Restoration Spain Research Articles

Arming Upstanding Citizens: Dynamics of Civilian Disarmament and Rearmament in Restoration Spain

This article examines the state's actions to arm and disarm the civilian population in Spain during the convulsive final years of the Bourbon Restoration period (1917–23). While this topic has received little attention in the abundant literature on the crisis of the liberal regime in Spain, it is crucial to fully understanding the inherent causes and nature of the high levels of political violence which characterised this period. By analysing the ‘selective rearmament’ of part of the population by both legal and illegal means, this article considers the relationship between dynamics of civilian disarmament and rearmament and the evolution of the alleged state monopoly on violence in Spain.

Place and local identity in the Europe of nations: Catalonia and its cities in Restoration Spain (1875–1923)

AbstractThis article suggests that local places and civic identities were historically relevant in the period when national politics and cultures emerged in Europe but have largely not received due attention in the historiography. It argues that the production of the local is a significant factor for understanding the configuration of the nation and that it was tied to how communities—and the agents that constituted them—constructed their own subjectivity and negotiated their place in the social world. It first provides a review of recent historical studies on collective territorial identities to underscore the relative lack of attention given to the local dimension and identify approaches that can be applied to the study of local cultures. It then focuses on the case of Catalonia in Restoration Spain, showing how region‐building dynamics and nationalisation processes coexisted and interacted with strongly assertive civic identities.

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Spain: From the Epidemic to the Crisis of Liberalism

This article analyses the political impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Spain, a hitherto scarcely explored subject. It first discusses the evolution and impact of the pandemic, focusing on political and social responses. It then shows how these responses were related to debates about the crisis of Restoration Spain's political system. Lastly, it analyses the long-term political impact of the influenza pandemic, showing how the demands of this period can be linked to policies and discourses during the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, particularly regarding the links between the call for a ‘health dictatorship’ developed during the pandemic and the rhetorical use of medical language linked to authoritarian regenerationism between 1923 and 1930.

A Female Fraudster in Restoration Spain: Galdós’s Cánovas and the Curious Case of Doña Baldomera Larra’s Ponzi Scheme

This article analyses Galdós’s account in Cánovas of the historical financial fraud perpetrated in the 1870s by Baldomera Larra, youngest daughter of the writer Mariano José de Larra. It studies the contemporary press coverage of the rise and fall of Doña Baldomera’s Ponzi scheme in order to reach a better understanding of the role which Galdós assigns to this historical fraud. In Cánovas, the scheme becomes an emblem of the speculative economy of Restoration Spain. The article shows that, despite his progressive detachment from political history, Galdós remains a sharp critic of the society of his time in this final episodio.

De reyes providenciales, fidalgos y falsarios. Pelayo de Asturias y las construcciones portuguesas sobre la Restauración de España durante el reinado de Felipe IV

Los procesos de gestación de identidades políticas en la península ibérica se fundamentaron en una jerarquía de hitos y protagonistas que, entre la realidad y la leyenda, tomaron cuerpo durante el Medievo y perduraron con vitalidad hasta la Edad Contemporánea. Uno de los sujetos que reiteradamente aparecieron en los anaqueles de la memoria hispana fue «don Pelayo». El oscuro caudillo norteño —bien astur, bien hispanogodo— vadeó los caminos de la historiografía, la literatura política e, incluso, los romances populares y el teatro para convertirse en la piedra angular de los orígenes de la Monarquía de España durante la Edad Moderna. El presente artículo utilizará la figura de Pelayo de Asturias para comprender la construcción de imágenes políticas entre aristócratas, genealogistas y tratadistas portugueses durante la crisis de 1640. El estudio sinóptico de sus producciones escritas abrirá nuevas perspectivas para afrontar el estudio del pasado altomedieval durante la eclosión del goticismo, el conflicto entre Felipe IV y João IV y los procesos creativos de argumentación histórica sobre uno de los teóricos padres de las naciones ibéricas y, sobre todo, un modelo de reformación de monarquías en declive ante el espejo de la «restauración de España».

