The “Novecentistas” in London and the acclimatization of scientific romance in Spain

Abstract

In the first decades of the 20th century, many Spanish young intellectuals felt the need to live abroad in order to improve their training with a cosmopolitan worldview. Several of them went to London, where they familiarised themselves with the British institutions and culture, eventually making them better known in Spain. Among the cultural products adapted by them, we must mention the scientific romance, whose most famous practitioner was H.G. Wells. Some Spanish writers, such as Miguel de Unamuno or Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, also cultivated this literary genre. However, three members of the so-called “London group” of Spanish intellectuals were who succeeded in producing the first genuine, representative and well-received Spanish scientific romances: Ramón Pérez de Ayala’s Sentimental Club (1909), Luis Araquistáin’s El archipiélago maravilloso, and Salvador de Madariaga’s La jirafa sagrada (1925). These works show a speculative and satirical tendency that uses a British kind of irony to convey a message of intellectual freedom. Their fusion of thought, humour and reasoned imagination in an innovative fictional framework is typical of the best literature written by this group. Thus, the expatriation of its members was beneficial not only for their intellectual background, but also for the modernisation and universality of the contemporary Spanish literature.