Creating Epistolary Spaces of Proximity: Spanish Women’s Letters from Exile

This monograph focuses on the alliances forged by Spanish women intellectuals — writers, artists, actresses — in exile during Franco ’ s dictatorship (1939 – 1975). The studies included in this dossier foreground the relations and communities created by exiles to bridge the distances that separated them from various groups of friends and colleagues. The groups comprise, first, their fellow-exiles, who had found a host country in the United States, Latin America, or Europe; second, the ‘ insiles, ’ consisting of their compatriots who remained in Spain during the Francoist regime; and, third, the new friends they made in the host country and from whom they would at a later stage be separated once they had relocated or returned to Spain. The studies compiled in this issue resort to exiled women ’ s private correspondence and show how the letters enable the exiles to create an epistolary space of proximity. This effect of rapprochement, in spite of the physical distance that separated the correspondents, is the most salient feature of the alliances and communities that are studied in this dossier. The scholars who participate in this special issue enter into dialogue with the rapidly growing scholarly interest in Spanish women exiles ’ correspondence via private letters, which was the key medium of communication of the mid twentieth century. Recent years have seen the publication of several new works and projects on the field of women ’ s letters written in the context of Spanish exile (Aznar