Justicia popular: el castigo de la comunidad en España, 1895-1923

El artículo analiza las numerosas tentativas de linchamiento popular que tuvieron lugar en la España de la Restauración. El principal objetivo reside en esclarecer las causas, lógicas y procesos históricos de este fenómeno de violencia colectiva. Para ello, se examinan los comportamientos sociales que suscitaron este tipo de reacción popular, las prácticas sociales, significados culturales y usos políticos que se manifestaban en estas expresiones de violencia y su relación con los procesos y estructuras políticas del Estado. Consideradas en el pasado como estallidos de ira y venganza propios de una sociedad atrasada, estas formas de violencia revelan el propósito de castigar una infracción que rebasaba los límites de lo tolerado por la comunidad, formas propias de entender la justicia y una preocupación compartida por mantener normas de conducta que preservasen ciertos modos de convivencia e integridad de la población. A su vez, estas acciones descubren la existencia de otras prácticas de castigo en la sociedad muy diferentes a los procedimientos liberales, que pudieron persistir o alimentarse en un contexto de desconfianza y descrédito de los representantes públicos e instituciones del Estado. La investigación se funda en la exploración de la prensa nacional y provincial, las fuentes gubernamentales, judiciales y bibliográficas

La campaña contra los sacerdotes pederastas (1880-1912): un ejemplo de «pánico moral» en la España de la Restauración

En este artículo se trata de analizar la campaña promovida por la prensa republicana anticlerical de la Restauración española contra los abusos cometidos por sacerdotes «pederastas». A partir de un conjunto aproximado de cuatrocientas noticias sobre el asunto, recogidas de la prensa anticlerical de la época (1880-1912), se ha constatado un total de 151 casos referidos a abusos pederastas perpetrados por el clero. La metodología utilizada se basa en la sociología norteamericana de los «pánicos morales». Después de introducir el problema, las fuentes y la cronología, se delimitan las fases que jalonan ese proceso de construcción del pánico moral acerca de los sacerdotes pederastas. Se pone de relieve el paralelismo existente entre la mencionada campaña periodística y la creciente ofensiva anticlerical entre 1898 y 1912. Por último la cruzada periodística contra los curas pederastas es analizada como un catalizador político de luchas que implicaban al mismo tiempo la dominación de género, de edad y de clase social.

Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas ed. by David R.George Jr., Wan Sonya Tang

Reviewed by: Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas ed. by David R.George Jr., Wan Sonya Tang Patricia López-Gay George, David R., Jr., y Wan Sonya Tang, editores. Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. 269. ISBN 978-3-31996-195-8. Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas, editado por David R. George, Jr. y Wan Sonya Tang, es una colección de estudios que exploran dramas televisados, contemporáneos, de la época de la Restauración española (1874–1931). Dentro del espacio de análisis de representaciones televisivas, no cinemáticas, los autores del volumen se interesan por un tiempo que—en su relación a memoria histórica en España—suele quedar a la sombra de periodos como la guerra civil española, el franquismo o el post-franquismo. Desde este prisma, el libro nos traslada a un espacio menormente transitado. Surge en la intersección de los estudios televisivos y el hispanismo y ofrece, así, un claro potencial, dada la parquedad de investigaciones en ese campo híbrido, y su posible aplicación como material docente. La obra, publicada por Palgrave Macmillan en edición de tapa dura y edición electrónica, contiene seis ilustraciones en color que entran en diálogo con el texto teórico. Entre las representaciones audiovisuales examinadas destacan dramas de época como Ull per Ull (2010), El secreto del puente viejo (2011), Barcelona, ciutat neutral (2011), Gran Hotel (2011–13), La Señora (2008–10), Acacias 38 (2015) o Seis hermanas (2015–17). Esta lista de títulos confirma algo anunciado desde el subtítulo del volumen, History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas (mi énfasis). El centro de los estudios diversos que componen el volumen son producciones televisivas aparecidas en un corto espacio temporal, posterior al año 2000. Por ello, resulta en especial bienvenida la “Introducción” (1–22), donde los editores amplían el marco histórico-contextual, remontándose, en su repaso, a la evolución de los dramas televisados de época a partir del año 1956, cuando fue creada la corporación de Televisión Española (TVE). Además, como suele ser costumbre, la introducción de los editores presenta los estudios [End Page 620] compilados, completando y afianzando así—junto al índice conceptual que cierra el volumen (263–69)—, la cohesión y unidad de los capítulos que componen el libro. Televising Restoration Spain consta de doce capítulos estructurados alrededor de bloques temáticos de similar extensión. Es de resaltar la gran diversidad de aproximaciones adoptadas por estudiosos de uno y otro lado del Atlántico, así como la variedad de cuestiones abordadas. En la parte 1 (23–50), David George y Elena Cueto Asín se preocupan, en cada uno de sus artículos, por el proceso de construcción de un legado cultural vinculado a la Restauración. Siguen los capítulos de Mónica Barrientos Bueno y Ángeles Martínez García, por un lado, y de Wan Sonya Tang, por otro. En esta parte 2 (51–76), se analiza la representación y el uso de las tecnologías tanto desde el interior de las ficciones televisadas—donde el tiempo evocado se asocia a la modernidad o al progreso—, como para fomentar afuera de estas—en el plano pragmático de la recepción audiovisual—los lazos que dichas ficciones establecen con el público contemporáneo. A continuación, en la parte 3 (77–118), Nicholas Wolters y Linda Willem indagan en la construcción del género como categoría cultural dentro de las ficciones analizadas, subrayando que, aun cuando pueda ser problemática, esta resulta indisociable de la emergencia de cierta conciencia feminista. La parte 4 (162–204) está dedicada a la telenovela y comprende otros dos capítulos, firmados por Francisca López y Concepción Cascajosa Virino. En el último módulo temático, la parte 5 (205–62), los autores respectivos, María Gil Poisa, Leslie Harkema e Iván Gómez Garc...

