Donoso Cortes: The Continuing Crisis

In: Journal of Inter-American Studies, Band 2, Heft 1, S. 45-63

Abstract

Juan Donoso Cortés, the Marqués de Valdegamas, died in Paris on May 3, 1853. For four and a half years he had been recognized as one of the most controversial and best-known critics of the European revolutionary movement, as a defender of the Catholic Church against Liberal and revolutionary criticism, and as one of the most able parliamentary orators and diplomats of the time. A few years after his death his name was all but forgotten. A hundred years later, in 1953, there was an extensive revival of interest in his work in Western Europe, and the lectures given about him and the books and articles published in Spain, especially, form an impressive bibliography. Though in his day he was regarded by many as a Cassandra, Europeans immersed in crisis in the twentieth century have not been so certain that he was no prophet.