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ABSTRACT
This article explores the sociopolitical significance of automobility during the Miguel Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a means to historicize Antonio Espina’s novel Luna de copas. Devoting special attention to the class antagonisms brought about by Primo de Rivera’s economic policy and vision for Spain, the article shows that Espina engages this historical context by fictionalizing the growth of motorized tourism and industrial development in the country. The novel’s depiction of automobility advances a critique of the capitalist elites who achieved social and political prominence under Primo de Rivera but whose participation in modernization efforts was self-serving and not meant to bring about effective change for most Spaniards. Drawing on sociological theory and archival material, this article contends that Luna de copas recognized how automobiles afforded their owners a modern instrument of social distinction, dehumanization, subjugation and deterritorialization, thereby strengthening oligarchical structures at the height of the Machine Age. Historicization of Espina’s novel suggests that scholarship has overly exaggerated the autonomous nature of avant-garde fiction.
Acknowledgements
I presented an earlier version of this article at the 7th Annual University of California Comparative Iberian Studies Symposium held at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on May 17–18, 2018. I would like to thank the organizers for the invitation as well as the other participants for their suggestions and comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributor
Carles Ferrando Valero is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bowling Green State University. His research focuses on modern Iberian literature and visual culture, and his scholarly interests include transnational modernism, the avant-gardes, intellectual history, new media and technology and the dialectics between politics and cultural production. He has published articles in journals such as the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Hispanic Review and Modernism/modernity. His current book project, A First Magical Realism, elucidates the cultural politics implicit in the translation of German critic Franz Roh’s Nach-Expressionismus (1925) into Spanish as Realismo mágico (1927) and contends that part of the cultural production of interwar Spain established a productive dialectics with the continental aesthetic developments first studied by Roh. Email: [email protected]
Notes
1 Ortega’s denunciation is problematic at best given his initial complicity with the dictatorship, first made public in a newspaper article in November of 1923. To be sure, Ortega expressed reservations and even revealed feelings of unease in the article, which was in fact a milder, less cautionary version of an earlier piece that the newspaper El Sol did not want to or dare publish – on the specifics of this situation and Ortega’s position at the time, see Gracia (Citation2014, esp. 334–339) and Fonck (Citation2010). But the fact of the matter is that Ortega did not join the opposition to the dictatorship until much later than most other intellectuals did. He first made public his unequivocal disavowal of the dictatorship in the spring of 1928, and about a year later he renounced his professorship and joined various initiatives to overthrow the regime. By 1930, the year he published “La moral del automóvil en España”, Ortega’s public condemnation of the dictatorship was well established.
2 Espina published Luna de copas as a stand-alone book in 1929 – the novel was the last work in the renowned, albeit short-lived, avant-garde prose collection Nova Novorum. Earlier versions of its two parts had appeared in Revista de Occidente in October and November of 1927 (“Bacante”) and in November of 1928 (“Baco”). The dates correspond to the Civil Directory years of the dictatorship, when “[g]overnment by military amateurs was abandoned … for that of civilian ‘technocrats’ who embarked on an ambitious programme of public works” (Carr Citation2000, 241).
3 All quotes from the novel are from the joint edition of Pájaro pinto and Luna de copas by Gloria Rey (Citation2001, Cátedra). Rey had previously included Luna de copas in her selection of Espina’s narrative work Prosa escogida (2000, Fundación Santander Central Hispano), which was the first reedition of Luna de copas after it was originally published as a book by Editorial Revista de Occidente in 1929.
4 The promise of female emancipation in automobility was not without its limits. Article 5b of the “Reglamento de circulación de vehículos con motor mecánico por las vías públicas de España” (Citation1926) stipulated that women needed paternal or marital authorization to obtain a driver’s license (1645), and in most cases – including Silvia’s – vehicles driven or used by women had been bought by men, who in the 1920s still exerted some control over female automobility by means of the checkbook. Moreover, motor vehicles were enlisted in various ways in the maintenance of traditional gender roles and institutions – for instance, by forming part of a woman’s dowry (De Miguel Citation1995, 62).
5 See Moteurs de Dion’s advertisement for their automobile model “L’Élégant” (c. 1900), which depicts a group of unconcerned motorists running over livestock while an enraged farmer protests in the distance (Prior Citation1991, 31; the image is also easily retrievable by means of an Internet search); see also Apel·les Mestres’s rendition of the Catalan countryside (c. 1911) wherein a rambunctious automobile driver is about to run over various animals to the disbelief of locals (Carulla and Carulla Citation1998, 430).
6 See Ernest Montaut’s advertisement for Michelin Tires (1905) celebrating a Panhard racing automobile that outpaced the Flying Scotsman locomotive between Edinburg and London, at the time the fastest train in the world, by thirty minutes (Prior Citation1991, 110; the image is easily retrievable by means of an Internet search: “Pneumatik Michelin Besiegt die Eisenbahn” or “Le pneu Michelin a vaincu le rail”).
7 José María Salaverría’s text “La emoción del automóvil” (Citation1907) reproduces a conversation between an automobile owner and his chauffer. The latter explains that when he speeds
[un] raro orgullo … se apodera de mi alma. … [C]uando paso de los 100 [kilómetros por hora] … permanece vibrante y único [en mí] un pensamiento de soberbia … ; en cambio no tengo ojos para el paisaje, los animales, los hombres que andan en mi alrededor cumpliendo sus vulgares menesteres … ¡Cuántas veces a lo largo de las carreteras he pensado en la muerte de una gallina o de un hombre casi sin pena, tal vez con alegría … ! La velocidad nos ha hecho malos. (6)
8 The fact that automobiles made drivers (more) aggressive and dangerous as a result of enhancing their social superiority constitutes a clear case of “prosthesis trouble”. I am alluding to Sigmund Freud’s famous notion that modern technological devices had made “[m]an … a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at times” ([Citation1930] Citation2010, 66). Judging from various testimonies from the early twentieth century, part of the trouble with automobiles was that they unleashed a kind of Nietzschean will to power in drivers (see note 7).
