Intelectuales, lenguas y dialectos en la Espana del siglo XIX (Spanish text)

Iberian peninsular linguistic and cultural diversity has made possible the development of at least five literary traditions: the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Galician, the Catalan, and the Basque. Leaving aside the Portuguese literature which, from its inception, has always followed an independent course of development quite distinct from Spanish literatures, and the Basque, whose obscure language has become an insuperable obstacle for foreign writers and public, all other cultural traditions have been sharing for a long while a common political state, a historical condition that has given rise to controversies, claims for cultural independence as well as regional political confrontations. The purpose of this study has been to reexamine the theories and explanations thus far advanced regarding the origins and development to the different origins of the literary institutions that are clearly distinguishable in the intellectual life of modern Spain. Based on the persistence of other regional and national literary traditions written in languages and dialects other than Castilian, that have never been completely assimilated or erased by Spain's official literary system, I have attempted to analyze the traditional scholarly accounts that have either justified or denied the very existence of a plurilingual literary institution in the Iberian peninsula.; Sine the end of XVIII century, language has been considered an external sign of nationhood. The cultural meaning that historians, critics, intellectuals, and politicians have conferred upon the written and spoken autochthonous language explains the crucial role it has played in the nationalist or regionalist movements. It also reveal the symbolic absolute value that literature has acquired in those movements that claim to represent a Nation without a state. By taking into consideration how national literatures have been interpreted and defined in Spanish literary thought, this study has focused on the many historiographicals accounts that during the last decades of the nineteenth century tried to identify and give meaning to the literary practices in Spain in their historical development.