A feminist engagement with Spanish modernism: the social objects of “las Sinsombrero”

ABSTRACT

Spanish archives house hundreds of documents related to avant-garde male poets who wrote during a period of cultural effervescence known as the Silver Age of Spanish literature (1898–1936). Feminist researchers like Tània Balló and Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles have successfully brought attention to the smaller corpus of archival materials related to modern women artists and writers, known as “las Sinsombrero”, who rebelliously took their hats off in public. Scholars working with female subjects must confront the inaccessibility of material documentation to address the historical absence of modern Spanish women. Balló's three Las Sinsombrero documentaries exemplify the wealth of non-material documentation about the lived experiences of women within cultural networks. I argue that Maurizio Ferraris's theory of documentality provides a key methodology for examining non-material social objects, such as gatherings of women at the “Academy of Witches,” as legitimate objects of study that can better represent the cultural milieu of Silver Age Spain.

KEYWORDS:

• Silver Age Spain
• “las Sinsombrero,” Spanish modernism
• documentality
• social objects

Although it was difficult for me to find substantial archival documentation about twentieth century Spanish women writers while conducting research during the summer of 2019, I noticed their presence everywhere I went in Madrid, Seville, and Málaga. Writers like Amanda Junquera and Carmen Conde and visual artists like Maruja Mallo and Delhy Tejero were heavily involved in Silver Age (1898–1939) cultural production in these Spanish cities, alongside avant-garde writers like Federico García Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and Vicente Aleixandre. During my stay in each city, I identified the apartments where women writers once lived, visited the cafés and intellectual institutions where they gathered, and discussed their lives as an attendee at the “Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Spain: A Debate from the Perspectives of the United States and Spain” symposium at the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students’ Residence) in Madrid.¹ While critics have attempted to include women in the literary canon by comparing their productivity to that of their male colleagues, this approach relies too heavily on physical documentation and does not take into consideration the difficulties women faced in gaining recognition as writers. There is, however, significant non-material documentation of the cultural milieu of Silver Age Spain in memories of and about women writers, the tertulias (literary gatherings) they held, and the collaborations they forged. During my trip, I interviewed Alejandro Sanz and Emilio Calderón about Vicente Aleixandre's life in Velintonia to construct a history of how writers inhabited the house, and I used Google Maps to pin locations not listed with historical plaques. To effect change on the literary historiography of Silver Age Spain, one must thus question the reliance on material evidence preserved in archives as a precondition of literary achievement.

Tània Balló's three Las Sinsombrero documentaries consider a different set of variables, namely social gatherings and community building among modern women (“las modernas”), to narrate their life stories beyond what has been inscribed on physical documents.² Fellow avant-garde artist Ramón Gómez de la Serna gave a name to the phenomenon called “el sinsombrerismo,” a metaphor for rebellious avant-garde women of the 1920s who scandalously removed their hats in public.³ In her 2015, 2019, and 2021 Las Sinsombrero documentaries, Balló pays homage to dozens of modern women who were socially and artistically active during this period but whose contributions were left unacknowledged for decades. The memory of “las Sinsombrero” and their social networks survive in urban spaces, and new methods of documenting their lives and work are needed. Feminist researchers of Spanish modernism like Nuria Capdevila-Argüelles and Gemma Santiago Alonso have shown that the task of proving female participation in literary and cultural activities cannot be completed solely by conducting archival research given the inaccessibility or disappearance of material documentation created prior to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).⁴ Given that there is a wealth of non-material documentation for women's lived experiences within cultural networks, as I found in tracing the spaces through which they moved, I propose that Maurizio Ferraris's concept of “social objects” within documentality provides a needed point of entry for conducting research into the network of collaborations within which “las Sinsombrero” worked. Applying this theoretical framework to the history of locations like Velintonia allows scholars and cultural activists to reconcile memories of both documented male writers and the formative gatherings of understudied female inhabitants.

