Generation of '98

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The Generation of '98 (also called Generation of 1898 or, in Spanish, Generación del 98 or Generación de 1898) was a group of novelists, poets, essayists, and philosophers active in Spain at the time of the Spanish-American War (1898).

The group reinvigorated Spanish letters and restored Spain to a position of intellectual and literary prominence that it had not held for centuries. It was important to the group to define Spain, as a cultural and historical entity. The name Generación del 98 was coined by Jose Martínez Ruiz, commonly known as Azorín in 1913, alluding to the moral, political, and social crisis in Spain produced by the disaster and the loss of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898, after defeat in the Spanish-American War that year.

The writers, poets and playwrights of this generation maintained a strong intellectual unity, opposed the Restoration of the monarchy in Spain, revived Spanish literary myths, and broke with classical schemes of literary genres. They brought back traditional and lost words and always alluded to the old kingdom of Castilla, with many supporting the idea of Spanish Regionalism.

The majority of these texts that were written in this literary era were produced in the years immediately after 1910 and are generally marked by the justification of radicalism and rebellion. Examples of this are the last poems incorporated to "Campos de Castilla", of Antonio Machado; Miguel de Unamuno's articles written during the First World War; or in the essayistic texts of Pío Baroja.)

The criticism of the "Generation of '98" today from modern intellectuals is that the group was characterized by an increase of egoism, by a great feeling of frustration, especially about the Spain of those days, by the neo-romantic exaggeration of the individual and by the imitation of contemporary European artistic movements.

On the other hand, left-wing revolutionary writers of the 1930s claim that the negative interpretation of the intellectual rebellion of the "Generation of '98" is because of the ideological detachment of the critics from the revolutionaries. Supporters of the revolutionaries identified themselves with the intellectual faction of the petite bourgeoisie, who felt empowered to combat a spiritualist, nationalist and counterrevolutionary attitude.

[edit] Historical context

The years between 1875 and 1898 languished creatively due to the Restoration project of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. When Spain lost its colonies in 1898 society at large once again poured salt on the wounds of Spain's Glorious Revolution (1868).

The group of "intellectual" commentators of the disaster of 1898 averaged around 50 years of age and their professional perspectives had reached their peak (or were about to). The oldest were around the age of Benito Pérez Galdós and the youngest that of Unamuno. Therefore, instead of being a "generation of 1898" — that is, spiritually formed by the events of that year — they were instead formed by the period of the September Revolution.

The importance of considering them as a group is that they lived through two emotionally and intellectually distinct periods.

The Revolution: ideological effervescence, zeal for reform and confidence in the corrective virtue of political programmes.
The Restoration: spiritual apathy, reluctance in tackling unavoidable problems, the suspicion inspired by any thought of change and the growing lack of confidence in the prevailing policies.

In short, these were men who were disillusioned twice over, seeing as they saw two political structures of contradictory character fail (Revolution and Restoration). From these two political experiments the "intellectuals" of 1898 reached the same conclusion: the urgency of finding a means, in areas of thought and activity separate from politics, of rescuing Spain from its progressive catatonic state.

The first intellectual pushback took place at the dawn of the Restoration. In 1876 Francisco Giner de los Ríos founded the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. Their work constituted an indirect repudiation of official instruction, at that time proven to be ineffective and insufficient, and subject to suffocating control by political and religious interests.

The historic character of Spain then became a problem worth studying (as a similar problem had become in France earlier, after the overthrow of Sedan). Unamuno studied the catechism, Macías Picavea the "loss of character (personalidad)", Rafael Altamira the psychology of the Spanish people, and Joaquín Costa the historic character of Spain.