Spain's cultural and intellectual exchanges with Europe in the early
decades of the twentieth century.
This study makes an original contribution to scholarship by tracking and
evaluating the significance of the various individuals and
(particularly) institutions responsible for the traffic of ideas both
between Spain and the outside world, and also within Madrid and the
interior. This has not been attempted before, and it is a necessary
supplement to the usual focus on individual authors and texts, allowing
us to appreciate the importance of setting the latter in the context of
the circuits of knowledge functioning in Spain in their time. It looks
in breadth and in detail at the nature of Spain's cultural and
intellectual exchanges with Europe in the early decades of the twentieth
century.
Three features make it original in its approach. It focuses on a broad
range of institutions, including publishing houses and journals, as
"centres of exchange", and looks at how they promoted and facilitated
Spain's contact with Europe. The second feature is that it foregrounds
the idea of "cultural imaginaries" as the driving force behind Spain's
exchanges with Europe. Thirdly, in terms of territory, it departs from a
Franco/German-centredconcept of Europe, paying particular attention to a
Europe of the margins, in the form of England and Russia, as two
countries that held particular attractions for the Spanish mind. While
being centred on Madrid for its case-studies, it also pays specific
attention to issues of internal dissemination.
ALISON SINCLAIR is Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge.