United States. Although Rafael María de Labra and others wanted to educate the working classes, most Spanish intellectuals wanted to train a new ruling class, following the European models. ‘Aspiremos’, wrote Santiago Ramón y Cajal in 1901, ‘pues no a suprimir el cacique, sino a educarlo y mejorarlo’ (Let us aspire, not to abolishing the cacique, but to educating and improving him).26 Three years before, in an article in El Liberal, he had requested that the funds 239



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corresponding to the Ministry of War, ‘la mayor parte de ese presupuesto, hoy infructuosamente gastado en Guerra y Marina’ (the main part of this budget, today fruitlessly spent on War and the Navy), be spent on education. That money should be used, he said, to train ‘hombres de ciencia superiores’ (great men of science). He suggested a system of scholarships to help outstanding Spanish students to travel abroad and visit the main educational centres in Europe. When they came back to Spain, they would put what they had learnt into practice.27 In the early twentieth century, Baroja and Azorín demanded that Spanish government encourage young writers to go abroad. In their magazine Juventud, they suggested combining national introspection and opening up to a European spirit.28 In contrast to this, Unamuno criticized such attempts to Europeanize Spain and his novel Amor y pedagogía (Love and Pedagogy) (1902) mocked these efforts to train genius. Intellectuals frequently made vague and contradictory proposals, but the pressure they exerted led to some concrete reforms in education. In 1900, the Spanish Ministry of Education was founded, and in 1907 the Spanish government set up the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (Board of Advanced Studies and Scientific Research), which followed the ideas of Francisco Giner de los Ríos. Afterwards, a residential centre for undergraduates, similar to an English college, was established in Madrid, and Lorca, Buñuel and Dalí would later live there in the 1920s. Most of those who proposed a regeneration showed interest in the reform of the education system, including the members of the so-called Generation of 1914, who were committed to educational projects such as the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios.29

Experts in protest: The making of the Spanish intellectuals

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the intellectual was gaining visibility as a result of responses to specific events of the 1890s, including the Montjuïc trial and the Spanish–American War of 1898. As the role developed and evolved, the intellectuals’ experiences of these events, and their continued participation in debate and political protest distinguished them even further from the men of letters of the earlier nineteenth century. In 1905, Miguel de Unamuno wrote an article for Nuevo Mundo (New World) with the title ‘¿Quiénes son los intelectuales?’ (Who are the intellectuals?). In the early twentieth century, Spanish journals and newspapers frequently used this new name, and Unamuno wanted to know who the term referred to and why. From his point of view, intellectuals were writers, but writers were not necessarily intellectuals. Something else was required for this: No puede ni debe consentirse que traten los literatos de monopolizar el dictado de intelectuales, cuando se puede ser un muy apreciable, y hasta en ciertos

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What distinguished intellectuals from writers and the nineteenth-century men of letters (hombre de letras) was their social function. According to Santos Juliá, the emergence of a mass society in Spain had created a new position and role for writers in the community. An intellectual participated in public life, but was also at a remove from it. Aspiring to inform and to shape public opinion, he or she nevertheless was not a leader of a social class or group. Intellectuals were still considered moral guides who spoke on behalf of their compatriots, but they did not view themselves as members of the multitude they wanted to represent.31 Although intervention in politics was a characteristic of intellectuals in Spain and beyond, they never, or rarely, used traditional channels for participation. To begin with at least, they did not support any one political party’s line of thinking, but were active as advocates of moral values such as justice or truth. However, this changed after the First World War as many intellectuals became involved in political corporations. Thus, in France, Julien Benda published La Trahison des clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals) (1927), a denunciation of the way French intellectuals had betrayed their moral function. The Spanish case was quite similar. Although some came out in support of individual politicians, most intellectuals who comprised the so-called Generation of 1898 were not in public office, with the exception of Azorín who became a member of the Spanish Parliament in 1907. Later, however, noteworthy intellectuals such as Julián Besteiro or Manuel Azaña would take up important roles in public office and become active participants in governments.32 The first Spanish intellectuals were not leaders of political parties, but paid close attention to politics, inciting people to protest against governments at specific moments and in relation to specific issues. In 1927, in a reference to his fight against Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, José Ortega y Gasset said that Spain was ‘el único país donde los intelectuales se ocupan de política inmediata’ (the only country where intellectuals took on the most immediate political challenges). He was right, in that the figure of the Spanish intellectual had emerged in the context of protest movements that had denounced specific injustices. These manifestations of social criticism may have been broadly directed against the ruling classes and the establishment, but public involvement took the form of public interventions in the specific events of the 1890s and after.33 241



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After the public controversy generated by Benito Pérez Galdos’s play Electra, in 1901, Spanish intellectuals increased their activities in the public sphere, gaining even further visibility. When Eugenio Montero Ríos was elected Prime Minister in 1905, many intellectuals, led by Galdós, signed a manifesto entitled ‘El país y los políticos’ (The country and the politicians) to protest against the appointment of ‘ese anciano’ (that old man), who, not only got his son-in-law a job in the government, but symbolized the Spanish defeat of 1898: he had signed the Treaty of Paris. The end of the Spanish Empire in the Americas had been a foundational event for a generation of public writers and for their rebellion against the system of Restoration government. This historical symbol was included in this protest. The manifesto was published by a significant number of newspapers, and some of these, such as El Imparcial or El País, supported the protest. However, others were critical of the manifesto’s signatories: they were not ‘desconocidos’ (unknown), and although they were ‘alejados y desdeñosos de la política’ (removed from and scornful of politics), they used their ‘hermandad con el mundo intelectual’ (close relationship with the intellectual world) to become ‘jueces de este linaje de ambición’ (judges of this lineage of ambition).34 The authors of the manifesto spoke on behalf of a ‘pueblo entregado’ (surrendered nation), but their protest can be described more as a kind of temper tantrum than a coherent political programme; they were not demanding anything, just protesting. It was not explicitly stated in their manifesto that Montero Ríos should resign, but they criticized him for his former activities and his unfashionable manners. Their opposition to the new Prime Minister was connected to the defeat in the Spanish–American War of 1898. Moreover, this protest resembled a desperate lament for the failure of a political regeneration to materialize. The title of the manifesto, ‘El país y los políticos’ (The country and the politicians) suggested they were denouncing the entire political system that Montero Ríos symbolized. By the end of 1905, Montero Ríos’s government had fallen, but his resignation came about as a consequence of a separate political issue, unrelated to the protest. The Prime Minister resigned because King Alfonso XIII supported the sections of the army which stormed the offices where ¡Cu-Cut!, a satirical Catalan magazine, and La Veu de Catalunya, a Catalan newspaper, were published. Soldiers and officers destroyed and burned part of the building. In order to justify these attacks, it was alleged that these publications had insulted the army. Many intellectuals believed that this incident threatened freedom of speech. Unamuno, who had not signed the manifesto, immediately wrote an anti-militarist article, though he published it in an unknown journal.35 The attack on the offices of ¡Cu-Cut! and La Veu de Catalunya led to the Prime Minister’s resignation and, in 1906, to the implementation of a new 242



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Ley de Jurisdicciones (Law of Jurisdictions) which recognized the right of military judges to intervene in cases of offence to the flag, nation or army and effectively legalized the military attacks against the Catalan periodicals. Before the law was passed in Parliament, intellectuals responded to the proposed changes, organizing a public lecture by their most famous representative, Unamuno. This event, which was recognized as a public meeting of intellectuals, was celebrated in the Zarzuela Theatre in Madrid on 25 February 1906. As a public protest, the lecture allowed Unamuno to present himself as a Spanish version of Zola: ‘Yo me interesé profundamente en el asunto Dreyfus cuando agitó a toda Francia. Seguí paso a paso todas las peripecias de la lucha entre la pluma y la espada, y estudié la tragedia en que fueron protagonistas Zola y Mercier’ (I was extremely interested in the Dreyfus affair when it shook France. I followed step by step all the developments in the fight between the pen and the sword, and I studied the tragedy in which Zola and Mercier were the main protagonists).36 The meeting was well attended, and many newspapers published comments and news about the event. The audience included writers (Emilia Pardo Bazán), Republican politicians (Emilio Junoy) and members of the army, who were sent to check whether the speeches were against the law. Unamuno gave a moderate lecture, even saying that the army might be something positive for Spain: ‘quizá constituya un bien para España’ (it might constitute a benefit for Spain). In the role of intellectual, he incited his audience to protest against militarism, but he did not propose any solution or programme: ‘Yo no traigo programa, no traigo específico, no me gustan las soluciones concretas, vengo sólo a activar los espíritus y avivar las entrañas’ (I do not bring a programme, nor specific remedies, I do not like concrete solutions, I have come only to stimulate spirits and stir up hearts).37 Unamuno participated in the protest as an intellectual and not as a politician. He did not, therefore, have to propose solutions. However, he used a metaphor to suggest that he would prefer the Spanish people to be more interested in culture than weapons: ‘Si Don Quijote volviese a nacer, dejaría el lanzón y la adarga arrimados a un árbol y tomaría la pluma’ (If Don Quixote were to be reborn, he would put down his spear and his oval shield by a tree and he would pick up a pen).38 Although his tone was moderate, his lecture provoked controversy in the Spanish public sphere. While newspapers such as El Día or El Imparcial praised the speech, La Vanguardia published a review of the event that mocked the speaker and criticized the intellectuals who had invited him, ‘los sedicentes intelectuales e intelectualas’ (those would-be intellectuals, male and female). Because of the great expectations surrounding this meeting, many thought it was not really successful, but Unamuno had accomplished his self-assigned mission: to stir up public opinion and promote protest. In the end, the Law of Jurisdictions was passed. However, while 243



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specific issues could provide conduits through which the role of intellectual could be articulated and put into practice, according to Unamuno, the specific issues were in themselves insignificant.39 What was important was that these protests made Spanish intellectuals visible in the public sphere, allowing their audience to identify them as a defined group. In this respect, the reaction among intellectuals to the execution of Francisco Ferrer i Guardia, who was found guilty of being an instigator during the Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909, is crucial. His death had an obvious symbolic meaning. Many of the elements that had encouraged intellectuals to participate publicly in protest were present in this case, such as colonialism, militarism and clerical influence in public life. The location was also important. Ferrer i Guardia was executed in Montjuïc fortress, thus recalling the torture, arrests and executions that had taken place there in the 1890s. Moreover, Ferrer was an educationalist, free-thinker and activist, and many intellectuals from Spain and other countries had viewed him as one of their own.40 His execution therefore shocked the European intelligentsia. In many countries, such as Germany, France and Italy, detailed information about the judicial process was disseminated by newspapers, which either supported or criticized the decision of the Spanish government. All over Europe, societies of free-thinkers and libertarian groups organized demonstrations and other events to protest against his execution. However, the Spanish intellectuals, who had not paid much attention to Ferrer’s trial, transformed the reaction to his execution into a protest against the then Prime Minister, Antonio Maura, and against recent Spanish military campaigns in Morocco. On this occasion, intellectuals, led by the writer and then member of Parliament Peréz Galdós, had a clear political objective: Maura’s resignation. The campaign was carried out through articles, parliamentary debates and demonstrations. According to Marichal, the events that took place after execution of Ferrer marked the start of Spanish intellectuals’ participation in ‘actividad política … como grupo social definido’ (political activity … as a defined social group).41 Eventually, Alfonso XIII decided to replace Maura as Prime Minister, demonstrating the importance public opinion had assumed in the political arena.42 To summarize, some Spanish writers and scientists became intellectuals through their association with specific public protests. Miguel de Unamuno was the main figure of the Spanish intelligentsia before the First World War. From the 1910s, intellectuals assumed a more direct and active role in politics. José Ortega y Gasset and Manuel Azaña would become the models for the new type of intellectual that emerged in Spain with the establishment of the Liga de Educación Política (League of Political Education) in 1913.