Laureano Calderón’s social foundry: industrial imagination and social prescription in Restoration Spain

ABSTRACTThis article introduces a new critical tool through which to analyze discursive production in fin-de-siglo Spain. Considering the cognitive transformations triggered by industrialization, it examines the conceptual models that intellectuals and artists used to evaluate social and economic problems. I propose that the industrial economy, particularly in its emphasis on the human capacity to transform reality through energy and work, produced a new logic that permeated the ways in which literary, political and social discourses of the period appropriated scientific frameworks concerning the material changes of modernization. The article demonstrates how the metaphor of the foundry came to operate as a central element of late nineteenth-century diagnoses and prescriptions concerning Spanish society. It does so by interrogating two public interventions by physicist and educator Laureano Calderón, which demonstrate that industrial, scientific and technological models determined the strategies of representation used to evaluate the most urgent problems of the country.

Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth: From Miguel de Unamuno to La Joven Literatura by Leslie J. Harkema

Reviewed by: Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth: From Miguel de Unamuno to La Joven Literatura by Leslie J. Harkema José Luis Venegas Harkema, Leslie J. Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth:From Miguel de Unamuno to La Joven Literatura. U of Toronto P, 2017. 292 pp. Borges once described James Joyce as being "menos un literato que una literatura" (Borges, Obras completas 4 251). In the same spirit, Leslie Harkema's new book successfully demonstrates that Miguel de Unamuno is much more than just an iconic figure of the so-called Generation of 1898. Unveiling a neglected literary network between the venerable Rector of the University of Salamanca and the younger poets of the Generation of 1927, Harkema dispenses with the generational paradigm to map out the development of literary culture in early twentieth-century Spain. Youth as a literary, philosophical, and cultural idea bridges the gap between Unamuno's response to the hoary structures of Restoration Spain in the late 1800s and the avant-garde impulse that seized the intellectual elite gathered around Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes in the 1920s. In exploring the transmission of this idea, Harkema traces an arc connecting Unamuno, the Generation of 27 (known at the time as la joven literatura), and European modernism. Spanish modernism thus becomes the critical frame that repositions Unamuno and la joven literatura in a comparative and transnational context unencumbered by tired generational labels. In the introduction, Harkema considers the different meanings that youth took on in Spain and Europe at the turn of the twentieth century. Engaged with wider cultural contexts while never losing sight of Unamuno, she contends that in diverse, and sometimes contrasting ways, youth is a "lyrical state" through which Spanish modernists resist the chronological and linear understandings of modernity found in, for example, Hegel and the Bildungsroman (5). In a rich chapter one, [End Page 1022] Harkema develops these insights to show how Unamuno's key ideas regarding literary form, national identity, and historical development cannot be fully understood without an examination of his opinions about youth. His critique of progress and linear time hinge on key concepts such as intrahistoria, poesis, and pistis, which, Harkema explains, converge on the creative energy of youth and the rejection of rigid teleology and cold rationality. The following chapters analyze the reception of Unamuno's "poetics of youth" among a younger group of writers who cut their literary teeth at the Residencia de Estudiantes. Chapter two highlights the impact on this group of Unamuno's Ensayos, a selection of essays edited by the Residencia press in the mid-1910s. Harkema places José Moreno Villa, who helped edit this collection, in dialogue with Unamuno to offer a nuanced interpretation of the apolitical commitment to aesthetic purity that permeated the Residencia. Harkema stresses Unamuno's influence on Moreno Villa's El pasajero (1914) and other writings. Rather than ignoring the social and political conflicts that plagued Spanish and European society at the time, Moreno Villa, taking his cue from Unamuno, sublimates them into an abstract reflection on human existence, as well as on the tension between youthful vitality and impending mortality, creation and destruction, life and death. Moreno Villa represents the Residencia's insularity, but also the residentes' capacity to grapple with "the relationship between youth and art, and incorporate the perspective of the adolescent, that recent product of modernity, into their own artistic creation" (135). Chapter three elaborates on these insights by showing how Unamuno sparked the politicization of la joven literatura against the background of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship (1923-30). A staunch critic of the regime, Unamuno went into exile but remained a point of reference for the younger poets who organized the three-hundredth anniversary of Góngora's death in 1927. His refusal to attend the event at the organizers' request has been interpreted as evidence of the rift between the older, politically-aware writer and the young aesthetes. Harkema challenges this view by arguing that Unamuno's poetic and political ideas, which cannot be divorced from the overarching notion of youth, "were very present in the younger writers' work, before and, increasingly, after 1927" (139). To substantiate this claim...

