Viajes en la década de 1930. Prácticas culturales y experiencias intelectuales durante la Segunda República española

Abstract

Travel experienced a high point in the interwar period with the beginning of mass tourism in Spain. While Spanish intellectuals visited Europe or America to define their identity and their position in the cultural field, the Spain of the Second Republic attracted many writers, scientists and artists from other countries, who found here one of the great cultural epicenters, but also a country where traditions and ways of life that resisted the push of modern life survived. The Civil War confirmed the idea that the Spanish landscape was the stage where the future of the world was beginning to be decided, and many European and American intellectuals came here in those years, while Renau began the evacuation of the Spanish artistic treasure to protect it from fascist barbarism. This book analyzes the vision of Spain and the world derived from the travels of Walter Benjamin, Nancy Cunard, Walter Starkie, Ortiz Echagüe, Mª Teresa León, Concha Méndez, Mijail Koltsov or the collaborators of the travel magazine Oasis -directed by the engineers Vicente Olmo and Silverio de la Torre-, but also the experience of the inner journey of many of them and the influence of those cultural experiences.