Making Modern Spain

Book excerpt: In this elegantly written study, Alfante explores the work of select nineteenth-century writers, intellectuals, journalists, politicians, and clergy who responded to cultural and spiritual shifts caused by the movement toward secularization in Spain. Focusing on the social experience, this book probes the tensions between traditionalism and liberalism that influenced public opinion of the clergy, sacred buildings, and religious orders. The writings of Cecilia Böhl de Faber (Fernán Caballero), Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Benito Pérez Galdós, and José María de Pereda addressed conflicts between modernizing forces and the Catholic Church about the place of religion and its signifiers in Spanish society. Foregrounding expropriation (government confiscation of civil and ecclesiastical property) and exclaustration (the expulsion of religious communities), and drawing on archival research, the history of disentailment, cultural theory, memory studies, and sociology, Alfante demonstrates how Spain’s liberalizing movement profoundly influenced class mobility and faith among the populace.