SOURCE: Lovett, Gabriel H. “Larra and the Liberal Revolution.” In Romantic Spain, pp. 57-80. New York: Peter Lang, 1990.

In the following excerpt, Lovett discusses the role of Larra's satirical writings during the 1833-40 Spanish civil war between the Carlists and the Liberals.

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In the war against Carlism Larra's pen played an active part. In a number of articles he poked fun at the pretender's cause, ridiculing Carlism and the Carlists with his incomparable satire. He saw them as backward, attempting to annul all progress, and even history itself, in their desire to take Spain back to the order of the sixteenth century. The Carlists, according to Larra, displayed their ignorance through their propensity for pure negation; they denied both the necessities of the new day and also the progress made in the nineteenth century. It seemed as if the Carlists supported a system which had no...