La pena de muerte en la Restauración: una historia del cambio social

The death penalty is an expression of power, full of great dramatic force, where different representations and political meanings, cultural values and social attitudes tend to converge. This article analyzes the social function and the political use of the death penalty, its forms, meanings and transformations during Restoration Spain, from public execution to its moderation, privacy and the increase in mercy. The main objective is to clarify the relationship of this complex phenomenon with different construction processes and rationalization of the structures of political power, the emergence of new sensibilities that stress the inhumane and uncivilized character of executions and the development of political actors and forms of social mobilization based on demand for rights. Thus, the changes in the forms of punishment are essential to understand the changes in the society of that time and the returns it was exposed to.

Domestic Fiction and Cursilería in the Fin-de-Siècle Novellas of Salomé Núñez y Topete

Fashion guru, author of at least ten feuilletons and collected short stories, and a constant contributor to Hispanic press, Salomé Núñez y Topete (c.1859–1931) barely features in literary studies. Yet she knew Emilia Pardo Bazán, Carmen de Burgos, Concha Espina and Blanca de los Ríos, often publishing in the same periodicals and working on joint feminist and cultural initiatives. The primary purpose of this article is to initiate Núñez y Topete's recovery as a prominent professional writer in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Spain, focusing on her fin-de-siècle novellas, serialized works of domestic fiction. The second objective is to examine how domestic fiction intersects with the cursi, a bourgeois construction that mirrored the fragility of middle-class identities in Restoration Spain. My analysis of Núñez y Topete's works extends scholarship on the cursi in the Spanish fin-de-siècle context, which has concentrated almost exclusively on male writers. The cursi was also imbricated in contemporary debates around what constituted sham and genuine culture, the retrograde and modern, and ultimately, foreign imitation and Spanish realist original. Núñez y Topete's novellas critique the sociocultural fractures that engendered the cursi and debate competing middle-class models for personal happiness and national advancement.

Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y española by Carmen Pereira-Muro (review)