Social objects facilitate a new approach to studying Spanish modernism through a focus on instances of community building and intellectual collaboration vis-à-vis memories of events, rather than reliance on archived documentation. As part of social ontology, the main tenant of documentality is that documents, “and more generally records of social acts—are the ground of social reality.”⁵ Marriages, holidays, and literary gatherings are all examples of social objects because they belong to a specific historical moment (i.e. Silver Age Spain), consist of social acts between two subjects (i.e. a conversation), serve as linguistic enunciations based on J.L. Austin's theory of performatives, and refer to the creation of an object from the initial event (i.e. a marriage certificate).⁶ Ferraris's theory of documentality helps scholars wrestle with the uneasiness of incomplete archives by thinking creatively about other avenues for writing about and teaching Spanish modernism, such as memories and conversations. Scholars are then able to reimagine the events and collaborations known to have occurred but that lack archival records.

While documentality has gained traction in philosophy and political theory, it has not yet been applied to literary studies. However, Ferraris's work lends itself to applying his methodology of studying social objects to “las Sinsombrero” because written, remembered, and recorded inscriptions fall well within the domain of literary and cultural studies. People in the social world, otherwise known as the cultural milieu of Spanish modernism, mediate the creation of these inscriptions. According to Ferraris, these inscriptions can be done in writing or through rituals or speaking.⁷ That is, one can use close reading techniques to study written inscriptions (newspaper articles, personal ephemera, literary texts) within their cultural context and apply scholarship on rituals and memory when dealing with non-material inscriptions like oral histories and memories. Michael Buckland explores the possibilities of non-material evidence as social objects and suggests that documentality can include more than physical documents, allowing for the classification of memories as “inscriptions.”⁸ Non-material inscriptions fill in gaps in what is known about “las Sinsombrero” to expand the history of Spanish modernism, especially the vital role of women during this period of cultural effervescence.

Transmedia projects like the Las Sinsombrero documentaries and their accompanying WikiProject are well-suited for addressing the challenge of documentation by allowing both researchers and the public to curate an archive of social objects that include social interactions between women located in spaces of memory.⁹ Given the inaccessibility or nonexistence of traditionally archived sources, Las Sinsombrero succeeds in documenting the social objects that are essential for maintaining the legacies of modern women writers and artists. Since many “sinsombreristas” including Concha Méndez and María Teresa León were born into wealthy families, they had access to the books and education that allowed them to participate in the many organized intellectual activities in Madrid during the 1920s and 1930s. New institutions like the Residencia de Señoritas (Young Women's Residence) and Lyceum Club Femenino (Women's Lyceum Club) gave women spaces to study, hold conferences, and participate in tertulias about pressing social topics.¹⁰ It is essential to treat non-material documentation of such memories and testimonies as social objects that expand the narrative of Silver Age Spain by challenging the idea that women were absent from the rooms where creation happened.

In her book about the second Las Sinsombrero documentary, Balló articulates a methodology for working with non-material documentation that necessitates using social objects. She discusses the challenges she faced finding biographical documentation about Consuelo Berges, a translator without a personal archive and proposes a framework she calls “constelaciones vitales” (“vital constellations”).¹¹ She describes this activity as a methodology through which she produces a map of a woman's interpersonal relationships to visualize who Berges interacted with during her lifetime. After mapping out these connections like stars forming a constellation, Balló then finds more documentation about each woman by contacting descendants and people in writers’ hometowns. Balló and other researchers are thus developing a more inclusive version of Ernesto Giménez Cabellero's 1927 illustration of the “universe of contemporary Spanish literature” that envisioned men and their literary magazines as stars and planets.¹² Although it is crucial to find documentation of women's lives, the real benefit of Balló's research lies in linking social objects like conversations with friends at the Residencia de Señoritas together as “Sinsombrero” constellations. One need only identify these preexisting “stars” to form new constellations displayed in the #misinsombrero (“my Sinsombrero”) Tweets and WikiProject. This framework rejects the notion of a solitary artistic genius in a hierarchical canon in favor of a world-building model in which writers interact with friends in their networks. Furthermore, these constellations uncover traces of writers’ lives through testimonies and memories instead of working within the limitations of physical documents.

