Reconquest and Crusade in Spain

Abstract

In the summer of 1898 the entire Spanish fleet was destroyed in two successive engagements with the navy of the United States: the most comprehensive, catastrophic and humiliating naval defeats of modern history. Not only did these reverses shear Spain of the last shreds of transatlantic empire: they also inflicted a severe psychological blow to the Spanish nation at large. Already a stranger to most of the invigorating developments in economic, cultural and political life which had transformed western Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, Spain found that her backwardness and feebleness had now been devastatingly exposed to the gaze of the world. Spain had become a laughing-stock among the nations. What had gone wrong? The ‘Generation of ‘98’ was the name given to the group of intellectuals and public men who set themselves to ponder this question. They conceived of their task in large terms. It was not just a matter of diagnosing and treating present and local sickness—to employ the medical imagery of which they were so fond—but of taking account of the whole organism which was so visibly ailing; and this involved examining its early growth. An historical dimension was built into their deliberations from the outset. It is for this reason that 1898 is a significant date for the historian of medieval Spain.