What does England mean for us? Maeztu and Spanish foreign correspondents in Edwardian London
desconocidoRamiro de
Maeztu (Vitoria, 1874 - Madrid 1936) was an essayist, literary critic and
Spanish political theorist, in addition to the first Spanish correspondent in
the United Kingdom. During his long stay in London (1905-1919) he witnessed
some of the key transformations in modern British society: the rise of the
suffragette movement, the consolidation of the Labour Party, the beginnings of
the modern welfare state, the First World War, etc. His newspaper articles
became the conduit through which an eager Spanish audience learned of the
travails of its more industrialized neighbour. Maeztu’s own ideas were strongly
influenced by the great Edwardian authors he met in London, such as G. K.
Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Yet his feelings towards his host country
were complex and ambivalent, an attitude which continued after his return to
Spain and which, in some ways, shaped his entire intellectual trajectory. He is
therefore a fascinating case study of the dynamics of modern Spanish
Anglophilia, and a good example of the intensely complicated relationship which
Continental authors have had with the UK. David
Jiménez Torres is a university lecturer, newspaper columnist and author. He
obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge and was Lecturer in
Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. He is
currently associate lecturer in Humanities at the Universidad Camilo José Cela. Free event in Spanish.