Author(s): Maximiliano Fuentes Codera

Publisher: Ediciones Akal

Publication Date: 2014-05-09

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 240

Language: es

World War I marked the arrival of a new era and the beginning of a period of ideological and political activism unprecedented in Europe since 1848. Although Spain remained neutral throughout the conflict, it was not immune to this process. The decline of the Restoration regime and the rise of mass politics were two elements of a convergent development that had begun with the turn-of-the-century crisis and which the European conflagration helped to substantially accelerate. In the new scenario opened in August 1914, intellectuals played a crucial role in developing a process of cultural mobilization expressed through multiple avenues, ranging from pro-Allied and pro-German militancies to the renewal of journalistic chronicles. Their relationship with politics grew increasingly close in the heat of the conflict, and by 1917 they found themselves at some of the centers of action that challenged the Restoration system. The conflict turned them into catalysts of national opinion and thus symbolized their coming of age. In light of recent historiographical contributions, this book argues that, contrary to what has often been thought, the impact of the Great War on Spain was fundamentally important and decisively contributed to the construction of discourses and political and cultural practices that would be essential for the renewal of dominant political cultures in the following decades.