Journalists at the Front: Ramiro de Maeztu, Inglaterra en armas and Spanish Intellectuals during the First World War

Abstract

Published in 1916, Ramiro de Maeztu’s short book Inglaterra en armas is, of

its author’s works, the one that has received the least critical attention.1 It

has only been dealt with by scholars very briefly (if at all), and there has been

no attempt to introduce it within the grander narrative of Maeztu’s

intellectual evolution. It is my aim in this paper to shed some light on this

work, outlining both its principal features and the interpretative difficulties

it poses for Maeztu scholars. I will also attempt to resolve these difficulties by

inserting the text within a genre that has received scant critical attention:

the crónicas del frente written by Spanish authors during the First World

War. I will argue that the more striking features of Inglaterra en armas recur

in similar texts written by Maeztu’s contemporaries, and that this can be

explained by the rigidity of the pro-Allied propaganda discourse in which he

and his peers were engaging...