Reviving the Unsung Heroines of Spanish Literature
By Your Favorite Cheeky Commentator
So, picture this: it’s the 1930s in Spain. The sun’s shining, the tapas are sizzling, and while some brilliant men are busy with their literary gatherings in cafés, the women? Well, they’re elbow-deep in hat workshops, paper mills, and, you know, actual hard work. Meet the *invisible* ladies of literature: Luisa Carnés, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, and the like – poets and novelists whose tales often get lost in the wrinkled pages of history. Quite the tragedy, really. Because they were writing when Rom-Coms didn’t even exist yet!
“It’s not that they are forgotten now, it’s that they were not very visible at the time.” – Eva Moreno
Moreno, a bonafide detective of literary history from the University of Seville, points out that these writers didn’t just have invisible ink – they were literally scribbling in the margins while the boys played in the spotlight. Most of them came from working-class backgrounds, which apparently didn’t include invitations to the exclusive ‘where-it’s-happening’ literary shindigs where the literary elite gathered to ponder their own existence. It’s like being the only one not invited to a wild party, but instead you get to make the chips and guacamole – and don’t even get me started on inadequate paper quality!
You see, many of these authors had to juggle their passion for writing while actually putting food on the table. How’s that for multitasking? They often penned articles and serials for newspapers – the proverbial bread and butter of their careers. They instinctively knew their readers were the working class, and they valiantly navigated their way through writing “practical” pieces while nudging in some cheeky feminist proclamations on the side. Bravo, ladies!
Tea Rooms and the Crafting of Modernity
Speaking of female narratives packed with punch, let’s not overlook Luisa Carnés’ celebrated novel Tea Rooms: Working Women. It’s like a literary fiesta that’s turning 90 in 2024! This gem reflects her time as a shop assistant in a 1920s café, showcasing the grit and grind of women at work. And guess what? It’s been snatched up for adaptations! It’s pure gold, I tell you – both then and now!
But it’s not a lonely island of literature; we have Cecilia García de Guilarte, who also painted powerful messages through her stories. With such an important role in the literary fabric, the fact that their works went unpublished for ages feels like a cosmic joke gone wrong. It’s like finding a box of chocolates you can’t eat – torture!
The Feminine Sections and a Dash of Revolution
Our heroines took full advantage of those *ahem* neglected “feminine” sections of the press, cunningly slipping in their feminist rants like cool ninjas. Carmen de Burgos, bless her heart, whipped up cookbooks that weren’t just about smashing pots and pans; they contained feminist insights on inequality sprinkled between recipes. Yes, darling, you can learn how to whip up a mean omelet and dismantle patriarchy all in one sitting!
“The authors took advantage of the little importance given to popular narrative…” – María Naranjo
Clever, right? These ladies ingeniously turned their narrative styles into educational tools, crafted to raise the consciousness of their readers while still giving them some sizzling tips for their kitchen. It’s the ultimate two-for-one package deal if you ask me.
The Aftermath: Memory, Exile, and Rediscovery
Fast forward to modern Spain – where the literary landscape has been rather selective when it comes to reviving these profiled figures. As professor Iliana Olmedo suggests, post-Franco literary recovery erratically scrambled for the less dangerous voices. Imagine trying to eat a plate of spaghetti with one hand while holding a butter knife in the other – it’s messy.
While work of some, like Sánchez Saornil, has resurfaced, the more politically charged writings still remain in the shadows, perhaps a bit too spicy for the current ‘taste-makers’. We can only hope for a renaissance where these leading ladies claim their rightful places in the sun!
Luisa Carnés abandoned her studies at the age of 11 to work in her aunt’s hat workshop. It is not known about Lucía Sánchez Saornil where she completed her basic education, since there is hardly any information about her childhood, nor can her movements be followed due to her father’s work, who combined days in the countryside with a position at the Madrid Company. of Telephones. Cecilia García de Guilarte was taught to read by her mother, but as a teenager she already worked with her father at the Spanish Paper Mill in Tolosa.
They are some of the writers of working-class origin in Spain in the 1930s, neither completely unknown nor present in the literary canon, not even in that of the recently resurrected Sinsombrero or women of the Generation of ’27. Some because their career was more journalistic rather than literary, as in the case of Carmen de Burgos, of bourgeois origin but considered a precedent and godmother of some of them. Others, because exile and Franco era erased them, sometimes in the literal sense.
“It’s not that they are forgotten now, it’s that they were not very visible at the time,” says Eva Moreno, professor and researcher at the University of Seville.