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Conclusion: The emergence of a new social agent in Spain

From the 1890s onwards, Spaniards could become intellectuals by actively intervening in the public sphere to protest against the political system of the Restoration. They were not men of letters who led revolutions, but they did make concerted efforts to influence public opinion and claimed to represent, if not actually belong to, the multitude. The emergence of this social agent responded to the long-term changes in European societies in the late nineteenth century. But specific events also had a role to play: French cases, particularly the Dreyfus affair, had a great influence in Spain; it was by acting in response to the Montjuïc trial that the Spanish intellectual first emerged. Once they had adopted the term, Spanish intellectuals started a process of self-construction through engagement with specific issues, and through expressions of dissent from the political system of the Restoration, with its limitations on direct participation in politics. The importance of Catalonia, especially Barcelona, an important centre of modernity in Spain, in the making of the Spanish intellectuals at the turn of the century should be highlighted. Many of the events that created a platform for the first intellectual protests took place there. Establishing a straightforward causal relationship would be risky, and there were other cities, such as Madrid, where intellectuals were also active. Nevertheless, the centrality of Barcelona in this process is beyond doubt. Intellectuals frequently used newspapers, magazines and public meetings in order to intervene in the political field. Moreover, they denounced broader problems of Spanish society: militarism, colonialism and clerical influence in public life. They refrained from proposing concrete plans or solutions to these issues, preferring instead to stimulate public opinion, to which politicians in turn paid increasing attention. Although they were reluctant to be considered as part of the people, they claimed to speak on behalf of the nation. Their Spanish audience recognized their professional success and bestowed moral authority on their opinions. However, they were criticized for their close association with the social elite. In fact, the Spanish intellectuals were a minority in an illiterate country. They were few in number, but played a significant role in the shaping of Spanish public opinion.

Notes

 1 Lewis A. Coser, Men of Ideas. A Sociologist’s View (New York: The Free Press, 1965).  2 Christophe Prochasson, ‘Sobre el concepto de intelectual’, Historia Contemporánea 27 (2003), 799–811.  3 Martin Malia, ‘What is Intelligentsia?’, Daedalus 89:3 (1960), 441–58. For further information about Petr Dmitrievich Boborykin (1836–1921), see John McNair,

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‘A Russian European: Boborykin in England’, The Slavonic and East European Review 63:4 (1985), 540–59.  4 Stefan Collini, Absent Minds. Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 15–44.  5 David Drake, French Intellectuals and Politics from the Dreyfus Affair to the Occupation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 2. See also Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Los intelectuales en Francia. Del caso Dreyfus a nuestros días (Valencia: PUV, 2007), 15–20; François Dosse, La marcha de las ideas. Historia de los intelectuales, historia intelectual (Valencia: PUV, 2007), 63.  6 Collini, Absent Minds, 15–44 (the quotation is from p. 24).  7 Paul Aubert, ‘Violence à Barcelone et naissance des intellectuels: Affaire Corominas, “Loi des juridictions”, “Semaine tragique”, Affaire Ferrer’, Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne, 47 (2012), 13–42 (see in particular pp. 15–17).  8 Quoted in Rafael Pérez de la Dehesa, ‘Los escritores españoles ante el proceso de Montjuich’, in Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Carlos H. Magis (Mexico D.F.: Colegio de México, 1970), 688.  9 Pérez de la Dehesa, ‘Los escritores españoles ante el proceso de Montjuich’, 685–94 10 Pérez de la Dehesa, ‘Los escritores españoles ante el proceso de Montjuich’, 685–94. 11 Donald L. Shaw, La generación del 98 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1977), 34–5. 12 See ‘Emilia Pardo Bazán en el Ateneo’, El Liberal, 27 January, 1897. 13 Paul Aubert, ‘Comment fait-on l’histoire des intellectuels en Espagne?’, in L’histoire des intellectuels aujourd’hui, ed. Michel Leymarie and Jean-François Sirinelli (Paris: PUF, 2003), 63–90. The quotation is from p. 63. 14 Ramiro de Maeztu, ‘El socialismo bilbaíno’, Germinal, 16 July, 1897. For further information, see Paul Aubert, ‘Intelectuales y obreros (1888–1936)’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 30 (2008), 127–54. 15 Urbano González Serrano, ‘Los intelectuales’, La Escuela Moderna. Revista Pedagógica Hispano-Americana 8:85 (1898), 241–4. The quotation is from p. 42. 16 Eric Storm, ‘The Rise of the Intellectual around 1900: Spain and France’, European History Quarterly 32 (2002), 139–60. The quotation is from p. 157. 17 Santos Juliá, Historias de las dos Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004), 63. 18 In 1899, two Spanish newspapers, El País and El Liberal, gave detailed information about Dreyfus Affair, using the term ‘intelectual’. E. Gómez Carrillo, ‘Sensaciones de París’, El País, 16 March 1899; Luis Morote, ‘Ranciedades’, El Liberal, 4 February 1899. 19 Miguel de Unamuno, ‘La vida es sueño. Reflexiones sobre la regeneración de España’, La España Moderna (November 1898), 69–78. 20 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Recuerdos de mi vida: Historia de mi labor científica (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006), 556. See also, Juan Carlos Sánchez Illán, La nación inacabada. Los intelectuales y el proceso de construcción nacional (1900–1914) (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2002), 33.

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21 Elena Hernández Sandoica and José Luis Peset, ‘Instituciones científicas y educativas’, in La edad de plata de la cultura española (1898–1936). Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal, vol. 2, ed. José María Jover Zamora (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1994), 545–80. 22 Miguel de Unamuno, ‘Los futuros’, El Globo, 6 November 1898. 23 Lucas Mallada, Los males de la patria y la futura revolución española (Madrid: Tipografía Manuel Ginés, 1890). 24 Shaw, La generación del 98, 41–2. 25 Conde de Romanones, ‘Exposición decreto’, Gaceta de Madrid, no. 201 (20 July 1901), 295. 26 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, ‘Carta a Joaquín Costa (1901)’, in Oligarquía y caciquismo como la forma actual de gobierno en España: Urgencia y modo de cambiarla, vol. 2, Informes y testimonios, ed. Joaquín Costa (Zaragoza: Guara Editorial, 1982), 310–13. 27 Santiago Ramón y Cajal, ‘Habla el país: Lo que dice el Dr. Cajal’, El Liberal, 26 October 1898. 28 See Shaw, La generación del 98, 41–2. 29 José Ortega y Gassett was interested in new pedagogical ideas, according to Juan Marichal, El secreto de España. Ensayos de historia intelectual y política (Madrid: Taurus, 1995), 189. 30 Miguel de Unamuno, ‘¿Quiénes son los intelectuales?’, Nuevo Mundo, 13 July 1905. 31 Santos Juliá, Historias de las dos Españas, 63–74. 32 Shaw, La generación del 98, 43. 33 Marichal, El secreto de España, 175. 34 ‘Protesta. El país y los políticos’, El Imparcial, 29 June 1905. The names of those who signed the manifesto are: Benito Pérez Galdós, Manuel Bueno, Francisco Grandmontagne, Pío Baroja, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Nicanor Rodríguez de Celis, Ramiro de Maeztu, Pedro González Blanco, Azorín, Manuel Machado, José María Matheu, Federico Oliver, Enrique López Marín, José Nogales, Antonio Palomero, José Verdes Montenegro, Jaime Balmes, Alfredo Calderón, Luis Paris, Edmundo González Blanco, Silverio Lanza, Luis de la Cerda, José Betancort, Manuel Ciges Aparicio, Sixto Espinosa, Antonio Flores de Lemus and Ramón del Valle-Inclán. The daily newspaper La Correspondencia Militar criticized Azorín for joining the protest. 35 Santos Juliá, Historias de las dos Españas, 100–1. 36 Miguel de Unamuno, ‘Conferencia de Unamuno’, La Correspondencia de España, 26 February 1906, 3. 37 Unamuno, ‘Conferencia de Unamuno’, 3. See also Fernando Soldevilla, El año político (Madrid: Imprenta de Ricardo Rojas, 1906), 107. 38 Unamuno, ‘Conferencia de Unamuno’, 3. 39 Miguel de Unamuno, ‘Heraldos de la verdad’, El Día, 26 February 1906; ‘Después de oír’, El Imparcial, 26 February 1906; ‘Cotidianas’, La Vanguardia, 28 February 1906. See also Soldevilla, El año político, 107. 40 In an interview in 1909 Juan Pérez Caballero, a Spanish diplomat, called Ferrer an ‘anarquista intelectual’ (an intellectual anarchist). His words caused great

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controversy in the Spanish press. ‘La ejecución de Ferrer’, El Día, 15 October 1909. According to Paul Aubert, the birth of Spanish intellectuals centred around two issues: militarism and clericalism. Paul Aubert, ‘Violence à Barcelone et naissance des intellectuels’. 41 Marichal, El secreto de España, 175. 42 See Paul Aubert, ‘Consecuencias de la Semana Trágica y del Caso Ferrer: Los intelectuales españoles y franceses frente a la Leyenda Negra de España a principios del siglo XX’, Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne 47 (2012), 143–77. See also Marichal, El secreto de España, 175.

References

Anon., ‘La ejecución de Ferrer’, El Día, 15 October 1909 Anon., ‘Emilia Pardo Bazán en el Ateneo’, El Liberal, 27 January 1897 Aubert, Paul, ‘Comment fait-on l’histoire des intellectuels en Espagne?’, in L’histoire des intellectuels aujourd’hui, ed. Michel Leymarie and Jean-François Sirinelli (Paris: PUF, 2003), 63–90 —, ‘Intelectuales y obreros (1888–1936)’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea 30 (2008), 127–54 —, ‘Consecuencias de la Semana Trágica y del Caso Ferrer: Los intelectuales españoles y franceses frente a la Leyenda Negra de España a principios del siglo XX’, Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne 47 (2012), 143–77 —, ‘Violence à Barcelone et naissance des intellectuels: Affaire Corominas, ‘Loi des juridictions’, ‘Semaine tragique’, Affaire Ferrer’, Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne 47 (2012), 13–42 Collini, Stefan, Absent Minds. Intellectuals in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Coser, Lewis A., Men of Ideas. A Sociologist’s View (New York: The Free Press, 1965) Dosse, François, La marcha de las ideas. Historia de los intelectuales, historia intelectual (Valencia: PUV, 2007) Drake, David, French Intellectuals and Politics from the Dreyfus Affair to the Occupation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Gómez Carrillo, E., ‘Sensaciones de París’, El País, 16 March, 1899 González Serrano, Urbano, ‘Los intelectuales’, La Escuela Moderna. Revista Pedagógica Hispano-Americana 8:85 (1898), 241–4 Hernández Sandoica, Elena, and José Luis Peset, ‘Instituciones científicas y educativas’, in La edad de plata de la cultura española (1898–1936). Historia de España de Ramón Menéndez Pidal, vol. 2, ed. José María Jover Zamora (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1994), 545–80 Juliá, Santos, Historias de las dos Españas (Madrid: Taurus, 2004) Maeztu, Ramiro de, ‘El socialismo bilbaíno’, Germinal, 16 July 1897 Malia, Martin, ‘What is Intelligentsia?’, Daedalus 89:3 (1960), 441–58 McNair, John, ‘A Russian European: Boborykin in England’, The Slavonic and East European Review 63:4 (1985), 540–59

