Roots of 20th-Century Western Counterculture: From Guillem Rovirosa’s Catalonia to Its Antipode

Abstract

The point of departure for this essay is the first part of the life of Guillem Rovirosa (1915–1934), before he became one of the most important social activists in post-war Spain. During those years he abandoned his Catholic faith and, accompanied by a few friends, embarked on a journey of exploration through Esperanto, naturism, spiritualism, and theosophy. This essay proposes the application of comparative microhistory to religious sociology. The author has sourced similar combinations from around the world in the same period and concludes that this melting pot was not unique. Quite the contrary, from Europe to the Far East, many people underwent similar experiences, usually of a countercultural nature and often linked to the idea of anti-authoritarianism and to its possible religious foundations.

1. Introduction

One day in 1933, almost by chance, a 33-year-old Spanish electrical engineer working in Compiègne, France, found his life changed by a sentence he overheard as he walked past a church in Paris. He saw many people near the temple; he asked what was happening and was told that Cardinal Mercier preached at that time. Mercier was a prelate who was much discussed for his daring pastoral initiatives. Out of curiosity, in order to see the controversial archbishop, Rovirosa opened the door of the church and, at that moment, Mercier said that they were in the age of ‘specialists’ and that Christians have to be ‘specialists in Christ’ as eye doctors are specialists in eyes.

Rovirosa had abandoned his Catholic faith as a young man in the belief it was simply a repository of bourgeois morality and pietistic comforts for the weak. He had embarked on a search for truth which led him through a range of countercultural, religious, and even esoteric experiences: between 1917 and 1930, he tried Esperanto, naturism and spiritualism before arriving at theosophy. But he considered himself a very good ‘specialist’ (in electrical mechanics), and that day in 1933 he understood that he knew nothing about Christ, even though he knew a lot about Christianity and had a very bad idea of its way of being. Converted in 1934, between 1946 and 1957 he became the heart and soul of one of the first and stronger Catholic anti-Franco movements in Spain, la Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica (HOAC), thereby ensuring himself a significant place in 20th-century Spanish history (Garcia Soler 1977, 2014).

Our primary subject in this research is not his conversion, but his previous countercultural journey. It is all about finding out whether Rovirosa’s interest in these countercultural elements between 1917 and 1930 was simply a personal accumulation of experiences, or a sequence of choices that was also relatively common to others like him. Our study was therefore not conceived as a conventional—or unconventional—biography or institutional history, but as a vision of the social context (of a biography and institutions). It could be said that our aim was to delve into the life of the microcosm of a specific person—Guillem Rovirosa—and to ask whether it signals a sociohistorical shift in the wider culture of his time. We know from experience that this can be effective. Perhaps the most important achievement of “microhistory”—to mention a well-known historiographical and sociological method—is precisely that it reveals aspects which may be overlooked with general historical methods and yet are just as relevant as for any global vision of a community.

Obviously the first step was to document and trace Rovirosa’s life, and this task was performed—in my view—in the critical edition of his biography written by Garcia Soler (2014). It is a splendid book, whose original version was banned in 1971 by Franco’s censors before its publication was finally authorized in 1977 with several corrections. We found its original draft—the one prohibited by the censors—in the Spanish government’s general archives (AGA, [3]50,73/1088); then, in the author’s own archives (ACPHOAC/FXG), we discovered the successive extensions up to 1977 when he was allowed to publish a still-censored edition. With all this material, we recreated what might have been his “ideal” final version under the supervision of his son, Xavier Garcia Pujades, who was also a writer. Here, we repeat only the essential facts required to support our present sociological hypothesis, which is the following:

The world’s cultural fracture in 1968 had certain specific and very important characteristics, which we have ourselves attempted to outline elsewhere (2005). It was the public eruption of a melting pot, a mixture that had been brewing for many years. We researched its origins and published our conclusions (2010) in a work in which I placed great importance on the concept of “identity” and showed using documents how this word served as a major lexical support for the attitudes of 1968.

