Making Freethinking Spain: The Sociopolitical Poetics of Belén Sárraga (c.1873-c.1950)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore how Belen Sárraga’s work provides a fascinating lens through which to examine how many left-wing female writers conceived of literary publication as but one arm of a multipronged attack to further the objectives of freethinking, federal republicanism, feminism, freemasonry and popular movements within Spain and abroad. The article addresses Sárraga’s engagement with these goals in her writings, with particular emphasis on her volume of poetry "Minucias" and its articulation of sociopolitical issues. The reader's report (1 May 2009) for this article stated: "I very much enjoyed reading this essay, and I learned a great deal from it. It addresses an original subject—the writings of Belén Sárraga within the context of the free-thinking, the federalist, and the feminist movements in Spain at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Sárraga is a little known contemporary of the writers of the so-called Generation of ’98, and this informative and well written essay demonstrates that there were worthy women just as concerned with the future of Spain as their male counterparts who are much better known. "