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Mallada, Lucas, Los males de la patria y la futura revolución española (Madrid: Tipografía Manuel Ginés, 1890) Marichal, Juan, El secreto de España. Ensayos de historia intelectual y política (Madrid: Taurus, 1995) Morote, Luis, ‘Ranciedades’, El Liberal, 4 February 1899 Ory, Pascal, and Jean-François Sirinelli, Los intelectuales en Francia. Del caso Dreyfus a nuestros días (Valencia: PUV, 2007) Pérez de la Dehesa, Rafael, ‘Los escritores españoles ante el proceso de Montjuich’, in Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Carlos H. Magis (Mexico D.F.: Colegio de México, 1970), 685–94 Prochasson, Christophe, ‘Sobre el concepto de intelectual’, Historia Contemporánea 27 (2003), 799–811 Ramón y Cajal, Santiago, ‘Habla el país: Lo que dice el Dr. Cajal’, El Liberal, 26 October 1898 —, ‘Carta a Joaquín Costa (1901)’, in Oligarquía y caciquismo como la forma actual de gobierno en España: Urgencia y modo de cambiarla, vol. 2, Informes y testimonios, ed. Joaquín Costa (Zaragoza: Guara Editorial, 1982), 310–13 —, Recuerdos de mi vida: Historia de mi labor científica (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006) Romanones, Conde de, ‘Exposición decreto’, Gaceta de Madrid, no. 201 (20 July 1901), 295 Sánchez Illán, Juan Carlos, La nación inacabada. Los intelectuales y el proceso de construcción nacional (1900–1914) (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2002) Shaw, Donald L., La generación del 98 (Madrid: Cátedra, 1977) Soldevilla, Fernando, El año político (Madrid: Imprenta de Ricardo Rojas, 1906) Storm, Eric, ‘The Rise of the Intellectual around 1900: Spain and France’, European History Quarterly 32 (2002), 139–60 Unamuno, Miguel de, ‘La vida es sueño. Reflexiones sobre la regeneración de España’, La España Moderna (November 1898), 69–78 —, ‘Los futuros’, El Globo, 6 November 1898 —, ‘¿Quiénes son los intelectuales?’, Nuevo Mundo, 13 July 1905 —, ‘Conferencia de Unamuno’, La Correspondencia de España, 26 February 1906, 3 —, ‘Cotidianas’, La Vanguardia, 28 February 1906 —, ‘Después de oír’, El Imparcial, 26 February 1906 —, ‘Heraldos de la verdad’, El Día, 26 February 1906 Various authors, ‘Protesta. El país y los políticos’, El Imparcial, 29 June 1905

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••

How to live a colonial soldier’s life Catherine Davies

Historical biography is not a genre generally favoured in Spain, and the personal memoirs of the principal protagonists of events deemed worthy of historical record (for example, of Spanish army officers involved in war and government) have not been mined as profitably as they might have been. It is self-evident that individual people make history, singly or collectively, within the rational or irrational constraints of a given historical context. As Robert I. Rotberg has argued, ‘Social forces are important, but they act on and through individuals’; biographers are often ‘responsible for recovering the force of forgotten human agency – for rescuing critical and overlooked human efforts in the surge of historical changes’.1 The predominance of the Annales School in France, however, with its attention to deep structures and long-term processes, and its influence in the Hispanic world, eclipsed the significance of those individuals whose thoughts, decisions and actions, in their public and private lives, made a historical difference. Until the epistemological shift of the 1990s, academic biography was devalued and even trivialized in much Spanish and Latin American historiography. Fortunately, this trend has been arrested with the publication, more recently, of several important and academically rigorous biographical studies.2 Biography gives due attention to past events as experienced chronologically in a lifetime and, as I have argued elsewhere, may further our understanding of how ideas travelled from place to place and across generations.3 This chapter argues that in order to more fully understand the histories of Spain and Cuba in the nineteenth century a scholarly and objective account of Spanish colonial rule on the island is required, and that this should prioritize the ideas and actions of the individual men and women who, knowingly or unknowingly, contributed to the making, interpretation and implementation of colonial policies and administration. This chapter focuses on a critical turning-point in the life of Brigadier Ramón Labra, experienced in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in the 1840s, and which is sparsely recorded. It enquires 250



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into the historical significance of the unexpected events the Brigadier experienced, their likely impact on him and his family, and the possible long-term consequences for Cuba and Spain. It is about how he, as an individual, lived his life, and why and how this life mattered.

Brigadier Ramón María de Labra and Spanish colonial reform

In the central square of Cienfuegos, a port on the southern coast of Cuba, stands an imposing statue of Brigadier Labra. The wording on the statue reads ‘Al Inolvidable Exmo Sr Don Ramón María de Labra Dedica este Recuerdo el Pueblo de Cienfuegos’ (To his Unforgettable Excellency D. Ramón María de Labra Dedicated to his Memory by the People of Cienfuegos). The square, originally the Plaza de Armas, was named Parque Labra until 1911, and subsequently Parque Enrique Villuendas and Parque Martí. So, who was Ramón Labra and why is he of interest? Labra was appointed Political and Military Governor of Cienfuegos in February 1844, recommended by the then Captain General of Cuba, Leopoldo O’Donnell, and took up his post in July 1845.4 He served for just over three years until October 1848, as registered on his service record. The port or ‘villa’ of Cienfuegos was founded in 1819, taking the name of the then Captain General José María Cienfuegos and in 1845 had a population of 5,655 inhabitants.5 During his time in Cienfuegos Labra was responsible for a number of important initiatives in the town and its borough and his achievements were many. According to Pedro Oliver y Bravo’s Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción (Historical, geographic and statistical record of Cienfuegos and its jurisdiction) (1846), Enrique Edo Llop’s Memoria Histórica de la Villa de Cienfuegos (Historical record of the town of Cienfuegos) (1861) and the extensive Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos (Descriptive, historical and biographical record of Cienfuegos) published to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the city by Pablo Rousseau and Pedro Díaz de Villegas in 1920, Brigadier Labra introduced public lighting in the town, funded by public subscription and completed in 1847; set up the Comandancia de Ingenieros (Engineers’ Headquarters), built the Dolores bridge and improved the prison building. In addition, he encouraged the building of the drainage system, improved the postal service, introduced a steam-boat service to Havana, Trinidad and Santiago, and installed Francisco Murta’s printing press where Oliver y Bravo’s 1846 report and the town’s first newspaper, the Hoja Económica (Economic Newssheet), was published (the latter no longer exists other than as three or four single issues in the town’s library and other archives). He established the first public market with a set of regulations to improve public health (for example, in order to arrive at market in a good 251



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condition hens were to be transported in cages or baskets, not strung up) and new health regulations were introduced in the slaughterhouse and the cemetery. He built eight schools, a public gymnasium, two colleges and a Liceo Artístico y Literario (Artistic and Literary Lyceum) in which he encouraged young people to organize dances and theatre productions.6 As Head of the Ayuntamiento (Town Council), he made sure all the merchants paid their taxes, introduced fines for tipping in the streets, organized a group of ladies to fundraise for repairs to the church and laid the stone for the church bell tower, which still stands today opposite his statue.7 His final act was to commission a coat of arms for the town, which was presented to the council in July 1848. Ramón Labra was celebrated in Cienfuegos for good reason, in his own right. But he was also the father of the much celebrated abolitionist, Rafael María de Labra (1840–1918), who was responsible for the lengthy, and eventually successful, parliamentary campaign waged in the Spanish Parliament from the late 1860s until the late 1880s, to finally abolish slavery in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Rafael María de Labra founded the Spanish Abolitionist Society with Puerto Rican Julio Vizcarrondo, wrote over 140 books, a hundred newspaper articles and 130 speeches and pamphlets on the subject, notably La abolición de la esclavitud en el orden económico (The abolition of slavery in the economic order) (1873), and led a press campaign with the same objective throughout the 1860s. It is fair to say that Rafael María de Labra dedicated his entire life to the abolitionist cause. To what extent can this life choice be explained by his family’s circumstances and his upbringing during the first ten year of his life in Cuba?8 Rafael María de Labra was born in September 1840 in Havana where his father, Ramón, had been stationed since 1836; Rafael’s mother, Ramón’s wife, was Cuban. Rafael lived in Cienfuegos between the ages of five and almost nine, and departed with his family for Spain in 1849. These were formative years and clearly what he experienced as a child marked him for life. For example, in a side remark in the 1873 book, he criticized travellers to Cuba who published descriptions of slavery without knowing it properly. Slavery was for them ‘vist(a) entre un bostezo y una copa de champagne’ as ‘las negradas, de un ingenio’ [sic] (glimpsed between a yawn and a glass of champagne [as] the blacks, of a sugar mill).9 Ramón Labra, Rafael’s father, was one of several political and military governors in Cienfuegos. To have deserved a statue suggests his impact was substantial and that he was remembered fondly. It would not be unreasonable to infer that his status and statue were in some way connected to his son; however, this seems not to be the case. The first stone of the statue was laid in April 1919, with a speech by the Spanish Consul in Cienfuegos, to commemorate the centenary of the founding of the town. It might be assumed 252



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that this was also in recognition of Rafael María de Labra, who had died in Madrid exactly one year earlier, in April 1918. Indeed, Rafael María’s death was much reported in the local press, for example, in El Comercio, 18 April, which mentions in passing that Rafael had once lived in Cienfuegos, and in La Correspondencia, 18 April, which includes an important article on his works but only briefly reminds readers that his father had once been governor of the town and states that Rafael had left at the age of ten for Cadiz (in fact, he left when he was eight). There is very little sense of Rafael belonging to or having once lived in Cienfuegos. Ramón deserved his statue on his own merits, and indeed in 1919 a prize of 200 pesos was offered by the Casino Español (Spanish Casino) and the Centro de la Colonia Española de Cienfuegos (the Centre of the Spanish Colony of Cienfuegos), for a historical monograph of no fewer than twenty pages double-spaced on ‘la actuación del Gobernador político y militar de Cienfuegos, Brigadier Don Ramón María de Labra’ (the achievements of the political and military governor of Cienfuegos Brigadier Don Ramón María de Labra).10 It was won by the priest José María Cortés, but this short text has apparently since disappeared. How did Ramón Labra come to be Brigadier and to be posted to Cienfuegos? Ramón Labra y Gómez was born in Asturias and was studying law at Oviedo University when Napoleon’s army invaded Spain. He swopped his toga for his sword, as his son was later to write, and enlisted in the Infantry Volunteers the day Asturias declared war on Napoleon in 1808.11 This army of raw recruits had been formed by the Asturian Junta (local government) working independently from Madrid and composed of liberal revolutionaries who would later make a major contribution to the 1810 Cortes (Parliament) and the 1812 Constitution of Cadiz, for example, Flórez Estrada and Agustín Argüelles. In this same army were Asturians Rafael Riego, leader of the Spanish liberal revolution of 1820, and Juan Díaz Porlier, who tried to force Ferdinand VII to accept the Constitution, both of whom were executed (in 1823 and 1815 respectively). Ramón Labra fought throughout the Peninsular War as captain in the Pontevedra Regiment achieving a distinguished record in the battles of Salamanca, Alba de Tormes and in Barcelona. After the War and Ferdinand VII’s Restoration, he was ordered in 1820, like many of his fellow officers, to sail to the Americas with Pablo Morillo’s troops to put down the independence movements which had begun in earnest in 1810. He was actively involved in the subsequent mutiny in Cadiz, led by Riego, which was betrayed by fellow officer Enrique O’Donnell, and he was imprisoned but released during the liberal government of 1820–23. In 1823 Labra once again fought the French whose military invasion of Spain had been authorized by the Holy Alliance in order to revoke the 1812 Constitution and restore absolutism in Spain. He was captured after the fall of Pamplona and exiled to France and 253



