Modernismo was a literary movement of fundamental importance to Spanish America and Spain, which took place over a period of forty years at the turn of the nineteenth century, roughly from the 1880s to the 1920s. Not to be confused with the Brazilian modernismo of the 1920s, which corresponds to the European Avant-Garde or to English-language Modernism, Spanish American modernismo is widely regarded as the first Spanish-language literary movement to have originated in the New World and to have become influential in the “Mother Country,” Spain. Although the splendor of modernista poetry is still one of its most admired aspects, modernismo is now understood as a broad movement whose impact was felt just as strongly in the prose genres: the short story, the novel, the essay, and the journalistic subgenre of the crónica (chronicle). In general terms, it was characterized by the appropriation of French Symbolist aesthetics into Spanish-language literature. However, other significant traits were its cultural cosmopolitanism, its philological concern with language, literary history, and literary technique, and its journalistic penchant for novelty and fashion. These traits also led modernista writers to link their work to the changes taking place in music (from Wagner through Debussy), architecture (from Viollet-le-Duc to Gaudí), and the visual arts (Impressionism to Art Nouveau), and this may to a certain extent justify considering modernismo as the Spanish American manifestation of an early Modernism, a sort of prelude to the Avant-Garde.

Nevertheless, while Symbolism was but an episode in the development of nineteenth-century French literature, Spanish American modernismo was “a literature of foundation,” to use a phrase by the contemporary Mexican poet Octavio Paz, a moment when Spanish American writers and intellectuals set out to deliberately create a literature that would be just as solid and aesthetically valuable as that of their European counterparts. The modernistas were well aware of the boldness of their move, for it was a bid by writers from nations that were still striving towards modernity in other spheres, to achieve full literary modernity.