Revista de Occidente : Historia de una publicación mítica y centenaria

Since its founding in 1923 by José Ortega y Gasset, Revista de Occidente has been much more than a periodical: it was the great bridge between Spain and European and American modernity. Its pages brought together the ideas that transformed the 20th century and the writers who shaped it. Einstein and Heisenberg engaged in dialogue with Ortega; Husserl, Russell, and Max Weber shared space with Baroja, García Lorca, María Zambrano, and Borges. Kafka, Woolf, Rilke, and Faulkner found here a crucial outlet for the Spanish-speaking reader. This book traces its century-long history as an intellectual laboratory of the West, from the Silver Age to the Transition, encompassing exile, censorship, and democratic reconstruction. It is not just the history of a magazine: it is a chronicle of how cultural elites attempted to understand their time —and anticipate our own— amid wars, dictatorships, and civilizational crises. With historical rigor and narrative flair, the author reconstructs the editorial, political, and cultural context that made possible a unique undertaking: a journal of ideas aimed at a select minority that aspired to influence the majority. From Spengler to Jung, from Marañón to Julián Marías, from the artistic avant-garde to contemporary science, these pages reveal the intellectual fabric that sustained Western debate during a turbulent century.