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England for ten years, like many other Spanish liberals, until Ferdinand’s death and the amnesty of 1834. In September 1836, during Queen María Cristina’s regency, Labra was promoted from first Commander to General of the Galician Peninsular Infantry regiment and posted to Cuba by Mendizábal’s radical liberal government, recommended by the new Captain General of Cuba, Leopoldo O’Donnell (nephew of Enrique O’Donnell). In short, Ramón Labra was a committed liberal constitutionalist who was to serve in the Spanish Army for 55 years and whose life encapsulates the experiences of the so-called ‘generación revolucionaria’ (revolutionary generation) originating in the Napoleonic resistance.12 In 1839, while in Havana, he married – in the cathedral – the Cuban creole Rafaela Cadrana, and Rafael, their only child, was born in 1840. In 1841 he was awarded the Royal and Military Order of St Hermenegildo by the Spanish Regent Baldomero Espartero, and in 1843, Queen Isabel II having ascended to the throne, with Francisco Serrano as Minister of War, he was promoted to Brigadier of his regiment.13 Further orders in May 1844 instructed Labra and two other brigadiers (Fulgencio Sales and Angel Loño) to remain on the island. In 1845 Labra was posted to Cienfuegos. Rafaela Cadrana, his wife, was the daughter of the honorary provincial Intendente and Factor General de Tabacos (Honorary Quartermaster General and Tobacco Agent) in Cuba, Ignacio González Cadrana, Knight of the Order of Carlos II. Ignacio Cadrana figures in several lawsuits, mainly to do with his office, but one relates to his other daughter, Ana, who in 1834 married a Spanish lieutenant in the Lances Squadron, Ramón Martínez López de Ayala. This officer demanded from Ignacio the 3000 pesos owed to him as part of his new wife’s ‘military dowry’.14 In 1844, a year before Ramón Labra took up his post in Cienfuegos, Manuel González Cadrana, Ignacio’s son, Labra’s future brother-in-law, was appointed by Royal Decree to the position of clerk to the Adminstración de Rentas (Revenue Administration) in Cienfuegos, to fill a vacant post and recommended by his father’s 45 year service as Jefe de Hacienda (Head of Tax Office) in Cuba.15 The Cadranas were therefore well placed in the colonial administration of the island. Not everyone agreed with Brigadier Ramón Labra’s appointment in Cienfuegos. The Royal Decree of 29 June 1845 refers to O’Donnell’s request three years earlier that the incumbent Political and Military Governor of Cienfuegos, Juan Flores, be retired from his post and replaced by Labra.16 The Queen had noted Flores’s protest. He wanted to continue in his post, and he too wanted to be promoted to Brigadier. It was recommended that he should be retired but treated well in his ‘destino pasivo’ (retirement).17 It may be that O’Donnell was keen to post Labra to Cienfuegos because of the very particular situation of that town at the time. In fact O’Donnell visited his friend in Cienfuegos at the end of December 1844 to check on his progress. Flores and 254



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Labra had replaced, in turn, the Conde de Fernandina, Juan Louis Lorenzo de Clouet, the original founder of the French immigrant colony (known as the Colonia de Fernandina de Jagua). Clouet had expected the governorship to remain in his family in perpetuity. In a lengthy correspondence with the Queen he complained that the rights he was conceded by Ferdinand VII in 1829 had been removed by the revolution of 1840 (when Espartero took over the Regency in Spain). Nevertheless, in his letter to the Queen of February 1845, he wrote that he was willing to renounce the governorship temporarily ‘interin lo desempeña el digno Brigadier D. Ramón María de Labra puesto que haberlo merecido la confianza del integro Capitán General (O’Donnell) de la isla de Cuba la aprobación de V.M., no podrá menos de reunir las cualidades necesarias para el desempeño de tan importante cargo. Ruego por lo tanto que lo conserve en él’ (while Brigadier D. Ramón María de Labra is in post, given that the trust placed in him by the upright Captain General of Cuba had met with the approval of Your Majesty, it must be expected that he has the qualities needed for such an important post. I beg therefore that Your Majesty keep him there).18

Cienfuegos in the 1840s

In the 1840s the port of Cienfuegos, described by Oliver y Bravo as ‘el más espacioso y magnífico de todos los de la isla’ (the most extensive and magnificent of all those of the island),19 was experiencing an unprecedented economic boom due to the largely unexpected growth of the sugar industry, unexpected because the colony of Jagua and its capital Cienfuegos, had been founded for an explicitly different purpose: to encourage mixed arable and livestock farming by white settlers from Louisiana and New Orleans. The population of the port when Labra took up his post was 5,655 inhabitants: 3,471 (c.61 per cent) white; 1,027 (c.18 per cent) free blacks and mulattoes; and 1,157 (c.24 per cent) slaves.20 According to Orlando García Martínez, sugar production in Cienfuegos had increased from 0 in 1827 to a million arrobas twenty years later.21 Cienfuegos was undergoing ‘el más violento boom que recuerda la historia cubana’ (the most violent boom recorded in the history of Cuba).22 By 1859 the Cienfuegos region accounted for 9 per cent of the sugar production of the whole island. In 1846 there were 71 ‘ingenios’ (sugar plantations) and 101 in 1856. The wider jurisdiction of Cienfuegos had a population of 29,000. Of these 16,000 were white, 9,000 slaves and 4,000 free black. The black population was 44 per cent of the total, and the slave population 30 per cent of the total. The numbers (c.7,000) were about the same for the white and black population between the ages of 16 and 60, which caused increasing concern among the white elite.23 Outside the town, in the sugar plantations, the population 255



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was 4,500, about three times the number in 1838. Many of the cattle ranches, vegetable plots and coffee estates had been converted to sugar plantations, and there was huge land speculation. The average number of slaves in each sugar plantation doubled from 57 to 105 during the 1840s and 1850s.24 Many of the free blacks were slave owners and free black families were among the most respected in the town, namely the Soto, Coimbra and Karel families, some of whom were among the original Louisiana settlers of the 1820s. For example, Estefanía Hernández, the daughter of the mulatto slave María de la O and the Canary Islander Marcos Hernández, owned a splendid house on the southwest corner of the square where Labra’s statue now stands. The increase in sugar production signified, of course, a huge demand for labour. Slaves were transferred from coffee to sugar estates locally and they were brought by the plantation owners from other parts of Cuba, but many were also brought into the island illegally to supply the Trinidad-Cienfuegos region. This was the period when Venezuelan Tomás Terry Adams, who started out in Cienfuegos as shop assistant, made his fortune to become one of the richest millionaires in Cuba by dint of land speculation, sugar production, the illegal trafficking of slaves and their reselling at extortionate prices to a market avid for the supply of labour. Oliver y Bravo’s Memoria histórica, published in 1846, states that 445,483 arrobas (11,137,074 lbs; 4,972 UK tons) of sugar were produced in 1845, as well as rice, maize, bananas and vegetables.25 By 1851 Cienfuegos was the fifth largest port in Cuba with imports worth 310,741 pesos fuertes (cf. Havana 17, 913, 310) and exports of 506, 256 (cf. Havana 14, 172, 563).26 The Hoja Económica of 14 April 1853 registers, for a single day, ships in Cienfuegos with cargo and passengers sailing to and from: Kingston, Jamaica; New York; Philadelphia; St John’s, Newfoundland (the latter registered with Terry Adams showing that he exported sugar to Canada); Halifax, Nova Scotia; Cadiz; La Coruña and Santander in Spain. On that one day there is substantially more commerce with Canada and the United States than with Spain. The 1840s, however, was also a decade of fear and unrest in Cuba. The colonial authorities, apprised by slave holders in December 1843 of a suspected slave uprising in the Havana-Matanzas area, had reacted swiftly to uncover and repress any such conspiracy. The alleged plan, devised by free blacks and mulattoes to declare the independence of Cuba, was communicated to the authorities by the wealthy Cuban creole, Domingo del Monte, fearful of Cuba becoming a black republic similar to Haiti. In a brutal campaign instigated by O’Donnell, the coloured militia was disarmed, 3,000 slaves and free blacks tried, slaves tortured and some 80 shot or otherwise killed.27 Robert L. Paquette concluded in his study of what later became known as La Escalera (Ladder) Conspiracy of 1843–44, allegedly orchestrated by the late British Consul, David Turnbull, that there was no such major conspiracy but 256



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several uncoordinated overlapping conspiracies.28 These were aggravated by the ambitions of US white southerners keen to annex the island to the United States by undermining Spanish authority in a series of filibustering raids on Cuban ports. There is no reference to La Escalera conspiracy in any of the documents associated with Labra but the fact that he was posted to Cuba and instructed to remain on the island in 1844 is no doubt directly linked to this unrest. The Spanish military presence increased from 9,000 soldiers in 1837 to 19,185 in 1849. Even in 1841 of every five white men of military age on the island, one was a soldier, a situation much resented by the Cuban creoles.29 Most of these soldiers (28 per cent) were Galicians, as were the soldiers of Labra’s regiment, or Andalusians (14.75 per cent) and many died of disease; in the 1850s the death rate among the troops was 50 per cent.30 Despite the heightened racial tensions during the La Escalera episode, Labra successfully maintained peace in Cienfuegos and attempted to avert the persecution of the slaves and potential race conflict. He was instrumental is quashing an alleged slave conspiracy in Cienfuegos which could easily have resulted in bloodshed. This was the so-called Conspiración de la Corbata (The Necktie Conspiracy), which he resolved in April 1844. In October 1843 a hurricane had blown down a number of fences and several hens were stolen from households over a period of six months. The thieves who took the hens tied them up with their black neckties. One of the hens was found by its owner, Madame Adelina Petitt, with a black necktie round its neck. This was interpreted by a nervous and fearful French community as a sure sign of an impending slave conspiracy, the black tie indicating that the slaves would hang the white men and take their wives and daughters to the mountains. Labra investigated the matter and, with the help of the shopkeeper who sold the ties, found the culprits. These were none other than a group of impecunious young white men who robbed the hens and took them to Monsieur Caseaux’s cook, Juan ‘el criollo’ (the creole), to add flavour to his celebrated dish of yellow rice. They had left Mme Pettit’s hen behind as it was too old to cook. Labra interviewed the alleged conspirators, admonished them and encouraged them to spend their time more usefully studying. Several went on to become leading figures in the Cienfuegos Lyceum and the Philharmonic Society, which Labra set up.31 The first programme for the new Isabel II Theatre was printed in Cienfuegos some months later, on 21 December 1845, an evening performance that consisted of two comedies, by Bretón de los Herreros and Ventura de la Vega, two opera arias (from Norma and L’Ipermestra) and Bellini’s Capuletos overture.32

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Labra, victim of Narciso López’s US-backed filibustering invasion

The most interesting aspect of Ramón Labra’s governorship in Cienfuegos, however, and the most symptomatic of the tensions in 1840s Cuba, was his sudden departure from his post in 1848. The Provincial Archives in Cienfuegos retain the original minutes of the regular meetings of the town council, chaired and signed by Labra while he was governor: the ‘Actas capitulares, primer cuaderno de sesiones celebradas por la Junta Municipal’ (Committee Minutes, first volume of the meetings held by the Muncipial Board). These state that Labra was responsible for the ‘Gobierno, Administración, Recaudación, y Contribución de Fondos’ (government, administration, tax collection and contribution to public funds) of the Cienfuegos jurisdiction. The last minutes signed by Labra, in his small neat handwriting, were those of 4 November 1848. This was an extra-ordinary council meeting to swear in as interim governor Captain Julián Sanz, who was to replace Labra as instructed by the new Captain General of Cuba, Federico Roncali, Count of Alcoy, who had relieved O’Donnell eight months earlier. Labra gave a speech congratulating Sanz on his promotion and thanking the town council for their good sense and their assistance over the years. Sanz replied on behalf of the council, unanimously, to thank Labra for his virtudes muy relevantes, el tino, rectitud, juicio y prudencia con que ha sabido regir los destinos de esta naciente villa … su carácter enérgico, celo e ilustración que en circunstancias difíciles y apremiantes para esta población … ha sabido desplegar … hermanando en todo sus actos administrativos y judiciales la justicia con la equidad. (virtues very appropriate to his post, the good sense, honesty, judgment and prudence with which he has directed the fortunes of this newly founded town … his energetic character, commitment and enlightenment which in difficult and urgent circumstances for the town… he has displayed … applying in all his administrative and judicial decisions justice with fairness.)