Social objects allow me to curate an archive of material and non-material documentation of writers’ lived experiences and practices of community building within social networks. This approach embraces projects like Las Sinsombrero and the Association of Friends of Vicente Aleixandre's cultural activism to save Velintonia, a gathering place for writers in Madrid for over half a century.¹³ Unfortunately, the house has yet to be declared a “Bien de interés cultural” (BIC) heritage site as the original belongings and furniture have been removed. While Vicente Aleixandre's life in Velintonia 3 is well documented, the lack of material documentation about Carmen Conde and Amanda Junquera's “Academia de Brujas” (“Academy of Witches”) upstairs gatherings of women writers in Velintonia 5 has discouraged public interest and scholarship. Just as Maryanne Dever considers “archiving itself as a mediating process,” my investigation of the “Academy of Witches” brings attention to absences and omissions in surviving textual and visual documentation through a focus on community building among women.¹⁴

Downstairs in Velintonia 3, Vicente Aleixandre met with fellow Spanish poets Federico García Lorca and Dámaso Alonso and welcomed visiting Latin American poets like Pablo Neruda. Aleixandre's presence as a Nobel laureate poet and consummate friend and mentor defines the history of Velintonia, but upstairs in Velintonia 5 Carmen Conde and Amanda Junquera held creative gatherings of their own. Their relationship was only brought to light in José Luis Ferris's 2007 biography of Conde and the social objects of their “Academy of Witches” must still be assembled by scholars.¹⁵ In light of missing documentation, we are left with the affect of the partnerships and collaborations among women writers, carefully hidden during Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975). The affect of love and care shared in queer relationships as well as the enduring trauma of the dictatorship helps better inform female creative practices such as poetic tributes Conde made to Junquera.¹⁶ The poetry readings and other small gatherings at the “Academy of Witches” bear testament to the friendships and support that sustained the personal and professional lives of the hostesses and their fellow writers.

Traces of the social objects these women writers created, now only recorded in Conde's personal diary, provide a point of entry into the cultural significance of these gatherings. For example, the first “Academy of Witches” occurred on 8 February 1946 when Conde and Junquera hosted a reading of Concha Zardoya's new play La novia del espejo (The Bride of the Mirror).¹⁷ Regular participants included Concha Zardoya, Matilde Marquina, Carmela Iglesias, Consuelo Berges, and Eulalia Galvarriato, many of whom were married to canonical male writers and whose own careers have received little critical attention.¹⁸ Feminist recovery work on “las Sinsombrero” can draw from non-material documentation and lived experiences of the sapphic and sororal community forged at the “Academy of Witches” to pay tribute to female resilience and creativity during the dictatorship. These informal gatherings were no less formative to the personal and creative collaborations between writers as the celebrated tertulias and they offer prime areas for new approximations to studying modern women writers.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused a reckoning in how material documents are handled and valued. During this period of emergency, collaboration and accessibility constitute key components in advancing academic research and study. It is in this context that Balló's Las Sinsombrero project especially demonstrates the potential for public-facing projects to expand cultural narratives like those of Silver Age Spain without relying exclusively on physical documentation in archives. Given the androcentric imperatives of literary history, non-material social objects used in transmedia projects open a new methodology for locating the contributions of modern women writers within networks like the “Academy of Witches.” The Las Sinsombrero project adds new people, locations, and details to the narrative of Silver Age Spain through collaboration across multiple online platforms. “Las Sinsombrero” should not be taken as another canonized group of writers and artists, but an ever-expanding constellation of minoritized creative lives whose feminist ideologies and politics were paramount to the cultural landscape of Spanish modernism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science Research Council-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program under the Predoctoral Research Development Grant.

