Children of the Revolution: The opera Padilla or the Siege of Medina and the political culture of progressive liberalism between 1842 and 1846 in Madrid

Abstract

Progressive liberalism was articulated in the mid-nineteenth century in Spain as an ideological trend. For several reasons, it has remained hidden beneath other discourses which have hegemonized the history of political cultures. However, thanks to the increasing research on progressive liberalism, we have today a more detailed knowledge of this movement, both regarding the different factions that formed it and the public figures that adhered to it, especially the writers that combined art and business with the diffusion of the political principles that they shared. Based on these previous investigations, this article proposes a reading of the opera Padilla or the siege of Medina, premiered in Madrid in 1845, which considers spaces of sociability linked to music and the political culture shared by its authors: the writer Gregorio Romero Larrañaga and the composer Joaquín Espín y Guillen. Thus, this opera is contextualized in the delicate historical moment that led to the period known as the Moderate Decade, which favoured the use of specific symbols of progressivism —among others, the Comunero movement— with a clear communicative function. This contextualization is carried out in this article by using the press as the primary source and by placing the opera and its authors within the framework of three types of networks: social, media and intertextual ones. Ultimately, it shows that Padilla or the siege of Medina, a milestone in the development of Spanish national lyric theatre, was the result of artistic cooperation largely conditioned by political affinities.