Labra was given a vote of thanks and the Council expressed their sadness at his departure. On 10 November the council minutes, no longer signed by Labra, recorded that as proof of its gratitude the ‘Ilustre Ayuntamiento en cuerpo’ (the Illustrious Town Council in full) would accompany Labra and his family to their point of embarkation. Obviously this was a sudden departure, not mentioned in the previous council minutes of 4 July 1848 which had been replete with details about the design of the new coat of arms entrusted to Gregorio Díaz de Villegas, or in the meetings of 1 and 22 August. But there was some indication of trouble brewing. Labra had wanted to hand over his ‘hacienda’ (taxation) responsibilities (as ‘subdelegado de rentas’ [subdelegate 258



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of revenue]) in order to dedicate himself more fully to his other administrative and military duties. This had been agreed by O’Donnell in February 1848, shortly before O’Donnell’s departure from the island. But in July Labra was given orders to take back the responsibility for revenue and taxes, owing to the current political circumstances, which he did. He announced this at the Council meeting of 1 August. The accompanying letter from Intendencia (Army Service Corps/Quartermaster), signed 13 July, asked Labra to increase security and take special care with the safe at Customs, ‘con la lealtad, inteligencia y eficacia que tiene acreditadas’ (with the loyalty, intelligence and efficiency with which you are credited).33 There had recently been a robbery in the Customs office and the culprit, none other than José Gregorio Díaz de Villegas, designer of the coat of arms, had been arrested. This was no petty theft, however; it was an early indication of what would later be known as the first Narciso López conspiracy, also known as the Conspiracy of the ‘Mina de la Rosa Blanca’ (White Rose Mine), named after López’s copper mine near Trinidad. A communiqué held in the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba, dated Cienfuegos 5 July 1848, that is, a day after the coat of arms council minutes and a week before the request to increase security, was sent from Labra personally to Narciso López summoning López to present himself forthwith. Labra, in turn, was carrying out orders issued by the Ayudante de Campo (Field Adjutant) Captain General Juan de Trespalacios. Needless to say, López never appeared. A notice was published in the Hoja Económica and in the Diario de la Habana on 3 November 1848, but by then López was in the United States planning his next raid.34 Field-Marshal Narciso López Iriarte (1797–1851) was some ten years older than Labra, a distinguished superior officer and a former acquaintance. He had been born in Venezuela and, orphaned at a young age, had joined the Spanish army fighting against the insurgents in the wars of independence. He was promoted to colonel, fought in Spain in the Carlist wars and served as Military Governor in Madrid. In 1840 he was promoted to Mariscal de Campo (field-marshal), exceptionally as very few Spanish Americans were promoted to this rank, and posted to Cuba to assist Captain General Jerónimo Valdés. There he married a Cuban, the sister of the Count of Pozos Dulces, but lost his political influence with the appointment of Captain General O’Donnell in 1843. Five years later a disaffected López had made alliances with influential Cuban exiles and politicians in the United States who were intent on annexing Cuba. They were backed by wealthy Cuban slave holders who were fearful that the Spanish government would abolish slavery, especially following Spanish Foreign Minister Martínez de las Rosa’s law of 1845 which clamped down on trafficking and introduced penalties ranging from imprisonment to fines for owners, investors, ship captains and their crew.35 259



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All in all, López headed four unsuccessful filibustering raids on Cuba, organized and funded in the United States, in June 1848, July 1849, May 1850 and August 1851. The attack on Cárdenas on 19 May 1850, at 3 o’clock in the morning, was carried out by 500 men, mainly Anglo Americans, described by the town’s officials as ‘una gabilla de aventureros acaudillados por el traidor Don Narciso López’ (a gang of adventurers led by the traitor D. Narciso López).36 López was expelled from the Spanish army in August 1848, captured in the final raid, and executed in 1851. López’s conspiratorial movements in the summer of 1848, which implicated Labra, were subsequently reconstructed by Herminio Portell-Vilá who published a three-volume book on the López conspiracies. According to Portell-Vilá, López sent a message to Labra to say he was on his way to meet him but in fact rode 16 hours on horseback, caught a train, and on 7 July, disguised as a sailor, boarded a ship that took him from Matanzas to Rhode Island, Providence. José Gregorio Díaz de Villegas and José María Sánchez Iznaga, López’s uncle, were later arrested and confessed. The conspiracy was leaked by Sánchez Iznaga’s elderly father, Pedro Gabriel Sánchez, to Captain General Federico Roncali. The plan was that López, who knew Labra well – he addresses his reply to Labra ‘Amigo Mío’- was to seize Cienfuegos with a group of rebels armed with weapons sent from the United States on 24 June, San Juan Day, during the festivities. But the ship supplying the arms failed to turn up and the rebellion was postponed. Labra was interviewed on 5 July on a Spanish warship dispatched by Havana to Jagua Bay, after which he sent the message to López. Portell-Vilá asks, ‘Conocía o no lo que se tramaba el brigadier Labra? Pregunta es esta que no podemos contestar con certeza absoluta’ (Did Brigadier Labra know what was being planned or not? This is a question we cannot answer with absolute certainty).37 The conspirators were later released and no further action was taken, although the absent López was eventually condemned to death (on 3 March 1849).38 According to Díaz de Villegas, after the French revolution of 1848 and the release of slaves in the West Indies, the conspirators were afraid a Spanish republic would similarly abolish slavery and considered that Cuba’s interests were best served in the slaveholding US Confederacy. In the words of General José de la Concha, writing shortly after López’s execution, La revolución de Francia, ocurrida en febrero de 1848, y las conmociones de todo el continente europeo, hubieron de parecerles como providenciales para sus ideas. La abolición de la esclavitud en las colonias francesas, y la sugestión de que estendiéndose la revolución en España pudiera esta adoptar una medida semejante, eran medios de eficaz propaganda en el país, mientras que por otro lado, en lo que acontecía en los Estados Unidos respecto a la misma institución, veían nuevos motivos para que los Estados de esclavos se apresurasen a buscar un recurso de salvación en la anexación de Cuba. He ahí, pues, el origen del proyecto

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How to live a colonial soldier’s life de anexación; de la conspiración descubierta en Trinidad en 1848, y que tenía a su frente al no mucho antes Comandante general del mismo departamento, D. Narciso López.39 (The French revolution of February 1848, the revolts across the whole of Europe, must have seemed opportune for their plans. The abolition of slavery in the French colonies, the suggestion that if the revolutions were to extend to Spain, Spain might adopt a similar measure, provided effective propaganda in Cuba, while on the other hand, in what was happening in the United States with respect to the same institution, they could perceive that the US slave states might speedily find a means of annexing Cuba. This was then the origin of the annexation conspiracy; the conspiracy discovered in Trinidad in 1848, which had at its head the former General Commander of the same region, D. Narciso López).

The New York publication, La Verdad, edited by Cuban Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, reported that US President James Knox Polke and the Secretary of State James Buchanan, encouraged by their military successes in Mexico, knew about the conspiracy and had informed Roncali because their aim was to purchase Cuba, not to incorporate it into the United States, but to possess it as a colony. Unlike most historians, Portell-Vilá (a López admirer) argues that López did not want the United States to annex Cuba; although the US Cabinet had debated whether to invade the island, with troops who had fought in Mexico, or to purchase it from Spain, López’s aim was to secure an independent, republican Cuba.40 The view at the time, however, was that López was motivated by disaffection (he had been appointed to the position of Governor of Trinidad by his friend Captain General Valdés but lost this influence under O’Donnell), and above all by financial gain (he was paid a large sum for filibustering and hoped to offset several unsuccessful business ventures including a bread shop, a sugar plantation and mining which had all failed in bankruptcy).41 Although López escaped in 1849, the rest of those involved were brought to trial. They were all absolved or, in the case of José María Sánchez Iznaga, exiled to New York.42 According to Roncali, the chief culprits were the Cuban exiles in the United States, principally Cirilo Villaverde, author of the novel Cecilia Valdés, and fellow conspirators such as Francisco Mateo, Gaspar de Acosta y Rondón, Mr Williams H. Buchs, Sebastián Alfredo de Morales and the poet Miguel Teurbe Tolón.43

The consequences for Labra

The effect of these events on Ramón Labra was devastating. He was officially relieved of his post by a Royal Decree of 29 August 1848, and suspended from the army. He stepped down on 18 October 1848 and left Cienfuegos just over two weeks later. A Royal Decree dated one year later, 12 July 1849, sent from the Minister of War in Madrid to Roncali states the following: that 261



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the ‘Consejo de Guerra’ (Military Tribunal) held in Havana on 24 January 1849 ‘en averiguación del grado de culpabilidad que pudiera resultarle por la fuga que hizo a país estranjero el ex-mariscal de campo Narciso López’ (to judge the extent to which he could be blamed for the escape of ex-Field Marshall Narciso López to a foreign country), found unanimously that Labra was ‘exento de toda responsabilidad’ (exempt from any responsibility).44 Labra’s trial immediately preceded López’s, suggesting they had colluded, and although Labra had been finally absolved and López and José María Sánchez Iznaga sentenced to exile, López’s sentence was swiftly revised to the death penalty.45 Labra had been accused by Roncali of not moving swiftly to arrest López, of showing too much respect for his superior officer and therefore of not fulfilling Trespalacios’s orders: López ‘logró fugarse prevaliéndose de las atenciones y miramientos que por un exceso de consideraciones usó con su persona el Gobernador de Cienfuegos’ (managed to escape by taking advantage of the excessive courtesy and respect that the Governor of Cienfuegos showed towards him).46 On 24 July 1849 another Decree stipulated that the episode should not figure on Labra’s service record (and it has not), and that he should be reinstated in the army as Brigadier of Infantry.47 The conclusion of the tribunal was that: se absuelve libremente al Brigadier Labra porque no puede dudarse que han desvanecido completamente los cargos que se le han hecho … lejos de mostrar indecisión que se haya supuesto y falta de actividad y celo por el mayor servicio, fue arreglado y conforme a lo que se le previno.48 (Brigadier Labra is completely absolved because there can be no doubt that the charges made against him have been entirely dismissed … Far from being indecisive, as supposed, or slow to act to carry out his orders, he was prompt and obeyed instructions as required.)