The two studies I have mentioned—from 2005 and 2010—were both research works carried out a posteriori. The first was on the actual events of 1968, and the second on the origins of the 1968 demonstrations. My second step was to proceed in the reverse direction, working not a posteriori, but a priori. I did not begin with the circumstances of 1968, but with the circumstances of Rovirosa and his friends, in order to seek out the similarities with their specific environment in Spain. The findings have already been published (Andrés-Gallego 2014). In this new paper I want to cast my net still wider and cover all Iberian countries—as far afield as the Philippine antipodes—and compare them with other countries in the world in order to shed more light on the phenomenon. In short, I want to find out whether Rovirosa’s melting pot was something more than an individual or limited experience confined to a small group of friends. Only then would we be able to venture a little further and ask specifically whether we are witnessing one of the very first origins of 20th-century counterculture.

2. Results

Rovirosa studied electrical engineering at the then recently established School of Industrial Electromechanical Managers in Barcelona, as one of the twenty or so young people admitted in its first year in 1917 (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 125–30). The institution was perhaps the first in Spain dedicated to training managers, and specifically managers for electromechanical companies. The curriculum was designed by its first principal, Esteve Terradas, a Spanish mathematician and scientist, a doctor in mathematics and physics, and a graduate of the School of Industrial Engineering in Barcelona, where he had been born in 1883 (Roca Rosell 2004). Terrades had completed his studies in Charlottenburg and Madrid, and set up the new school in 1917 for the purpose of imparting to future company managers solely and exclusively subjects involving the practical application of electricity to mechanics, in which all theoretical aspects were directly applicable to industrial processes (Escola 1917). He was of the view that a manager should be required to master every function in any electromechanical process, from how to insert a plug into a wall through to the incipient pragmatic possibilities of quantum physics and the theory of relativity. In fact, in those years he invited to Barcelona scientists such as Jacques Hadamard and Hermann Weyl in 1921, Arnold Sommerfeld and Tullio Levi-Civita in 1922, and Albert Einstein in 1923 (Del Colombo and Roca Rosell 2005). The results were excellent. Of the thirty pupils in the first class, only four completed their studies. However, about ten became leading experts in different fields, and played a part in advancing those areas in Spain. As far as possible, we have traced the life of each member of this first class—Rovirosa’s—from 1917, and observed several affinities between them: they all had a deep interest in any new technical development and were exceptionally skilled at innovating (highly creative). Rovirosa was himself an inventor of the most widely diverse types of electromechanical solutions, from mechanical toys to cinematographic projectors, even including an electromechanical method for aging wines faster—perhaps much faster—than usual (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 201–24).

His friend Josep Grau was an exponent of the use of X-rays in Spain in the early 20th century. He had begun working as a stoker on the Catalan railways at an early age (LV 10 August 1904, p. 3), but had a great natural talent for mathematics and took full advantage of a cultural and technical project sponsored by Eusebio Güell, the wealthy Catalan businessman. Güell had taught his collaborator Ferrán Alsina, an eminent textile technician, and in 1907 they set up what they called an “experimental physics office” called Mentora—probably from an Esperanto word meaning “mentor” in the sense of “master”. The office was inaugurated in 1907 and was intended as a sort of public exhibition space consisting of an area where everyone could see all the latest devices and their functions (Indice 1907; Valentines-Alvarez 2006). The young stoker Josep Grau did not let this opportunity pass. He frequented this experimental physics office and its machines, and eventually went so far as to organize guided tours of Mentora before finally focusing on the field of X-rays, in which he became a genuine expert. After the Spanish Civil War, he worked as a senior executive at Siemens in Spain.

He was a good reciter of Esperanto poems, which he himself translated. There was sufficient interest in Esperanto in Catalonia for an unknown Sr. Grau—without any doubt, Josep Grau himself, then aged only 21—to give a talk in the Paco kaj Amo (“Peace and Love”) Esperanto association in Barcelona in 1910 on such a singular matter as X-rays (DVG 19 February, 1910). But it was his brother Jaume who became a proficient and original writer in the language. Jaume was a poet, a journalist, an amanuensis, and the author of an important “Catalan Anthology” in Esperanto (Kataluna Antologio, Grau Casas 1925–1931). He did not study but worked at the School of Industrial Electromechanical Managers—where his brother and Rovirosa studied—and became a town clerk. He installed a chemistry lab in his home for his own entertainment and, as a good poet, took pleasure in seeing chemical reactions as esthetic manifestations (Jaume to Josep Grau, 10 April 1941, in KEFD/FJGC/C).