Notes on contributors

Angela Acosta

Angela Acosta is a Ph.D. Candidate in Iberian Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at The Ohio State University writing a dissertation on the literary and cultural legacies of the Generation of 1927. She researches Spanish modernist literature with a focus on female-authored poetry and life writing during the first half of the twentieth century by “las Sinsombrero”, including Carmen Conde, María Teresa León, and Consuelo Berges. Her academic articles have appeared in El Cid, Ámbitos Feministas, and Persona Studies. Her translation work has been published in Metamorphoses and her public-facing articles have appeared in ALBA's The Volunteer, Flying Island Literary Journal, and The Culture Clique.

Notes

1 Herrero-Senés et al., “Repositioning Modernity, Modernism, and the Avant-Garde in Spain,” 160–3. Notable Madrid locations for writers include Carmen Conde's apartment on Ferraz street, Velintonia 3 and 5, Café Gijón, Café Comercial, the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students’ Residence), and the Residencia de Señoritas (Young Women's Residence). At the symposium, fourteen scholars discussed the study and teaching of Spain's “Silver Age” vis-à-vis emerging methodologies for approaching writers’ lives within and outside archives.

2 In The Return of the Modern Women, Capdevila-Argüelles refers to modern Spanish women writers as “las modernas,” a label that represents the transgressive aesthetics and politics of women who fought to live in a Spain with women's suffrage (1931) and legalized divorce (1932) prior to the Spanish Civil War.

3 Santiago Alonso, “Las Sinsombrero,” 371.

4 See Capdevila Argüelles, Uncertain Authors and Santiago Alonso “Las Sinsombrero.”

5 Ferraris and Torrengo, “Documentality: A Theory,” 12. Ferraris and Torrengo's work on documentality is situated within New Realism in Italian philosophy, which emerged among contemporary Italian philosophers in 2011. In “New Realism, A Short Introduction,” Ferraris proposes that objects are inscribed acts and that social objects, although first dependent on the social act between two or more people, become independent once they are recorded in a physical or digital file, “or even only in the minds of the people involved in the act” (160).

6 Ferraris, “Documentality: Why,” 126–8.

7 Ibid., 128.

8 Buckland, “Documentality Beyond Documents,” 185.

9 The WikiProject “Wikiproyecto: Las Sinsombrero” is a hub for users to create new content to promote academic research on “las Sinsombrero” by posting articles about Spanish women writers and editing existing articles. It includes a bibliography of scholarship on women and the Generation of 1927 as well as bibliographies for specific writers.

10 Santiago Alonso, “Las Sinsombrero,” 376. The Residencia de Señoritas exists today as the Fundación José Ortega y Gasset—Gregorio Marañón which houses the digitized archive of the Residencia de Señoritas.

11 Balló, The ‘Sinsombrero’ 2, Chapter 4.

12 Padró Nieto, “Theory of Literary Constellations,” 1094.

13 Calderón, The Memory, 167. The Association of Friends of Vicente Aleixandre is a nonprofit organization formed in 1995 and based in Madrid with the aim of designating Velintonia as a cultural heritage site (BIC) and future Vicente Aleixandre Foundation. In November 2021 it was designated at as a site of Spanish patrimony (BIP); however, efforts have not yet been made to restore the house, and the new designation is largely symbolic.

14 Dever, “Archives and New Modes,” 2.

15 See Ferris, Carmen Conde.

16 See Conde and Junquera, Poemas to Amanda. The book includes the poems Carmen Conde wrote to Amanda Junquera in recognition of their relationship as well as the dedications she made to Junquera in poetry collections. These inscriptions and the accompanying photographs provide a glimpse into Conde and Junquera's nearly fifty-year partnership.

17 Calderón, The Memory, 179. I have not yet found documentation of Zardoya's play and the text itself does not appear in archival and library catalogs in Spain that I have consulted, including the National Spanish Library and Library of Exile.

18 Ibid., 179.