ABSTRACT
Following a brief overview of the region's historical development, this chapter analyzes how the conflicting attempts materialized in the work of Canary Islands authors of the 1920s and 1930s. The years between 1927 and 1936, which frame the avant-garde adventure, constitute the richest period in Canary Islands high culture, both in terms of the number of artistic activities and the breadth of concerns. The islands had been economically dependent upon trade with Great Britain since the sixteenth century, and had even suffered several attempted invasions. The political and economic colonization that the islands have endured has affected their cultural development. Canary Islands literature is a colonial literature to the second degree, or—since in the case of mainland Spain it is more appropriate to speak of a peripheral condition—an ultraperipheral literature. In the Canary Islands avant-garde, the conflict between regionalism and universalism was the most visible of the tensions and the one that encompassed all the rest.