Although Labra was found innocent, the ten-month suspension and the six-month wait for an official verdict broke his health. There is no mention of ill-health before the summer of 1848; at 60, he seemed to be fit and well. But it was on grounds of ill-health, after thirteen years of service in Cuba, that he requested to return to Spain. He and his family left Havana at the end of April 1849 and arrived in Cadiz in June. After some months in the barracks in Cadiz, on a salary of 20,000 reales, Labra was appointed Military Governor of Almeria for a year but stepped down on grounds of ill-health in 1851 after just eight months. In 1863 he left active servies and was given permission to live in Madrid. References to his ‘quebrantada salud’ (broken health) are frequent during the 1860s in his correspondence with the palace requesting leave in Oviedo and Valencia to restore his health.49 He died aged 82 in May 1870. The episode, to my knowledge, is not mentioned by Rafael María de Labra in his scores of books and articles, it does not figure on Ramón Labra’s service 262



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record, and it is not referred to in the Cienfuegos centenary commemorations. However, it is interesting to note that the document ‘Sobre la deposición de Brigadier Ramón María de Labra por no haber contenido la fuga de esta isla del Mariscal de Campo Narciso López’ (On the removal from office of Brigadier Ramón María de Labra for not having contained the flight of FieldMarshal Narciso López from this island) was published by the Boletín Archivo Nacional, Havana, in 1916, two years before Rafael’s death. The raid on Cienfuegos and Trinidad was not an isolated event, ‘pues ni era aislado el movimiento como suponía, ni descubriéndolo sus delegados conseguían más que aplazar la ejecución de los proyectos’ (the movement was not isolated, as supposed, nor did its delegates do anything other than defer the projects when they were discovered).50 As stated, Narciso López tried three more unsuccessful filibustering raids on Cuba aided by mercenaries from the United States.51 Life in Cienfuegos, however, carried on. The council minutes were carefully taken well into the 1850s, the Hoja Económica continued with local and national news and the economic boom increased in intensity into the 1870s, but the cultural and civic vibrancy of the 1840s was diminished. Ramón de la Sagra visited the town in 1859 and published his account in Paris in 1861. There, he writes, according to his friend – a distinguished Cienfuegos lawyer – the town was entirely dedicated to money-making (‘materialismo’): La vida, para el mayor número de aquellos habitantes, se pasa entre la llegada de los bocoyes de azúcar y el embarque de los bocoyes de azúcar, por lo cual decía mi amigo que el Dios Bocoy era la divinidad adorada en Cienfuegos.52 (Life, for the majority of those inhabitants, carried on between the arrival of the sugar loaves and the loading of the sugar loaves, for which reason my friend said that God Sugar Loaf was the adored divinity of Cienfuegos)

It was a town in which the men worked all day, in the mills, the port, the offices, the law courts, a town devoid of culture or entertainment, where the streets were deserted in the evening, and where the women especially were bored to death.53 There is no mention of Labra in Sagra’s account. Neither is Labra referred to in Victoria María Sueiro Rodríguez’s study of the development of cultural modernity in Cienfuegos. Sueiro Rodríguez identifies the 1840s as the decade that first witnessed ‘el influjo de la modernidad ilustrada’ (the influx of enlightened modernity).54 In this first phase the elites created a cultural environment that suited their interests and tastes. It was marked by the creation of five associations, two of which were set up by Labra: the Liceo Artístico y Literario and the Sociedad Filarmónica (Philharmonic Society). These associations made possible the development of education, print culture, the discussion of literature and art in evening salons, the professionalization of orchestras, a regular programme of plays and concerts, the establishment 263



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of college chairs of art and gymnastics, the formation of a distinctive regional literary tradition and the organization of diverse public cultural events. It was through participation and collaboration in these cultural activities that a sense of belonging and citizenship was created, including a heightened interest in local, national and foreign news. Local pride in the town was reflected in its public buildings and neoclassical architecture. The late 1870s marked a second phase characterized by the growth of black and ‘pardo’ (coloured) associations which gave rise to a plethora of mixedrace cultural activities. The Cienfuegos area was celebrated for its mixed race orchestras and its black music teachers of national and international standing (for example, the black pianist and composer José Manuel Jiménez Berroa (Lico) Jiménez (1851–1917) who was appointed Director of the Hamburg Conservatory of Music). In this respect, Cienfuegos was exceptional for having produced ‘un importante y apreciable sector de negros y mestizos ilustrados que se esforzaron por elevar el nivel cultural y educacional de sus iguales’ (an important and impressive sector of enlightened blacks and mestizos who strived to raise the cultural and educational levels of their peers).55 There can be little doubt that Labra’s initiatives kick-started this process, hence his recognition in Cienfuegos today and the city’s status as a UNESCO world heritage site. And it is perhaps no coincidence that the eventual economic demise of Cienfuegos was brought about by the legal abolition of slavery, begun by Moret’s Law of 1870 and completed in 1886, for which the lawyer, parliamentary deputy and abolitionist Rafael María de Labra, Ramón Labra’s son, was largely responsible.56

Notes

 1 Robert I. Rotberg, ‘Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Considerations’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40:3 (2010), 305, 324.  2 For example, Rafael Sánchez Mantero, Fernando VII (Madrid: Arlanza, 2001); Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II. No se puede reinar inocentemente (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2004); Raúl Pérez López-Portillo, La España de Riego (Madrid: Silex, 2005); Pedro J. Ramírez, La desventura de la libertad. José María de Calatrava y la caída del régimen constitucional español en 1823 (Madrid: La Esfera, 2014); Juan Gay Armenteros, De Burgos, el reformista ilustrado (Madrid: FAES, 2014).  3 Catherine Davies with Sarah Sánchez, ‘Rafael María de Labra and Ramón Labra: Two Generations of Revolution and Liberal Reform in Spain and Cuba’, Hispanic Research Journal 11:1 (2010), 11–24.  4 Archivo Nacional de Cuba (hereafter AN) Reales cédulas y órdenes, 29 June 1845, no. 194, Legajo 138.  5 Pedro Díaz de Villegas and Pablo Rousseau, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919 (Havana: El Siglo XX, 1920), 93.

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 6 Pedro Oliver y Bravo, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción (Cienfuegos: Imprenta de D. Francisco Murta, 1846), 19–25; Enrique Edo Llop, Memoria histórica de la villa de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción (Cienfuegos: Imprenta El Telégrafo, 1861); Díaz de Villegas and Rousseau, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919. Pedro Oliver y Bravo, Cienfuego’s first historian, was Secretary to the Education and History Sections of the Diputación Económica de la Villa (Town Council, Commercial Department) and was commissioned by Labra to write the Memoria. Enrique Edo Llop, born in Valencia, Spain, in 1837, founded several newspapers in the city in the 1860s.  7 Enrique Edo Llop, Memoria histórica de la villa de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción, 125–8, 143–55. The Hoja Económica de Cienfuegos reported on Sunday 13 February 1848 that Labra would attend the laying of the foundation stone for the bell tower at a ceremony at 5  p.m. The church had taken fifteen years to build. This one copy of the Hoja is held among the papers pertaining to the legal case brought by Alejandro Clouet, Conde de Fernandina, son of the founder of the Jagua colony, Luis Clouet, requesting a pension for his widowed mother, Clara López de la Peña, for the services rendered to Spain by his father who had died in July 1848. The pension was refused. Archivo de Indias, Seville, Ultramar 174.  8 For more information on Rafael María de Labra, see María Dolores Domingo Acebrón, Rafael María de Labra. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Las Filipinas, Europa y Marruecos en la España del sexenio democrático y la restauración (1871–1918) (Madrid: CSIC, 2006); Catherine Davies with Sarah Sánchez, ‘Rafael María de Labra and La Revista Hispano-Americana 1864–1867: Revolutionary Liberalism and Colonial Reform’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 87:7 (2010), 915–38.  9 Rafael María de Labra, La esclavitud en el orden económico (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Noguera, 1873), xvii. Italics in original. 10 Centenario de Cienfuegos. Comisión Central Organizadora de las Fiestas martes 22 de abril de 1919 (Cienfuegos: Imprenta Riquelme, 1919). 11 Rafael María de Labra, Las Cortes españolas de 1810–1813 (Madrid: Imprenta Valentín Tordesillas, 1910), 2. See Davies with Sánchez, ‘Rafael María de Labra and Ramón Labra’, 22–4. 12 Daniel R. Headrick, Ejército y política en España (1866–1898) (Madrid: Tecnos, 1981), 56. Other officers of his generation who fought for the Constitution included Espoz y Mina and Lacy. Antonio Sendras Burín describes Labra as an ‘antiguo progresista, parte principal del movimiento liberal de 1820; uno de los tres jefes de defensa en Pamplona en 1823; emigrado 11 años en Inglaterra y compañero de [Evaristo] San Miguel y [Ramón] Calatrava’. See Antonio Sendras y Burín, Don Rafael María de Labra. Estudio biográfico (Madrid: Imprenta E. Saco y Brey, 1887), 5. 13 AN, Reales cédulas y órdenes, 31 August 1843, no. 139, Legajo 130. 14 AN, De Cotés, 1841, no. 10, Legajo 131. 15 AN, Intendencia, no. 93, Legajo 1121. 16 AN, Reales cédulas y órdenes, 29 June 1845, no. 194, Legajo 138. 17 AN, Reales cédulas y órdenes, 29 July 1845, no. 222, Legajo 171.