A fourth friend—Frederic Pujulà i Vallès—was the oldest in the group and wielded considerable influence over them all. He had already completed his studies in law at Barcelona University before his future companions embarked on their own professional training in 1917. That year, Rovirosa—at 20—was the youngest, while Jaume Grau was 21, Josep Grau was 29, and Pujulà was 40. The latter was already a highly creative and innovative modernist writer. He knew nothing of electromechanics or chemistry, but was well versed in Esperanto; like the Grau brothers, he was a poet and, probably—in view of his subsequent aptitudes—shared with his three companions the fact that he had lost his Catholic faith (Gelabertó et al. 2007).

The group of friends and companions was more numerous. We have chosen to single out these four because of the abundance of detailed documentation on Rovirosa, in addition to the personal archives of Pujulà (conserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona) (BC/FFPV) and Jaume Grau (in the Katalano Esperanto Federacio archives, Sabadell, Spain), in the last of which there is also extensive information on his brother Josep (KEFD/FJGC). In short, we have enough documentary material to know their life, feelings, and thoughts.

2.1. Their First Coincidence: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Esperanto

It is clear that we cannot carry out a similar study on everyone who followed similar paths in other parts of the world. But we know enough about some to conclude that they shared several common features with the four Catalan friends, especially in regard to their creativity and technical capabilities. Zamenhof, the well-known Russian–Polish Jew who created Esperanto—the starting point for Rovirosa’s and his friends’ unique journey—had finished his project for a universal language by 1878 when he was only 19 years old and, according to his biographers, spoke Yiddish, Russian, German, French, Hebrew, and could pass muster in Polish, Aramaic, Latin, Greek, and English (Centassi and Masson 1995). Ferrán Alsina, the eminent textile technician who designed Mentora in 1907, was also commissioned by Güell (the businessman mentioned in connection with the professional transformation of the stoker Josep Grau) to manage a colony—a community of homes—for the workers at Güell’s factory in Santa Coloma de Cervelló in Catalonia. Alsina had a sound knowledge of physics and economics. Some of his scientific writings had been translated into French (Alsina 1905; also, Güell y López-Bacigalupi 1930; D’Esplugues 1921; Gual Villalbí 1953), which was quite unusual in the Latin culture of the period, when it was more common to translate from French into Spanish.

Rovirosa and his friends’ point of departure was certainly not Esperanto. It is worth noting that the four companions were Catalanistas (Catalan nationalists) and that catalanismo had (and has) a very strong linguistic basis (Andrés-Gallego 2012). Among Catalanistas in the late 19th and early 20th century, Esperanto was seen as the best hope of becoming free from any linguistic dependence: first, from Spanish (id est: Castilian) and then from French, which, as is well known, was at that time the lingua franca for diplomatic and international relations throughout the world. In 1905 Pujulà—the modernist writer—convinced Unió Catalanista, the first great Catalanista political coalition in history, to undertake to teach Esperanto. In a future independent or autonomous Catalonia, children would study Catalan as their first language and Esperanto as their second (Poblet i Feijoo 2004, pp. 26, 28), thus requiring neither Spanish nor French.

We should not assume this to be either the sole reason or predominant reason for desiring the triumph of Esperanto in Catalonia. Esperanto was seen as a beacon for anyone aspiring to a universal understanding and a more empathetic view of the whole human race. The relationship between internationalism and Esperanto was clear, despite certain exceptions such as Catalanismo in Spain. In general—and not only in Spain—the rise of Esperanto, which was published by Zamenhof in 1887, coincided with a violent reaction against nationalism, an event which caused the triumph of Esperanto by association (Humphrey 1997, pp. 72–73). Zamenhof himself launched a weekly journal in Saint Petersburg called La Internaciulo (“The Internationalist”) in order to drum up a feeling of international community among Esperantists, but it was closed down in 1888. He continued in 1914 to reiterate his conviction that all nationalism represented nothing but the greatest misfortune for humanity (Korzhenkov 2009, pp. 12, 46).