“It’s not that they are forgotten now, it’s that they were not very visible at the time,” adds Eva Moreno, professor and researcher at the University of Seville. “Authors such as Lucía Sánchez Saornil, García de Gilarte or the sisters Amalia and Ana Carvia [nacidas a mitad del siglo XIX y que en los años 30 ya eran ancianas] They did not have access to the literary world of the time, which was articulated through gatherings and magazines where the few women who were admitted, when applicable, were bourgeois, because the invitation to enter those spaces usually had to do with social position.”
Moreno points out how many of these authors, like Luisa Carnés herself or Carmen de Burgos, “who we could consider bourgeois,” have more journalistic than literary production because “it was the only way to combine dedicating themselves to writing with having a livelihood. There are many authors of the time who do not need to work to live, but they do.”
He adds two more filters of the moment that affect their current perception: “By not moving in the circles of the cultural elite, they receive fewer reviews, they know fewer editors. They are not where the canon is created, which are almost always private spaces, such as gatherings in cafes and clubs. The generations of ’98, ’14 or ’27 baptize themselves thinking about posterity, and a Sánchez Saornil or a Carnés are not thinking about that.”
In fact, their approach to writing is “more practical, more out of necessity or, if you want to put it that way, ethics, to reach a certain reading public that they know is excluded. Many write in serials, or newspapers with a clear ideological focus oriented to the working class,” he adds. Publications of worse paper, which are not collected in newspaper archives, and which researchers can only rescue from personal or family archives. It is difficult for the general public to know authors that not even experts can study accurately.
Carnés, with which this text began, is the best known today thanks to Tea Rooms. working womena social novel that turns 90 in 2024 and that she published in the middle of the Second Republic, reflecting her experience as a shop assistant and waitress in a candy store in Madrid in the 1920s. Since its reissue by Hoja de Lata in 2016, the novel has lived a second life , even with a theatrical version in 2022 directed by Laila Ripoll and an adaptation into a television series, The Moderncurrently broadcast on RTVE.
The success has allowed his stories to be republished, most of them originally published in the press, or novels such as Natasha o Juan Caballerothe latter in May of this same 2024 and also by Hoja de Lata. Others, such as the Guipuzcoan anarchist Cecilia García de Gilarte, have been recovered by publishers such as Renacimiento, which has published her unpublished novels since the last decade, such as Quipu’s nestabout the republican exile in Mexico. Her journalistic work, especially as a war reporter on the ground on the Northern front, is still alive, in part, thanks to the CNT itself, in which she was a member until her death.
Although the strange thing is precisely that it remained unpublished, not the format. Most female authors in the 20s and 30s wrote short novels in print with a clear ideological focus. “The novel was the great popular entertainment. Since the end of the 19th century, many collections with diverse themes appeared (erotic, pink, adventure…), whose main consumers were female readers,” explains María Naranjo, researcher and member of the LGTBIQA+ La Golfa cultural association.
The authors took advantage of the little importance given to popular narrative and the “feminine” sections of the newspapers to “strain all their feminist proclamations and educate readers,” explains researcher María Naranjo.
This allows authors such as Concha Espina, Isabel de Oyarzabal or the aforementioned Carmen de Burgos to remain and even become known. They were differentiated from their male colleagues by “their political commitment and their defense of women’s rights.” The authors took advantage of the little importance given to popular narrative and the “feminine” sections of the newspapers to “sneak in all their feminist proclamations and educate female readers,” adds Naranjo.
And he especially highlights Carmen de Burgos, “who published works ‘for women’ such as The practical kitchen o The art of being a womanfull of feminist reflections and practical advice to combat inequality, while teaching you how to prepare an omelet or do the trendy hairstyle.
Carnés herself, whose coffin was covered by a Soviet flag and another from the Second Republic when she was buried, is “the best example that there was a powerful female culture prior to the civil war, not only because of its quality, but because of how it represented to those voices of women who defended a project of modernity that was curtailed,” explains Iliana Olmedo, professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and one of those responsible for the recovery of the figure of the Madrid author.
Olmedo points out how memory policies and literature after the Transition “first recovered the women who were best known in Spain and whose work was, in simple terms, less dangerous for certain groups that ideologically maintained traces of Francoism… or held a certain power coming from that inheritance.” Exile also causes greater forgetfulness, since in many cases the most productive stage of their literary careers took place in other countries.
Eva Moreno adds that the recovery has continued to be selective. “It was easier to find poems about Sánchez Saornil because she was an ultraist poet and those works did not necessarily have an ideological charge, even if she was an anarchist. He also signed with a male pseudonym, and that helped them spread more. But when it came to vindicating these authors, the least conflictive texts were chosen, those that did not talk about labor rights or attack bourgeois privilege. Tea Roomsin some way, it could be an uncomfortable novel for the canon even already in the Transition.”