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18 Oliver y Bravo, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos, 49. When Louis de Clouet died in Spain in July 1848, his son Alejandro, persisted in the claim. 19 Oliver y Bravo, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos, 30. 20 Rousseau and Díaz de Villegas, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919, 93. Oliver y Bravo gives slightly different figures: total population 5,649: 3,471 white, 1,027 free blacks and mulattoes (‘pardos y morenos  libres’) and 1,151 slaves, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos, 52. 21 Orlando García Martínez, Esclavitud y colonización en Cienfuegos 1819–1879 (Cienfuegos: Ediciones Mecenas, 2008), 68. 22 Manuel Moreno Fraginals, El Ingenio, 3 vols (Havana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1978), 1:143. 23 García Martínez, Esclavitud y colonización, 69. 24 García Martínez, Esclavitud y colonización, 75. 25 Oliver y Bravo, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos, 52. 26 Archivo de Indias, Santo Domingo 1307. 27 Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade. The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (London: Picador, 1997), 748. 28 Robert L. Paquette, Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), vii. 29 Manuel R. Moreno Fraginals and José Moreno Masó, Guerra, migración y muerte (el ejército español en Cuba como vía migratoria) (Barcelona: Fundación Archivo de Indianos/ Ediciones Júcar 1993), 55, 60. 30 Moreno Fraginals and Moreno Masó, Guerra, migración y muerte, 60, 63. 31 Díaz de Villegas and Rousseau, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919, 88–9. 32 Díaz de Villegas and Rousseau, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919, 93. 33 AN, Intendencia, 13 July 1848, no. 77, Legajo 1052. 34 AN, Intendencia, no. 37, Legajo 100. 35 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 750. 36 Archivo Militar, Segovia, Caja 5943, expediente 47144, Sección 9. 37 Herminio Portell-Vilá, Narciso López y su época, 3 vols (Havana: Cultural S.A., 1930), 1:249. 38 Robert Granville Caldwell, The Lopez Expeditions to Cuba (1848–1851) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915), 46. 39 José de la Concha, Memorias sobre el estado político, gobierno y administración de la Isla de Cuba (Madrid: José Trujillo, 1853), 28. 40 Portell-Vilá, Narciso López y su época, 1:282. 41 Mariano Torrente, Bosquejo económico político de la Isla de Cuba (Madrid: Imprenta D. Manuel Pita, 1852), 30–5. This is also the view of Hugh Thomas in Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971), 217. 42 Those who were tried were José Sánchez Iznaga, José Gregorio Díaz de Villegas,

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Rafael Fernández de Cueto, Francisco Días de Villegas, Ladislao Landa, Antonio Guillermo Sánchez, Gabriel Montiel, Pedro Manuel Sánchez Iznaga, José Joaquín Verdaguer, Juan Bautista Entenza, Francisco Poveda, José González Abreu, Francisco y Lucas Castro y Alejo and Pedro Iznaga, all persons of good repute. Joaquín Llaverías, La Comisión Militar Ejecutiva y Permanente de la Isla de Cuba (La Habana: El Siglo XX, 1929), 95. 43 Llaverías, La Comisión Militar Ejecutiva, 96. 44 AN, Reales cédulas y órdenes, 12 July 1849, no. 136, Legajo 148. Also in the Archivo Militar, Segovia, Legajo L-36. 45 Letter from Captain General to the Minister of War, 3 November 1849, Archivo Militar de Segovia, Legajo L-1666, Carta 288. 46 Archivo Militar de Segovia, Legajo L-1666, letter to Ministry of War signed by Roncali 8 February 1849. 47 AN, Reales cédulas y órdenes, 24 July 1849, no. 134, Legajo 148; no. 136, Legajo 148: ‘absolviendo de culpa y pena sin que le sirva de nota en su carrera al Brigadier Ramón María de Labra debiendo también ser repuesto en su empleo’ (absolving Brigadier Ramón María de Labra from blame and punishment without it being registered on his service record and reincorporating him in his employment). 48 Archivo Militar de Segovia, Legajo L-36. 49 Archivo Militar de Segovia, Legajo L-36. 50 Justo Zaragoza, Las insurrecciones en Cuba. Apuntes para la historia política de esta isla en el presente siglo (Madrid: Imprenta Manuel G. Hernández, 1872), 588. 51 Archivo Militar de Segovia, Caja 5943, Exp. 47144, Sección 9; Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, ‘Cuba: Gobierno y Capitanía general’, 9–0511, Col. C 1851. 52 Ramón de la Sagra, Historia física, económica, política, intelectual y moral de la Isla de Cuba (Paris: Librería Hachette, 1861), 179. 53 De la Sagra, Historia física, económica, política, intelectual y moral de la Isla de Cuba, 189–90. 54 Victoria María Sueiro Rodríguez, ‘Cienfuegos 1840–1898: Vida y cultura en una ciudad interior de Cuba’, Anuario del Archivo Histórico Insular de Fuerteventura (2002), 261–88. 55 Sueiro Rodríguez, ‘Cienfuegos 1840–1898’, 288. 56 I would like to thank Alejandro García Rodríguez of the Archivo Histórico de Cienfuegos and Sarah Sánchez for their generous assistance in the research for this chapter.

References

Burdiel, Isabel, Isabel II. No se puede reinar inocentemente (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2004) Centenario de Cienfuegos. Comisión Central Organizadora de las Fiestas martes 22 de abril de 1919 (Cienfuegos: Imprenta Riquelme, 1919) Concha, José de la, Memorias sobre el estado político, gobierno y administración de la Isla de Cuba (Madrid: José Trujillo, 1853)

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Davies, Catherine, with Sarah Sánchez, ‘Rafael María de Labra and Ramón Labra: Two Generations of Revolution and Liberal Reform in Spain and Cuba’, Hispanic Research Journal 11:1 (2010), 11–24 —, ‘Rafael María de Labra and La Revista Hispano-Americana 1864–1867: Revolutionary Liberalism and Colonial Reform’, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 87:7 (2010), 915–38 Díaz de Villegas, Pedro, and Pablo Rousseau, Memoria descriptiva, histórica y biográfica de Cienfuegos 1819–1919 (Havana: El Siglo XX, 1920) Domingo Acebrón, María Dolores, Rafael María de Labra. Cuba, Puerto Rico, Las Filipinas, Europa y Marruecos en la España del sexenio democrático y la restauración (1871–1918) (Madrid: CSIC, 2006) Edo Llop, Enrique, Memoria histórica de la villa de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción (Cienfuegos: Imprenta El Telégrafo, 1861) García Martínez, Orlando, Esclavitud y colonización en Cienfuegos 1819–1879 (Cienfuegos: Ediciones Mecenas, 2008) Gay Armenteros, Juan, De Burgos, el reformista ilustrado (Madrid: FAES, 2014) Granville Caldwell, Robert, The Lopez Expeditions to Cuba (1848–1851) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1915) Headrick, Daniel R., Ejército y política en España (1866–1898) (Madrid: Tecnos, 1981) Labra, Rafael María de, La esclavitud en el orden económico (Madrid: Imprenta de J. Noguera, 1873) —, Las Cortes españolas de 1810–1813 (Madrid: Imprenta Valentín Tordesillas, 1910) Llaverías, Joaquín, La Comisión Militar Ejecutiva y Permanente de la Isla de Cuba (La Habana: El Siglo XX, 1929) Moreno Fraginals, Manuel, El Ingenio, 3 vols (Havana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales, 1978) Moreno Fraginals, Manuel R., and José Moreno Masó, Guerra, migración y muerte (el ejército español en Cuba como vía migratoria) (Barcelona: Fundación Archivo de Indianos/ Ediciones Júcar 1993) Oliver y Bravo, Pedro, Memoria histórica, geográfica y estadística de Cienfuegos y su jurisdicción (Cienfuegos: Imprenta de D. Francisco Murta, 1846) Paquette, Robert L., Sugar is Made with Blood: The Conspiracy of La Escalera and the Conflict between Empires over Slavery in Cuba (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988) Pérez López-Portillo, Raúl, La España de Riego (Madrid: Silex, 2005) Portell-Vilá, Herminio, Narciso López y su época, 3 vols (Havana: Cultural SA, 1930) Ramírez, Pedro J., La desventura de la libertad. José María de Calatrava y la caída del régimen constitucional español en 1823 (Madrid: La Esfera, 2014) Robert I. Rotberg, ‘Biography and Historiography: Mutual Evidentiary and Interdisciplinary Considerations’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40:3 (2010), 305–24 Sagra, Ramón de la, Historia física, económica, política, intelectual y moral de la Isla de Cuba (Paris: Librería Hachette, 1861) Sánchez Mantero, Rafael, Fernando VII (Madrid: Arlanza, 2001)

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Sendras y Burín, Antonio, Don Rafael María de Labra. Estudio biográfico (Madrid: Imprenta E. Saco y Brey, 1887) Sueiro Rodríguez, Victoria María, ‘Cienfuegos 1840–1898: Vida y cultura en una ciudad interior de Cuba’, Anuario del Archivo Histórico Insular de Fuerteventura (2002), 261–88 Thomas, Hugh, Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971) —, The Slave Trade. The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (London: Picador, 1997) Torrente, Mariano, Bosquejo económico político de la Isla de Cuba (Madrid: Imprenta D. Manuel Pita, 1852) Zaragoza, Justo, Las insurrecciones en Cuba. Apuntes para la historia política de esta isla en el presente siglo (Madrid: Imprenta Manuel G. Hernández, 1872)

269

Index

abdication 21–2, 48 Abellán García, José Luis 78 absolutism 3, 66, 91, 93, 253 Adelman, Jeremy 14 Age of Discovery 18 Aguayo, Antonio de 90, 93–100, 103 Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de 70–4, 79 Alas, Leopoldo 68, 175 Alba, Santiago 238 aleluyas 128–30, 133, 137 Alkon, Paul 67–8 Altamira, Rafael 235–6 Álvarez Durán, Francisco 67 Americas 6, 15, 18, 20–6, 40, 43, 92, 151, 242, 253 Spanish America 16, 21, 25, 27, 44, 176, 183 Amorós, Juan Bautista 68, 78–9 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 44 Armitage, David, and Jo Guildi 13 Ateneo 204, 224–5, 236 Ateneo de Señoras 204 Aubert, Paul 236 Audiencia 15–17, 20, 27 Avellaneda, Gertrudis see Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis Azaña, Manuel 241, 244 Azorín 79, 235–6, 238–41 Badiou, Alain 38 Balmaseda, Joaquina see García Balmaseda, Joaquina Balmes, Jaime 64–5, 68, 95 Barcia, Roque 68 Baroja, Julio Caro 134

Baroja, Pío 238–40 Bauman, Zygmunt 66 Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo 74, 175, 226 Beiser, Frederick 64–5 Bernaldo de Quirós, Constancio 132 Bhabha, Homi 38 Blanco White, José María 4 Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 235 Blay, Miguel 117 Böhl de Fáber, Cecilia see Caballero, Fernán Bourdieu, Pierre 5 Bretón de los Herreros, Manuel 75, 221, 257 bullfighting 2, 162–6, 178 Burdiel, Isabel 4 Bury, J.B. 66 Butler, Judith 167 Caballero, Fernán 164–5 Cadiz Constitution 24–5, 92 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 53, 133, 162 Calderón, Salvador, and Enrique Serrano 49 Calleja, Rafael 184 Campoamor, Ramón de 50–1, 116, 226 Cannadine, David 39–40 Canon Law 92–3 Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio 235–6, 238 Carlist war 26, 259 Carominas, Pere 235 Carrasco, Juan Bautista 46–7 Carvounas, David 76–8 Castelar, Emilio 99, 223, 228 Democracia, La 98–9, 228

270



Index

Castro, Rosalía de 2, 64, 77–9 Castro y Pajares, Fernando de 90, 99–103 Catholic Church 2, 6–7, 14, 16–17, 23, 27, 42, 65, 90, 94, 96, 100, 102–3, 115 Neo-Catholicism 94–8, 179 see also faith Catholic Monarchs 14–16, 45 Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote 45, 52, 243 Charles II 18 Charnon-Deutsch, Lou 183 Chataway, Christopher, and Philip Goodhart 165 chivalry 6, 43, 149–52, 162, 166 Christian art 114–15 Cid, El 75–6, 78, 150–3, 162 Cilla see Ramón Cilla, Francisco Clarín see Alas, Leopoldo Cole, Thomas 112 colonialism 1, 14–15, 18–19, 42, 76, 193, 202, 234, 244–5 250–64 neo-colonialism 42 postcolonialism 38 Colton, Joel 67 Connell, R.W. 149, 151 corrida see bullfighting Costa, Joaquín 235, 238 Craig, Cairns 76 the Crown 6, 15, 20, 25, 89, 151 Cruz, Jesús 155, 158, 165 Cruz, Ramón de la 153, 160 Cuddy-Keane, Melba 45 Daix, Pierre 110 Darwinism 115 determinism 128–9 Díaz de Villegas, José Gregorio 258–60 Díaz de Villegas, Pedro, and Pablo Rousseau 251 Dicenta, Joaquín 236 Disaster of 1898 238 Draper, John William 115 Dreyfus affair 234, 237, 243, 245 duelling 161–2, 179, 185 fencing 161–2, 165–6 Durán, Fernando 4

