The term ‘Generation of ‘14’ usually refers to the people born between 1880 and 1890 who espoused Spain’s Europeanisation as the chief concern of their generation. To these prominent people Spain signified science, reason, university, culture, research and, basically, modernity. They held that Spain had not experienced a positivist phase and therefore neither science nor civil society or the liberal system had developed in the country as they had in much of the rest of western Europe. Accordingly, their vision of Spain’s problems was not linked to Costa’s regenerationism or to Unamuno’s introspection on the situation of Spain (characteristic of the generation of ’98) but focused on creating a new and vital Spain –in the words of the leader of the generation, philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who called for liberalism and nationalisation and for the country to be on a par with the most advanced European countries in the field of science, contributing actively to modern culture.
2014 is the 100th anniversary of this movement and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Biblioteca Nacional de España are preparing to celebrate it with an exhibition showing how these important members of the Generation of ’14, at a time when the European political systems were in the grip of crisis, played a leading role in Spanish life through their scientific, cultural and intellectual action and activity. Taking as a basis their socio-professional prestige, they adopted a public commitment to their fellow citizens which coincided with the collapse of the liberal parliamentary system and espoused as a common ideal the reformist ideas that enlightened the end of Alfonso XIII’s monarchy and the advent of the Second Republic.
2014 is the 100th anniversary of this movement and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and the Biblioteca Nacional de España are preparing to celebrate it with an exhibition showing how these important members of the Generation of ’14, at a time when the European political systems were in the grip of crisis, played a leading role in Spanish life through their scientific, cultural and intellectual action and activity. Taking as a basis their socio-professional prestige, they adopted a public commitment to their fellow citizens which coincided with the collapse of the liberal parliamentary system and espoused as a common ideal the reformist ideas that enlightened the end of Alfonso XIII’s monarchy and the advent of the Second Republic.