Reviewed by: Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y española by Carmen Pereira-Muro Kathleen Honora Connolly Pereira-Muro, Carmen. Género, nación y literatura: Emilia Pardo Bazán en la literatura gallega y española. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2013. Pp. 227. ISBN 978-1-55753-625-9. Pereira-Muro’s study, Género, nación y literatura, analyzes Emilia Pardo-Bazán as a public intellectual and writer, who functioned as a catalyzing force for the formation of the emerging Spanish and Galician national cultures during Restoration Spain. Pardo-Bazán, for much of her career, adopted the patriarchal discourses of her time that associated women with nature and men with culture. However, Pereira-Muro argues that she was able to subvert these gender binaries by advocating for an inclusion of women in a public and participatory role in the nation. With her last novel, Dulce dueño, Pardo-Bazán was able to carve out a space for female writing, and a female voice in national culture. Her complex ideological views make her difficult to classify for some feminist scholars, as well as critics engaged in the Spanish and Galician literary canons. Pereira-Muro indicates that the anomalies or dissidences produced by Pardo-Bazán’s work are an opportunity to re-think the “naturalness” and historical validity of literary canons, and come to terms with the underlying issues of gender and power that inform them. The first chapters of the book are devoted to contextualizing the literary and cultural milieu of Restoration Spain and the Galician Rexurdimento. Pereira-Muro draws a parallel between the reluctant inclusion of Pardo-Bazán in the Spanish canon, and her exclusion from the Galician [End Page 520] one, highlighting the underlying issue of gender. The realist novel was, for intellectuals during the Restoration, the way to produce a nation that was not yet cohesive. Studying the critiques leveled against Pardo-Bazán by her contemporaries reveals the efforts to naturalize Spanish literature (and by extension, the nation) as virile, masculine, and therefore modern. Pardo-Bazán’s critics, such as Clarín, decried her works as “cursi” and wished to disqualify her from the national canon due to the fact that she was a woman, and therefore only capable of superficial imitation. Yet, Pardo-Bazán’s realist works were included in the national canon, in order to maintain the prestige and stability of the realist novel as the legitimate national narrative. Ironically, what qualified Pardo-Bazán’s works for the Spanish literary canon was what disqualified them from the Galician one. Pardo-Bazán’s transgression of gender roles, and her “masculine” literary pursuits (the realist novel), were what Manuel de Murguía, the “father” of Galician literature, attacked. For Murguía, Pardo-Bazán, as a novelist and a person, lacked appropriate “womanly” feelings; her prose was too “masculine.” Pardo-Bazán is contrasted with Murguía’s wife, Rosalía de Castro, whom he enshrined as the paradigm of Galician national literary production. Pereira-Muro underscores the gender discourses that framed the Galician national canon, which had to be emotive, lyrical, and “maternal,” so that it could be appropriated by the “fathers” of Galician nationalism, such as Murguía. Pereira-Muro dedicates the final chapter to Pardo-Bazán’s last novel, Dulce dueño (1911). The author argues that, in Dulce dueño, Pardo-Bazán was able to transcend an “impasse” in her intellectual and literary production: insisting on women’s public participation in the nation, but continuing to maintain a patriarchal view of literary and national culture. Pereira-Muro demonstrates that modernism, primarily due to its destabilization of gender categories, is the movement that helped Pardo create a narrative space that was “feminine” and at the same time modern. Dulce dueño’s female protagonist and narrator, through an intertextual dialogue with the Spanish literary canon, hagiography, and mysticism, harmonizes feminine literature with high culture in a manner that had not been available before. Pereira-Muro has conducted an extensive analysis of Pardo-Bazán’s letters, essays, speeches, and novels. This study...

El escándalo by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (review)

Reviewed by: El escándalo by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón Sarah Sierra Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. El escándalo. Ed. Ignacio Javier López. Madrid: Cátedra, 2013. 512 pp. Whether due to his position as a conservative reactionary or simply the result of unfortunate timing, Pedro Antonio de Alarcón has attracted a seemingly disproportionate amount of negative criticism relative to his contemporaries during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The circumstances surrounding this negative press, however, have more to do with the author’s socio-political ideology, which tarnished the literary legacy of his 1875 novel, El escándalo. Under this premise, in a new critical edition, Professor Ignacio Javier López examines the factors that led to the overwhelmingly negative reception of El escándalo, attributing this phenomenon to an erroneous conflation of social and political contexts with the aesthetic value of the novel. López outlines Alarcón’s social and political trajectory from the author’s early participation in radical liberalism to his eventual conversion (or return) to traditional values by the date of El escándalo’s publication. In considering the author’s reactionary conservatism, which influenced his stylistic and ideological stance toward the novel, López explains that the years between the revolutions of 1854 and 1868 affected how Alarcón interpreted the events that transpired during the Sexenio Democrático. In spite of Alarcón’s own words stating a sudden change of heart “…me convertí repentinamente de demócrata en conservador, tomándole miedo al espíritu revolucionario” (42), López shows how this transformation was the result of a much slower progression, rooted in a complex interaction of social, political, and cultural effects, which influenced the author’s perception of this new world order. Throughout the study, López exposes the processes that led to the interpretation of El escándalo as a poorly executed Realist novel. He effectively demonstrates how Alarcón’s social and political trajectory influenced his preference for Romantic techniques over the incipient tropes and experiments of the emerging Realist movement in addressing the polarizing social crisis depicted in the novels of this period. Furthermore, he clarifies, Realism was neither formerly practiced nor officially acknowledged as a literary movement until shortly after the publication of the novel and, therefore, the common evaluation of El escándalo according to the tenets of Realism fails to recognize its historical context. Instead, López’s study explains that Alarcon’s novel should be considered within the category of the novela ideológica española, which comprised part of the new novelistic orientation: “No se trata de simples modificaciones en la morfología de las obras sino de un uso diferente del género, que suponía una función diferente de la literatura” (50). Alarcón’s contribution with El escándalo in 1875 is fundamental to the rise of the new direction of the nineteenth-century novel. From here, López describes the context in which the novela ideológica española emerged explaining that it confronted the social crisis that left Restoration Spain divided between conservatives and liberals. The content of such novels published around the crucial date of 1875 centered on the evolving crisis of la cuestión religiosa that examined the increasing secularization of modern society. Furthermore, López elaborates that the artistic debate [End Page 139] between idealism and realism created greater focus on the role of the novel in contemporary society. While Valera opted for idealism, Alarcón and Galdós embraced the alternative mode of arte útil; however, two opposing ideological stances constituted this category. On the one hand, the tendency initiated by Galdós sought verisimilitude by emphasizing individual development through the characters’ experience in this complex historical moment. Alarcón, on the other hand, rejected the realistic depiction of the social crisis opting for an allegorical representation in which the author opposes Good and Evil, affecting both his aesthetic choices and structure of the novel derived from his affinity with Romantic techniques. Here, López points out that Alarcon’s discursive application of Romantic tendencies are apparent in his use of the idealists’ redemptive and purifying love...

