Traveling for Spain: modernity and otherness in Spanish travel and war narratives (1860-1929)

This dissertation studies the genre of travel writing in Spain from 1860 until 1929. I am looking at elements of authority, mobility and gender related to the concept of modernity and its specific manifestations in Spain. I examine works dealing with destinations considered as having less important economical or political consequences for Spain during that time, such as Italy, Morocco or the Philippines. These include principally: Diario de un testigo a la Guerra de África (1860) and De Madrid a Nápoles (1861) by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón; Viaje a Italia (1888) and Aita Tettauen (1905) by Benito Pérez Galdós; En la Guerra (1909) and Por Europa (1916) by Carmen de Burgos; Mis recuerdos de Italia (1892) and Islas Filipinas (Memoria) (1895) by Victor Balaguer; En El País del Arte (Tres meses en Italia) (1916) and La vuelta al mundo de un novelista (1924) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. These travelogues and war narratives address the work of canonical as well as less-known authors but who also have a double status of journalists. In spite of the differences found in the approaches of Alarcón, Pérez Galdós, de Burgos, Balaguer and Blasco Ibáñez to Spain’s hybrid status in Europe during the latter half of the 19th century and the years up to the Civil War, there is a striking similarity in the concerns they express and the discourses with which they engage. These aspects manifest themselves in the thematic and travel choices of the five writers, from a space defined by its past and aesthetic contemplation--Italy--, to a space of war and colonialism--Morocco-- and a hybrid territory—the Philippines. The fact that these writers decided to analyze Spain away from their own country, and that each of them held a double status of well-known writers and recent journalists, speaks for their willingness to find a model and solution for Spain’s reality; it also reflects at the same time to their competing modes of relating to Spain’s past and future