Ruiz Zorrilla y El Motín: la construcción de una legitimidad revolucionaria en la prensa satírica republicana durante la Restauración (1881-1895)

Abstract

Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla was one of the main leaders of the Spanish republican movement in the last quarter of the 19th-century. After been banished in 1875, he turned his long exile in the basis of the public image that he tried to perform. In collaboration with periodical press and other media, he built a character that symbolized political values entailed with civic virtue and masculinity, like sacrifice, integrity, determination, and rebellion. These values, in the radical republican discourse, were synthetized in the idea of «revolution». In this sense, in a context of transition to new journalism, illustrated press played an essential role in summarize graphicly these ideas and spread them in a large scale. The aim of this paper lies on analyzing how republican satiric media, with special attention to the illustrated magazine El Motín, defined a public image of Ruiz Zorrilla associated with the legitimacy of the republican revolution, in front of a monarchic system that represented reactionary values.

Keywords

• Republicanism
• Contemporary History of Spain
• Political Cultures
• Political Legitimacy
• Political Caricature