A nationalist Esperanto was thus somewhat of a contradiction. But inconsistency was not the monopoly of just a few Catalans. In 1906, the Esperanto Universal Congress met in Geneva, and Rovirosa’s future friend Pujulà i Vallès spoke at the keynote session. When the meeting began to drag on, Pujulà opted to amend his speech and stated that all he wanted was for the audience to hear Esperanto spoken by a son of the “Catalan nation”. Immediately, a Spanish Esperanto military officer who was presiding the session claimed: “It is not a nation!” Pujulà, by his own account, remained silent, stared at him, and continued with his short speech (Pujulà i Vallès 1906; Poblet i Feijoo 2004, p. 31).

We find similar processes in other countries that were devoid of linguistic issues, but where there was also a strong desire to avoid any linguistic dependence on any other national language in their foreign relations: for example, Portugal. Here, Esperanto developed rapidly starting in the late 19th century when Zamenhof’s proposal was translated into Portuguese (Samenhof 1892, 1896; Proença 1900, 1907). Some cases of parochialism—if not nationalism—can be found in the practice of Esperanto outside Europe. Brazilian Esperanto promoters, for instance, revealed a hint of chauvinism in their insistence on having more members, or more books, or more of everything than any other country (Warren 1968, p. 403). But the opposite was more common. It has been said that one of the main factors in the development of the Japanese Esperanto movement—the largest in the world outside Europe—was the potential to control one’s own interior universe by means of a “neutral” language. But even in Japan, this movement was led by anarchists and had a clearly transnational flavor, especially in the demonstrations of solidarity with Russia in the 1920s, the years of the Russian Civil War (Konishi 2007, pp. 128–29).

Naturally, there were other major differences: Western international politics had promoted European imperialism and colonialism precisely in Asia, including China. Here, anarchism was a way to clean up the corruption of national imperial power and also to call for national liberation. It was thus paradoxically an internationalist and—because of this—a nationalist movement. They demanded the abolition of national boundaries, but also excluded the presence of foreign authorities. The real preoccupation of Asian anti-anarchists was often its implication for internal national liberation. In China, it was believed that because it set out to abolish all politics, anarchism undermined the general anti-Manchurian opposition and rendered China—in weakening itself—much more vulnerable to further aggression by other nations.

It is worth noting that precisely such a country as China is a good example of the variety of objectives pursued by the adoption of Esperanto. The Chinese people had not forgotten that the Manchu dynasty was of foreign origin and came from Manchuria. Anti-Manchurianism therefore involved a degree of ethnic struggle, considered by anarchists to be a form of racism. Certainly, the majority of Chinese anarchists were fairly steadfast in their anti-Manchurianism and determination to overthrow the emperor. But they also rejected racism and condemned the ethnic revanchism that they observed in other revolutionary—or at least republican—forces. They only supported patriotism if it did not lead to hatred of other ethnic groups (Dirlik and Krebs 1981, pp. 139–40).

This was also the reason they did not hate Western imperialism for its geographic, ethnic, or cultural origins, but because of its political imposition and oppression. Chinese anarchists subscribed to the general view of “the West” as being new and—note—modern, the most appealing feature for the young (Dirlik 1985, p. 293).

Some anarchists and non-anarchists believed that ancient Chinese culture, and particularly rural culture, offered forms of unregulated life in small communities which could be seen as the best way to improve the situation in China. In other words, Chinese traditionalism could be found even among anarchists.

Comparisons between Spanish and Chinese anarchism are not very productive. Spain was an ethnically cohesive country, and China was a hotchpotch of different peoples dominated by one, the Manchurians. It was easier to draw parallels between China and Russia, for instance, both of which were political empires with an assortment of languages and peoples, for whom Esperanto could offer a way of making themselves understood without recourse to Russian. It was probably no coincidence that Zamenhof lived in Russia, a country with precisely these characteristics. However, we must reiterate the universal character of Esperanto. This was perhaps the last great universal, idealistic—and rationalist—new development in linguistics (Passini 1993). Its simplicity, its rationality, and the scope of the change it could bring about in the world as a whole was highly attractive to a wide variety of people, which in Spain included Catholic priests, army officers, freemasons, anarchists, and even vegetarians (Poblet i Feijoo 2008, p. 35).

