The first literary supplements in the Spanish press

Abstract

This article attempts to reconstruct the first literary supplements published in the Spanish press in the last decades of the 19th century. The appearance of these first supplements came at a time of modernization of the press in Spain. This modernization was due to technical innovations, but also to the emergence of an affluent bourgeois social class with time for entertainment, as well as an effort by the liberal State to generalize education. All this meant that the press became a fundamental element for creating opinion, but also for entertainment. That is why newspapers paid attention to literature and gave it space in their pages, as it was one of the main sources of entertainment at the time. The appearance of these literary supplements encouraged literary criticism, becoming prescribers of what readers should or should not read.