Tumbas, conventos y museos: Las columnas (periodísticas) del imaginario arquitectónico de la nación española (1891-1909)

Abstract

This dissertation delves into the importance that monuments and the press played in the formation of the nation in Spain during the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. In particular, it focuses on how the media treatment of three culturally significant events reflects part of this process. Each of these events represents a form of construction within the architectural imaginary of the nation: the museum, the convent, and the tomb or pantheon. In the first chapter, I analyze the publication of "Incendio en el Museo de Pinturas," an article by Mariano de Cavia that reported an alleged fire at the Prado Museum in Madrid in 1891. In particular, I observe how liberals adopted the museum as a symbol of modernity, and, at the same time, I argue that conservative ideologies are marked by the presence of a severe imperial melancholy. In the second chapter, I examine the premiere of Benito Pérez Galdós’ play "Electra" in 1901 and the ideological aftermath of its allegory. Moreover, I contend that liberals assume European discourses about modernity, while adopting the use of a religious language to subvert conservative perspectives about the nation. Lastly, in the third chapter, I focus on the centenary of Mariano José de Larra’s birth in 1909. Starting with the lack of media coverage of his suicide in 1837, I study the history of his remains and trace each of his successive tombs and his cultural recovery as a way to understand the level of engagement with modernity in Spain’s fin de siècle.