Modernity as Representation: The Self-Reflexivity of the Spanish Realist Novel

This article argues that the perception in Restoration Spain that modernity was constituted by representation allowed the Spanish realist novel to be self-reflexive without contradicting its claim to depict contemporary reality. It outlines how the Spanish realist novel critiques modernity’s conversion of reality into representation in relation to the following contemporary phenomena: social reform initiatives which imposed gender norms on women; the market economy including consumerism, fiduciary money, and the abandonment of the gold standard; and a fraudulent system of parliamentary representation.

Confinement, Consolation, and Confession in Galdós's La desheredada

This article examines the motif of confinement in Galdós's La desheredada (1881) as an anxious commentary on socio-political structures in Restoration Spain and on the writer's literary form in this novel. The objective of the study is to show that Galdós's appraisal of successive levels of confinement in La desheredada constituted a crucial stage in his development as a writer that would lead him to innovations in both his literary content and form after the publication of this work. The narrative of La desheredada reveals that nineteenth-century psychiatric therapies such as the moral treatment and medical interrogation were indebted to the pastoral practices of consolation and confession. This melding of disparate discourses establishes a troubling continuity between the cultural systems of the Old Regime and modernity that is expressed in the text through the motif of enclosure. The notion of confinement is shown to pervade the novel at the formal level of narrative technique through the fusion of medico-religious discourse with narrative modes of representing consciousness. And the physical particulars of the publication history of La desheredada are shown to extend the motif of confinement beyond the pages of the novel. The first chapter of La desheredada was serially excerpted in the medical journal El Diario Médico , thereby enclosing the narrative in the same medical discourse that the novel is engaged in critiquing.

Political Clientelism, Elites, and Caciquismo in Restoration Spain (1875—1923)

This article focuses on the substantial academic literature on caciquismo — the proliferation of clientelist practices by local notables or caciques — in Restoration Spain (1875—1923). Caciquismo is generally considered to be the key problem in the political behaviour of Spaniards and the evolution of the Spanish political system in the Liberal era. The article shows the central relevance of caciquismo in contemporary political analysis and criticism, and the different interpretations of early historiography on the subject. It consists mainly of an overview of the prevailing historiographical tendencies — here called 'new political history' and'agrarian social history' — in the study of caciquismo, especially their opposite conceptions of caciquismo as some kind of political clientelism and their descriptions of political elites and the connections between political and economic powers. It is argued that these tendencies share a common language and conclusions which facilitate comparisons with similar phenomena in other countries. The article includes some hints of this comparative analysis, and, finally, it suggests some paths of research which may be followed in the future.