2.2. Relationship Between Esperanto and Anarchism

We mention these five human groups, but it is important to highlight that they are not five human compartments into which to classify Spanish Esperanto. We should think rather in terms of four options and a multitude of possible combinations of two or more: (i) anarchism (widespread among republicans in a monarchical country like Spain); (ii) idealism (which could be found in almost any creed—of course, Catholicism—as well as in atheism or freemasonry); (iii) the aspiration to universal linguistic understanding for anyone in the world; (iv) faith in progress and the possibility of universal happiness. The diversity of options and the mixtures of these options perhaps explain certain curious aspects of this story. For instance, in 1909, the Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Barcelona, and the Bishop of Barcelona saw fit to grant a special dispensation, allowed under Catholic canon law, to eat meat on the two Fridays during the period of the congress (Poblet i Feijoo 2008, pp. 33–34). There were a considerable number of Catholic priests who were practitioners of Esperanto. This was irrespective of whether the participants at the congress were Catholic; the idea was to ensure that the Catholic ban on consuming meat during Lent should not pose a problem to anyone (see “Los esperantistas”, LV 28(13,191):1, on the Sunday mass and Protestant congress-goers).

In fact, Zamenhof was a Jew, but he had proposed a new religion which was neither Jewish nor Christian. He introduced it as a form of Judaism stripped of its ethnic elements, accessible to all. He studied medicine in Moscow and Warsaw and became an ophthalmologist in 1886. He endured Russian anti-Semitism and, after taking part in the early Zionist movement of Hibbat Zion, he thought it worthwhile to develop the pre-Christian Jewish humanitarianism of Hillel the Elder, who had died in Jerusalem in year 10 of our era. Hillel proposed an open Judaism based on love. For Zamenhof, “Hellilism” offered a way to universal peace, love between all human beings, and the unity of all religions. However, this could only be brought about by removing the ethnic component—so deeply embedded in Judaism—from religion. Zamenhof also believed that his own original religion had to be simplified. Three “religious” laws were enough for him: (i) love our neighbors; (ii) do unto others as we would have them do unto us; (iii) never commit acts that our conscience tells us are displeasing to God. Any other law would not be divine but human (Künzli 2010; Garvía 2013).

Actually, the history of this international language—Esperanto—cannot be understood without also understanding Zamenhof’s personality, which included this important religious element. Zamenhof’s linguistic internationalism involved political internationalism too. He neither defended the existence of the Jewish people nor believed in their existence as a real “Jewish people”. For him, being a people implied living in a given territory and speaking the same language (besides practicing the same religion and having political independence), and Jews were dispersed all over the world and spoke very different languages. There were many Jews who spoke neither Hebrew, the maternal Yiddish shared by many, nor the Ladino of the Sephardim (“Spaniards” in Spanish Hebrew Romance).

Zamenhof proposed that Jews should abandon their determination to maintain their ethnic identity and simply promote their religious beliefs among anyone who wished to live with them, thereby forming a single people worldwide. In other words, this new “people of God” would no longer be Hebrews, but a people comprising all those who shared these beliefs and wanted to live in harmony. And herein lay the usefulness of Esperanto: if the people who formed this first community spoke Esperanto—and Esperanto really became an international language—a universal union would be possible (Korzhenkov 2009, p. 53).

From this point of departure, it was not surprising that Esperanto did so well among anarchists. We have said precisely that Zamenhof started from the assumption that being a people implied speaking the same language, living in a fixed territory, practicing the same religion, and having political independence. This definition of “people” was not new. It had been proposed by theorists of Germanism at the end of the 18th century, and spread throughout Europe in the 19th century. In fact, Catalan separatism was another version of that reasoning (whose adherents included the young Rovirosa, Pujulà i Vallès, the brothers Grau, and many others in the early 20th century). This description of what constitutes a people was also used by Irish and Polish movements, along with Italian unionists and a number of separatist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries (Putzu and Mazzon 2012).

