Drawing a Glorious Past,Picturing an Uncertain Future

Abstract

This article uses turn-of-the-century editorial cartoons and other imagery mass produced by the Spanish press to examine a period in Spanish history when the momentum of a developing national identity collided with the challenges of war and decolonization. Through a detailed exploration of the iconography embedded in caricatures published in the pages of a politically diverse selection of turn-of-the-century Spanish publications, this article seeks to demonstrate that the fear of an uncertain future combined with the disaster of a collapsing empire were projected onto images of the enemy which reflect a submerged anxiety over the threat of an ascendant and vulgar modernity. This anxiety manifested itself in dueling metaphors that presented the essence of Spanishness as a bulwark against industrialization, modernization, and liberalization.