Edo Llop, Enrique 251 Elias, Norbert 127, 165 Elliot, John 16–17 empire 6, 13, 16–19, 24–5, 42 Holy Roman Empire 16 Spanish Empire 152, 238, 242 Enlightenment 18, 42, 93, 132, 152, 222 Escalera, La 256–7 Espigado Tocino, Gloria 196 Espronceda, José de 72, 79, 225 exile 3–4, 26, 48, 90–3, 253, 259, 261–2 Fabian, Johannes 74–5 Fabra, Nilo María 174 faith 6, 17–18, 23, 90–1, 98–100, 103, 153 see also Catholic Church Felipe V 18–19, 48 Ferdinand VII 21–5, 91, 253–5 Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile see Catholic Monarchs Fernández, James D. 74 Ferrer i Guardia, Francisco 244 Fildes, Luke (Sir) 112 Flores, Antonio 68, 71–2, 77–9 Fombona, Evaristo 202 Fontanella, Lee 79 Foucault, Michel 38 French Revolution 21–2, 69, 260–1 Friedrich, Caspar David 112 Galdós, Benito see Pérez Galdós, Benito Ganivet, Ángel 75, 77–9 García Balmaseda, Joaquina 203 Correo de la Moda, El 192, 199, 203 García Gutiérrez, Antonio 220, 226 García Mora, José 90, 102–3 Garrido, Fernando 70–1, 221 gender 1–3, 5–6, 44, 113, 119, 147–67, 225 Generation of 1898 78–9, 241 Gil y Carrasco, Enrique 72 Giner de los Ríos, Francisco 235, 240 Glorious Revolution 2, 99, 102 Golden Age 133–4 Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro 137–8

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Index

Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis 44–5 González Blanco, Edmundo 177 González Serrano, Urbano 237 Gorriti, Juana Manuela 200–1 Goya, Francisco de 130 Grassi, Ángela 191 Great Powers 6, 42, 44 Greenhouse, Wendy 115 Groot, Jerome de 73 Haidt, Rebecca 79, 152 Haney, David, and Donald Wehrs 39 Hartzenbusch, Juan Eugenio 220 Hentea, Marius 79 Hoar, Leo J. 182 Hualde Pascual, Pilar 73 Hugo, Victor 39 Huizinga, Johan 76 Huntington, Daniel 114–15 iconography 111–16, 224 idealism 99, 113, 116–18, 234 imperialism 1, 13, 43, 45, 89, 153, 167 Inquisition 17, 26, 48, 91–2 Isabel the Catholic see Catholic Monarchs Isabel II 2, 4, 26, 193–4, 216, 222, 254, 257 Jameson, Frederic 54, 118 Jiménez Aranda, Luis 112 Jiménez Morell, Inmaculada 195 journalism 175–6, 180–2, 221–3 Juntas 22–3 Junta Suprema de España e Indias 22 Kern, Stephen 63–4 Kimmel, Michael 150, 158, 160 Koselleck, Reinhart 63, 66, 68 Kristeva, Julia 152 Labanyi, Jo 1, 191 Labra, Rafael María de 161–2, 239, 252–3, 264 Labra, Ramón María de (Brigadier) 251–64 Lafuente, Modesto 68–9 Lanza, Silverio see Amorós, Juan Bautista Larra, Mariano José de 72, 222, 225

Larsen, Neils 118 Lázaro Galdiano, José 176, 184–5 España Moderna, La 75, 176–7, 179–80, 184–5 Leonard, Irving 151 liberalism 3, 23–7, 43, 66, 75, 89–103, 174, 177, 180, 195, 216, 219–20, 222–4, 227–8, 236, 238, 253–4 anti-liberalism 2, 94, 102 Liberal, El 133, 176, 236, 239 Lombroso, Cesare 164 longue durée 13–14, 25–7 Lope de Vega, Félix 133 López Iriarte, Narciso (Field-Marshal) 258–63 López Martínez, Miguel 162–3, 165 López Soler, Ramón 72–3 Loveman, Brian 14 Lozano Marco, Miguel Ángel 78 Lucas Velázquez, Eugenio 2 Luis de León, Fray 48 Madoz, Pascual 43 Madrazo, Pedro de 116–17 Maeztu, Ramiro de 79, 236, 238–9 Mallada, Lucas 239 Manning, Susan 39 Mantecón Movellán, Tomás 134–5 Marr, Matthew 78 Martí-López, Elisa 39 Martín Gaite, Carmen 152–3 Martin-Márquez, Susan 72, 76 Mata, Pedro 43 materialism 113, 116–17, 218, 263 Mathews Gedo, Mary 110 Maura, Antonio 244 Melgar y Chicharro, Valentín 193, 195, 202 Méndez, Antonio 164–5 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino 175–6, 178 Mercer, Leigh 161 Mercier, Louis Sébastien 66, 243 Mesonero Romanos, Ramón de 65, 68–9, 222 Mignolo, Walter D. 38 militarism 147–8, 166, 234, 243–5 anti-militarism 242

272



Index

Mitchell, Timothy 156 Modernism 7, 45, 78, 109, 118 monarchy 2, 6, 24, 26, 40, 68, 152, 194, 220 Hispanic Monarchy 13–21, 23–5, 27 Spanish Monarchy 3 Monegal, Antonio 38 Monlau, Pedro Felipe 154, 158 Montero Ríos, Eugenio 242 Montjuïc, trials of 228, 235–7, 240, 244–5 Monturiol, Narcisco 43 Mora, José see García Mora, José Morillo, Pablo 24, 253 Morse, Richard M. 14 Murciano, Ángel 161 Museo Universal, El 41, 47, 70

Peace of Westphalia 18 Percival, Antony 182 Pérez Galdós, Benito 71–3, 140–1, 156–7, 159–60, 176, 178–80, 182–3, 185, 242, 244 Picasso, Pablo 7, 109–19 Pi i Margall, Francisco 41, 44 Piquer, José 202–3 Plato 116, 119 pliegos sueltos 130, 135, 139–41 Portell-Vilá, Herminio 260–1 Portillo Valdés, José María 23 Prado 2, 38 Putnam, Hilary 48 Puyals de la Bastida, Vicente 41

Napoleon Bonaparte 13, 21–6, 48, 253–4 Narváez, Ramón María (General) 93, 98–9 nationhood 1, 226 national identity 3, 118, 227, 238 nationality 3–4, 44–6, 149 Naturalism 49, 64, 116–19 Navarrete, José 163–5 Neira de Mosquera, Antonio 68 Nisbet, Robert 67 Noche de San Daniel 99, 102 Nuñez de Arce, Gaspar 218 Nussbaum, Martha 39–40

Quintana, Manuel José 225, 227

Ocaña, María Teresa 110 O’Donnell, Enrique 253–4 O’Donnell, Leopoldo (Captain General of Cuba) 251, 254–6, 258–9, 261 Oliver y Bravo, Pedro 251, 255–6 Orient 3, 162 Ortega y Gasset, José 241, 244 Ortega y Rubio, Juan 42, 46–7 Ortiz Armengol, Pedro 179–80 Ovidio Limardo, Ricardo 201 Palau i Fabre, Josep 110 Paraíso, Basilio 238 Pardo Bazán, Emilia 64, 75, 116, 175, 183, 236–7, 243 Paternina García-Cid, Enrique 113 Paterno, Pedro Alejandro 41, 43, 49 Paz, Octavio 14

race 1, 3, 5, 44, 74, 100, 149–51, 153, 162, 220, 257, 264 racism 40, 47 Ramón Cilla, Francisco 159 Ramón y Cajal, Santiago 236, 238–9 realism 112, 116–18 Realist fiction 1, 71, 156, 166 Reconquista 15–17, 149, 151, 165, 167 Rementería y Fica, Mariano de 147–8, 156–61 representation 1, 3, 5, 23–4, 90, 109, 112, 118–19, 134–5, 163, 191, 224–5 Restoration 184, 224, 227, 238, 242, 245 Revilla, Manuel de la 116 Revista de España 175–6, 182–3, 222 Reyero, Carlos 227 Reyes Católicos see Catholic Monarchs Richardson, John 110, 113 Riego, Rafael 253 Ringrose, David 1 Ripa, Cesare 113 Roman Curia 91–3, 101–2 Romanticism 4, 115–16, 218–20 Roncali, Federico (Captain General of Cuba) 258, 260–2 Ros de Olano, Antonio 2, 79 Rotberg, Robert I. 250 Rousseau, Pablo see Díaz de Villegas, Pedro royal court see Audiencia

273

Sáez de Melgar, Faustina 191–204 Violeta, La 192–204 Sagra, Ramón de la 263 Sánchez Iznaga, José María 260–2 Sánchez Llama, Iñigo 196 Sanz del Río, Julián 40, 45, 99 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 63–4 Scott, Walter 72–3 secularization 75, 89 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 3 Sellés, Eugenio 180–1 Sen, Amartya 42 Sennett, Richard 5 Serrano, Enrique see Calderón, Salvador Shubert, Adrian 163–4 Simonet, Enrique 113 Simón Palmer, María del Carmen 191 Sinués de Marco, Pilar 191, 195, 203 Sisters of Charity, Order of the 109, 113–14 slavery 1–2, 18–19, 21, 67, 76, 79, 252, 255–7, 259–61, 264 abolitionism 224, 252, 261, 264 Spengler, Oswald 76 Stephens, Bradley 39 Sueiro Rodríguez, Victoria María 263 Surwillo, Lisa 79 symbolism 116–19

Index Torres Caicedo, José María 200–2 Correo de Ultramar, El 200–2 transcendentalism 115–16 Unamuno, Miguel de 43, 45–8, 52–4, 79, 175, 180, 184, 235–6, 238–40, 242–4 Valera, Juan 175, 181 Valis, Noël 4, 79, 117 Valle-Inclán, Ramón del 126–7, 141 Vatican 27 First Vatican Council 97, 115 Veliz, Claudio 14 Verne, Jules 73 Vicens Vives, Jaime 177 viceroyalties 15–18, 20, 22–5 Vilaseca, David 38 Villanueva, Joaquín Lorenzo 90–3 Villapadierna, Maryse 184–5 War of Spanish Independence 90 War of the Spanish Succession 19, 48 Weber, Max 14 Wehrs, Donald see Haney, David West 1–3, 42, 67, 76, 113, 149, 155, 195, 199 Wood, Christopher S. 54 Žižek, Slavoj 38 Zola, Émile 116, 129, 234–5, 237, 243 Zorrilla, José 218, 220, 226

274

1  Pablo Picasso, Science and Charity (1897)

2  Enrique Simonet, Anatomy of the Heart; And She Had a Heart! (1890) (Museo del Prado [P6440], Permanent loan to the Museo Municipal de Málaga. © Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado)

3  Enrique Paternina García-Cid, The Mother’s Visit (c.1892)

4  Cesare Ripa, ‘Carita’, Iconologia (1593)

5  Pablo Picasso, A Holy Vision – Revelation of the Miraculous Medal (1896)

6  Juan Comba, ‘Hospital Installed in the Palace of Arts due to the Prevailing Epidemic’, La Ilustración Española y Americana (1890)

7  Pablo Picasso, Sketch for Science and Charity (1897)

8  Daniel Huntington, Philosophy and Christian Art (1868)