9 As late as 1918, Espina wrote a satirical poem titled “Fantoches” in which a rich nobleman “en el mundo triunfa” due to his ability to speed through and willfully disengage from any given context: “Millonario y Marqués / en su ‘Dion Bouton’ / (un 40 HP). Ya pasó / Pantalón” (Citation1918, 78).
10 See La Voisin’s advertisement “El automóvil de moda y de lujo en Francia” featured in La Esfera listing numerous members of the nobility among their prominent buyers (Citation1922).
11 The perceived correlation between mechanical speed and status is also expressed in Wenceslao Fernández-Flórez’s short story “La carretera” (Citation1927), where the main character, upon being asked “Y ¿para qué correr [con el automóvil]?”, replies: “No sé. … Todos corrían … Era preciso correr siempre … Había una superioridad en correr más que nadie y todo el tiempo” (125).
12 Numerous works of the time convey this socially oppressive image of the automobile. The narrator in Ernesto Giménez Caballero’s short story “Procesión”, for instance, forcefully states: “son perros los automóbiles, … son animales viles, sumisos, de carne esclava, nacidos para servir al poderoso y morder los zancajos del humilde” (Citation1927, 15). Gumbrecht remarks on the reporting of accidents around 1926 as proof that Europeans equated automobiles with social inequity: “Unlike plane crashes, which journalists represent as episodes of heroism and tragedy, the recurrent scenario in their coverage of car accidents involves aggressors and victims. For, at least in Europe, automobiles evoke strong feelings of social resentment” (Citation1997, 28). Note that this logic would make Silvia an aggressor and the farmer a victim.
13 The years of the dictatorship brought victories for the automobile over not only animal traction vehicles but also other mechanical means of transportation. For instance, in 1926 the Barcelona city hall began burying the train rails of heavily motor-transited streets (Pernau Citation2001, 49), thus creating another layer in the city’s historical palimpsest.
14 The dictatorship created different travel and circulation taxes with the goal of financing part of the maintenance costs. Given that the number of automobiles on Spanish roads was low, the CNFE established a “tasa especial de rodadura sobre automóviles y carros” (“Real Decreto-ley” Citation1926, 724; emphasis added), which explains why CNFE roads were not closed to animal traction traffic even though most technical aspects of their construction catered to the needs of automobiles.
15 See Federico Ribas’s iconic PNT poster “Fleuves de la Galice” (Prior Citation1991, 55; the image is easily retrievable by means of an Internet search). The way the dictatorship structured the PNT’s budget is yet another example of how Primo de Rivera and his team of technocrats pitted different interest groups against one another, often to the detriment of farmers: “se estipuló que su financiación corriera a cargo de los recursos que se obtuvieran con la creación de un seguro obligatorio … del ganado vivo que se transportara en [ferrocarril]” (González Calleja Citation2005, 292).
16 Two important works that both evidence and contribute(d) to generalizing the perception of Primo de Rivera and his dictatorship as redemptive are the Televisión Española documentary series Los años vividos (1991, the episode “Los locos años 20” produced by Julio Peña and Alberto de Masy and last aired in 2012) and Memoria de España (2004, the episode “España, España” produced by Alberto de Masy and last aired in 2012).
17 The customary emphasis on tariff protectionism of much of the scholarship devoted to the Primo de Rivera years “neglects the fact that Spain opened up to international capital during the 1920s” (Prados de la Escosura Citation2018, 140). Indeed, emblematic government undertakings seeking to diminish the presence of foreign interests in Spain – such as the nationalization of the automobile industry and the takeover of Standard Oil and Shell’s operations through creation of the national oil monopoly CAMPSA – coincided with “the massive flow of foreign capital into Spain and the acquisition by foreign banks of huge sums of pesetas” (Ben-Ami Citation1983, 338). Rial explains that Primo de Rivera’s protectionist legislation “produced few results, due partly to the ability of foreign companies to camouflage themselves behind influential Spaniards”, and that “[h]igh officials, including possibly Primo himself, were directly implicated in scandals” involving companies such as ITT, General Electric and General Motors. Consequently, “the taint of corruption obscured the increasingly hard line taken by the dictatorship on foreign capital” (Citation1986, 174). Espina alludes to the presence of foreign capital and interests in Spain through one of his novel’s characters, “[e]l gerente del Banco Internacional Hipotecario, establecido en Madrid desde hace años” (Citation2001, 275).
18 Aurelio does not reside in Visiedo proper but in Caribdys, a nearby Cantabrian island that evades official geographical inscription: “en el mapa no se señalaba la existencia de Caribdys. El puntero de los profesores de geografía no detenía la bolita de su extremidad en este punto del mapa de la Península Ibérica” (Citation2001, 235). The name “Caribdys” suggests that Aurelio, who determinedly lives off the grid (232), can escape modern processes of mapping, expropriation and deterritorialization while at the same time staking his claim to mythical powers of mobility and domination.
19 I am drawing from Bauman’s general understanding that “the individuals of ‘classic’ modernity, left ‘disembedded’ by the decomposition of the estate-order, deployed their new empowerment and the new entitlements of autonomous agency in the frantic search for ‘re-embeddedment’” (Citation2000, 33).
20 My interpretation of the social role of the automobile engages with Giddens’s definition of “reembedding” as “the reappropriation … of disembedded social relations so as to pin them down (however partially or transitorily) to local conditions of time and place” (Citation1991, 79–80).