After 1898

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the continuing debate over women’s higher education was held also in Spain in the context of a fin-de-siècle feeling of malaise. There, the fin-de-siècle mood was much influenced by the ‘Disaster of ’98’, when most of the remaining colonial possessions (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines) of the once vast empire were lost after nearly four years of colonial wars and a brief military encounter with the USA. Apart from the remaining territory in North Africa, the Spanish empire had come to an end. Coming at the time of the peak of European imperialist expansion and fervour, when possession of colonies was seen to be the hallmark of a vigorous and ‘healthy’ nation, 1898 dispelled any still existing notions that Spain was a world power. A feeling of malaise antedated 1898, but the events of this year sharply deepened the sense that the once great imperial power with a flourishing culture was now in deep decline. Pessimistic assessment of Spain’s place in the imperialist world order was not confined to Spain. The British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury, in a speech in 1898, declared that the world could be divided into thriving and dying nations. The latter, according to Salisbury, were ‘primarily non-Christian communities, but unfortunately that is not exclusively the case’. Many Spanish commentators saw this as a thinly disguised reference to their country. ¹