En tierra hostil: la prensa diaria republicana en las Islas Baleares durante la restauración canovista (1879-1894)

Abstract

In spite of an obvious social, political and cultural predominance of the conservative sectors linked to the Canovist Restoration's parties' shifting, in the Balearic Islands the republicanism got to have their own expression platforms, among which stood up a certain number of newspapers edited in Palma and Port Mahon. These papers were closely related to the republican parties of the moment and they spread cultural politics which had in common their lay and rationalist nature, as well as the fact of being more or less concerned about the social matters and about the Spanish centralist structure. They also insisted on the economic modernization and the educational development. Among the intellectuals who joined those journalist initiatives we find relevant personages such as Joaquim Fiol, Benet Pons i Fàbregues, Joaquim Quetglas or Joan Baptista Ensenyat. Very soon they collided with the imprecise limits that, in fact, were established by the Restoration's authorities and by the pressure of the most conservative mass media and, more importantly, of the clerical ones. Nonetheless, they knew how to reinvent themselves again and again, offering a very different image from the typical «calm island» that was widespread some years later by Santiago Rusiñol.