Bibliotecas populares en canarias: la Biblioteca de El obrero

Abstract

This work includes a large sample of books from the popular library of the Canary Workers Association (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands). It is a reconstructed library based on the references published in the journalistic body of the Association, that is, the newspaper El Obrero. Through this work we approach literary and cultural hobbies, in general, of a social collective influenced by the anarchist movement of the early twentieth century, which was important in Spain and the Canary Islands, as well as in Spanish America. The inventory allows to identify various literary works of French and Russian novels, mainly, but also some pedagogical and esoteric treatises, such as studies on Freemasonry, spiritualism, etc. We understand that this type of inventory can be useful for the study of various ideological, political and cultural aspects of the Canary Islands WorkersʼAssociation, which was the first workers‘ entity of blind importance that existed in the Archipelago.

Keywords

• canaries
• cultural history
• popular and working libraries