La respuesta liberal de Edmund Burke a la crisis de legitimidad política del siglo XVIII

Edmund Burke is both the greatest and the most underrated political thinker of the last three hundred years. We could not agree more with this assertion of Jesse Norman. Very few political-statesmen have attainted the enormous repercussion both in politics and in history that Burke had deployed over the last centuries. Nevertheless, Burke remains unfairly unknown for a wider public. And what it is more, the vast majority tend to think of him as a conservative, if not a liberal-conservative. A prior precision has to be made before continuing regarding the term liberal for the sake of accuracy. Burke was a prominent Whig, what in Spanish language we describe as a liberal, in the sense that both Hayek and Milton Friedman uttered, far from the meaning “kidnapped” of the word liberal by the Anglo-Saxon left. The object of this thesis is to investigate the non-solved controversy on Burke`s figure and the liberal answer he provided with to the political crisis of legitimacy of the 18th century. There is an existing shared opinion by the academia that prior to the Reflections on the Revolution of France, his masterpiece, he was an outstanding and prominent Whig. Champion of liberty, justice and good governance, guardian of liberal virtues and the authentic developer of the efficient policy put in place by the Marquis of Rockingham in order to curb the corruption and influence emanating from the court of George the Third and his double cabinet.

Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer (1881-1954), comediógrafo e impresor-editor. Entre la plenitud del cambio de siglos y el exilio

This thesis has its origin in a previous work: “The Catalan theatrical life in the magazine ‘El Teatre Català’ (1912-1917)” (DEA, UCM, 2004-2005), focused on the history, description and the indexes of that magazine. Among the historical and literary references ordered there, we chose a figure that would make a monographic work resulting in the present Doctoral Thesis. The choice fell on Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer (1881-1954), whose personality and literary corpus, allow additional possibilities for research. The cultural and literary reach of his life and his work covers a whole historical cycle in Catalan culture and literature, which moves from its contemporary consolidation towards the drama of its temporal dislocation, between the Spanish Civil War and the exile experience. This e historical itinerary is represented by Avel·lí Artís i Balaguer, being a playwright and a publisher. He’s been considered a comedy playwright since his editions bear titles such as “comedy”, “pas comedy”, “sainet” “quadro”, “farce” or “dialogue”, at most we find the word “Drama” once and “tragicomedy” twice, and we can find all this, in a series of texts for the representation ranging from 1909 to 1938. Secondly, as a professional fully involved in printing and publishing, thereby covering since its first steps as a compositor in the late nineties of the 19th century until his activity as a crucial character for magazines and other publishing projects, from the first decade of the 20th century until the last year of his Mexican exile...