‘Impugnador de preocupaciones’:<i>El Correo de los ciegos de Madrid</i>1787 and Public Opinion in Spain on the Eve of European Revolution

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1See I. L. McClelland, The Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain (A Survey of Aesthetic Uncertainties in the Age of Reason) (Liverpool: Institute of Hispanic Studies, 1937; 2nd ed. Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 1975), 147–48. 2The used brown envelope in which she kept this piece is postmarked ‘29.5.81’. Besides the article's title, the envelope carries, in her handwriting, a brief message to herself: ‘Alter’. Clearly she did indeed alter her original draft. For, as well as the final version, the envelope contains an earlier typed draft with her handwritten alterations added throughout. 3Nevertheless, as indicated, there are valuable comments on this periodical in McClelland, The Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain, especially pp. 147–51. 4See Ideological Hesitancy in Spain 1700–1750, Publications of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Textual Research and Criticism (Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 1991). 5In editing this article, I have expanded Ivy McClelland's original short title ‘Impugnador de preocupaciones’ to give a fuller indication of its concerns. To assist readers, I have also added some notes. The author's own notes, which were only three in number, have had, in consequence, to be renumbered, but carry asterisks, so as to be readily differentiated from my additions. I have not otherwise altered the article which the author herself had so carefully revised. 1 Correo de los ciegos de Madrid, later called Correo de Madrid y de los ciegos (Madrid: Imprenta Real, later J. Herrera, 1786–91). The author consulted, and quotes from, the copies of this periodical housed in the Hemeroteca, Madrid. 2*See Eugenio Hartzenbusch, Apuntes para un catálogo de periódicos madrileños desde el año 1661 al 1870 (Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1894), 12–13. Cotarelo (Emilio Cotarelo y Mori, Iriarte y su época [Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1897], 320–21, n. 5) attributes the editorship of the Correo de los ciegos de Madrid to Nipho (‘redactado por el infatigable Nifo’), though he offers no proof to support this attribution. 3Francisco Mariano Nipho (Nifo) (1719–1803), the presumed editor of the Correo de los ciegos, engaged in numerous periodical-related projects. ‘Su labor periodística’, as has been noted, ‘le otorga el carácter de primer periodista español’ (see Jerónimo Herrera Navarro, Catálogo de autores teatrales del siglo XVIII [Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 1993], 336). For a useful study, see L. Enciso Recio, Nipho y el periodismo español del siglo XVIII (Valladolid: Univ. de Valladolid, 1956). 4An extract taken from the ‘Advertencia’ in the first issue of the Correo, of 10 October 1786, explaining the periodical's aim. 5This was the article in the Encyclopédie méthodique. Géographie moderne, ed. Didier Robert de Vaugondy and Nicolas Masson de Morvilliers, 3 vols (Paris: Panckoucke, 1783 [1782]–1788); see Vol. I, 565–66. The article was ‘written by a certain M. Masson de Morvilliers, who, in the bluntest and most insulting terms, denied that Spain had made any contribution to any branch of European civilization’ (McClelland, The Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain, 100–01). 6* As I have discussed theatres in other contexts, I have omitted the Correo's references to them in the present survey. 7‘Before the growing menace of the French Revolution, Charles IV's chief minister, Floridablanca, tightened all censorship’ (I. L. McClelland, Spanish Drama of Pathos 1750–1808. I. High Tragedy; II. Low Tragedy, 2 vols [Liverpool: Liverpool U. P., 1970] [simultaneously published Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press], I, 188). 8A wittily indirect reference to Addison's Spectator, and, of course, to the social ‘modes and manners’ portrayed in Cruz's sainetes. 9For comment on these ‘portraits’, see McClelland, Spanish Drama of Pathos 1750–1808, II, 510–15. 10* See The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, 13 vols (New York: McGraw 1950–1981), IX, Boswell on the Grand Tour, 1764. 11It will be recalled that Campomanes was the founder of the Sociedades Económicas de Amigos del País. 12In McClelland, The Origins of the Romantic Movement in Spain Lucas Alemán is commented upon as follows: ‘Among the Correo's permanent contributors was one Lucas Alemán,1 who rejoiced in a not unmerited reputation as a wit, and who, from time to time, tossed off sprightly philosophy in verse or prose’. She reminds us that ‘Hartzenbusch gives this name [Lucas Alemán] as a pseudonym for Manuel Casal y Aguado, a medical doctor of Madrid (see “Maxiriath” [J. E. Hartzenbusch], Unos cuantos seudónimos de escritores españoles …, Madrid, 1904, p. 5)’ (p. 148, and note 1).

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