‘La España Moderna’ and ‘Regeneración’: A Cultural Review in Restoration Spain, 1889–1914 by Rhian Davies (review)

MLRy 98.4, 2003 1015 Chapter 2 considers how Spanish novelists used 'scientific spokespersons' to incorporate scientific ideas into their texts, making science enter novels in the form of characters. The man of science is frequently not the man of clear reason, and pedants and pseudo-scientistsfrom a variety of texts by Galdos and Pardo Bazan are included. The main emphasis in this chapter, however, is on Frigilis in La Regenta, read as a positive rather than a negative figure, although one whose science?at least in its ef? fects?is decoration and adornment, his effortsending only in changes of appearance. Up to this point the reader will have felt him- or herself in relatively familiar territory,although the background detail about some of the scientific ideas alluded to in these novels is given grounding in works of science proper in Spain, rather than remaining solely within the literary field. In Chapters 3 and 4, however, we enter a new territory,with a discussion of writings little known in the canon. Chap? ter 3 considers short stories by the Nobel Prize-winning histologist Ramon y Cajal (signed Doctor Bacteria), and La fe by Palacio Valdes, while in Chapter 4 there is an examination of writings that popularized science, using Ramon y Cajal's works of scientific popularization and Pardo Bazan's essay 'La ciencia amena'. Cajal turns out to be a natural popularizer, and, like various of his scientific contemporaries, ready to turn to literature to further the cause of science and spread the word. This activity is vital in turn-of-the-century Spain, and Cajal writing Los tonicos de la voluntad performs a double action of sounding an alarm about lack of science in Spain while communicating in a lively manner his own enthusiasm for scientific pursuits. Chapter 5 concentrates upon the generation of '98, with special reference to Unamuno , Amor y pedagogia, Baroja, El drbol de la ciencia, and Amor y ciencia, a play by Galdos of 1905. Rather than consider the numerous essays ofeach ofthese (where Unamuno 's writings on cientificismomight have been of interest in the light of the earlier writings on Darwinism and 'Darwinisticism'), Pratt approaches the topic here via the aesthetics of tragedy and sublimity. Finally, in the discussion of Ortega and his views on the place ofscience in modern culture, we return almost fullcircle. Ortega is argued to be unfailingly modern in his interest in science, and in his ability to write on it, but also unfailingly critical and cautious in thinking of the place of science in culture. Two notes characterize Signs of Science. One is an awareness of the levels and complexities of enthusiasm for science in Spanish, despite the much-famed backwardness that was the despair of the generation of '98, coupled with a sensitivity to other enthusiasms in Spain, notably the spiritual 'alternatives' to science. The other is the commitment of the author to his topic. Science and spirituality are dealt with even-handedly, with much objective comment (and necessarily some simplification, given the wide scope of the topic and the limits of length). If the author in the end draws back from sweeping conclusions, he has none the less opened up areas of inter? est and enquiry. Hispanic culture has clearly engaged in dialogue with science, albeit with many flawed representations of its themes and practitioners, and understanding all the inflections of this dialogue is central to our view of modern Spain. Clare College, Cambridge Alison Sinclair 'La Espana Moderna' and 'Regeneracion': A Cultural Review in Restoration Spain, i88g-igi4. By Rhian Davies. (Canada Blanch Monographs, 5) Manchester: Manchester Spanish and Portuguese Studies. 2000. xii + 212 pp. ?14.95. ISBN 0-953-99680-8. Do not pass by this study ofLa Espana Moderna believing it to be forspecialists only. Rhian Davies's book is an exemplary in-depth study ofa major review, but its signifi? cance derives frommore than that specific focus. The acquaintance with reviews ofthe 1016 Reviews early twentieth century that many Hispanists have is frequently confined to briefconsultation . Here they will findreason forgoing to look atjournals and reviews as pheno? mena in their own right,and not simply as vehicles forthe output of canonical...

David Ortiz, Jr. <italic>Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain</italic>. (Contributions to the Study of World History, number 73.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2000. Pp. viii, 139. $62.50

David Ortiz, Jr. Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain. (Contributions to the Study of World History, number 73.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2000. Pp. viii, 139. $62.50 Get access Ortiz DavidJr.Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain. (Contributions to the Study of World History, number 73.) Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2000. Pp. viii, 139. $62.50. Laura Desfor Edles Laura Desfor Edles California State University, Northridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 107, Issue 1, February 2002, Pages 283–284, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.1.283 Published: 01 February 2002

Reviews of Books:Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain David Ortiz, Jr.

Reviews of Books:Paper Liberals: Press and Politics in Restoration Spain David Ortiz, Jr.