"Comunistas, judíos y demás ralea", de Pío Baroja. Nuevas aportaciones a su génesis, edición y recepción por los medios

Abstract

Nowadays, when almost all the points about Baroja's life have been clarified and specified, some errors are still maintained for not paying attention to more or less recent investigations. A frequent lack of rigor appears in relation with the publication date of Baroja's anthology, made and manipulated by José Ruiz Castillo Comunistas, judíos y demás ralea. That is why this article adds new pieces of information to those already offered in the prologue to Libertad frente a sumisión, Pío Baroja, 2001. These facts, drawn from a very detailed study of the press in 1938, elaborate and corroborate what is said in the mentioned prologue. One of the most important aspects in this work has to do with the fact that the Republican media payed more attention to the mentioned and spurious anthology in order to discredit it than the National media in order to promote it, and, as a consequence again, Baroja neither counted on the republican's esteem nor the national's, not leaning with conviction towards any wing, although he had to go through annoying circumstances so as he could go on living in a time absolutely conditioned by politics and by shortage of money. Other remarkable and new issue is referred to the main and more than probable cause to the existence of Comunistas, judíos y demás ralea: the said Baroja's economic difficulties from which the publisher, the editor José Ruiz Castillo, who drew the publishing project, wanted to obtain some economical and political benefit.