The European origin of this way of thinking was no coincidence. It made no sense in the Americas, where people essentially spoke three European languages—English, Spanish and Portuguese—and which by the end of the 19th century had become independent from England, Spain and Portugal. Only the singularity of the Hebrew people—still a nation without a fixed territory and with several languages—broke both patterns, one common to Anglo-Saxon and Iberian America, and the other European. It also generated two vital alternatives: one emphasizing its ethnic component (a trend that was especially strong among Sephardim), and the other aimed at an internationalist—and often agnostic or even atheist—world view (stronger among the Ashkenazim, particularly in the opinion of the Sephardim (González 2014, pp. 274–318)). Perhaps the second explains the abundance of Jews among European socialist leaders in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. Zamenhof himself was an Ashkenazi Jew.

In 1921, the Spanish socialist Manuel Burgos endorsed the value of Esperanto as a means of redemption for the working classes and raised the possibility of reconciling language with historical materialism (Burgos 1933, pp. 24–29). In 1924, philosopher Léon Denis he thought the same although in favor of Jaurès’ socialism, which was more faithful to the French Jacobin tradition (Denis [1924] 2006). However, the success of Esperanto was certainly greater among anarchists than among socialists. In Spain, the anarchist movement itself had spread more widely than socialism among workers. Barcelona and its surroundings formed one of the most important urban centers of anarchism in the world at the time, and the daily newspapers often carried news linking both the anarchist and Esperanto movements. In January 1909, for instance, a team of workers formed the Laboro Esperanta in the Catalan town of Villanueva y Geltrú—precisely where Guillem Rovirosa was born (Garcia Soler 2014, p. 76)—and one of the founders of this association was the teacher Teresa Rosell, who taught Esperanto and Catalan in her small private school (Virella 2001, p. 62; Poblet i Feijoo 2004, p. 43). Some months later, when an Esperanto speaker—Francisco Ferrer Guardia—arrived in Barcelona to take part in the Universal Esperanto Congress of 1909, he was arrested and accused of being the main instigator of what came to be known as the “Semana Trágica” (Tragic Week), so-called because of the outbreak of “libertarian” violence (Poblet i Feijoo 2004, p. 26; 2008, pp. 27–28).

The “Semana Trágica” occurred in the last week of July 1909—some weeks before the Congress—and was the first eruption of anti-Catholicism in 20th-century Spain; it began as a general strike and degenerated into the systematic destruction of religious buildings and the persecution of clerics and nuns (Corts i Blay 2009). Ferrer Guardia was in fact a modest railway employee and autodidact, and the promoter of schools—he called them “Modern Schools”—where children received an anarchist education, according to documents read out in the Spanish Parliament during the debate that took place when he was condemned to death (DSCC, 6–18 July 1910; also RP 14, 21 and 28 June 1906). He had inherited a fortune from his dealings with a Frenchwoman, which he used to publish anticlerical, anti-militaristic, and republican books and pamphlets in favor of free love and universal happiness, but also—if the need arose–violence against the state, the army and the church. It is inconceivable that he could have been responsible for an incident such as the Semana Trágica. But the judicial and government authorities were not of that opinion, and he was sentenced to death and executed, thus becoming a martyr and a symbol of free thought throughout all Europe (La Cierva, DSCC 19 October 1909; Marín 2009).

The Semana Trágica jeopardized the existence of the 5th Universal Esperanto Congress in Barcelona. Many European Esperantists feared that Barcelona would not offer the minimal necessary safety conditions, nut no one thought to associate it with anarchy. The Esperanto movement attracted very different people and Barcelona’s candidacy as the venue for the 1909 Universal Congress had been supported by the main public and private institutions in the city, including those of a clearly conservative nature: the Municipal Council, the Provincial Council, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a number of cultural associations. When it appeared the congress would not take place, the organizers went to the same government official—the Minister for Internal Affairs—responsible for the repression that put an end to the Semana Trágica and which was now busy prosecuting the suspects. He gave them his fullest assurance and the congress went ahead as planned (Poblet i Feijoo 2004, p. 26; 2008, pp. 17–18, 27–28).

All this is simply an example of the heterogeneity of the Esperanto movement. Its spread among anarchists was equally clear. This was not peculiar to Spain. Like many Europeans and Americans, the claims of Chinese anarchists also included the abolition of marriage, property, family, and familial relations, the private ownership of land, national boundaries, and so on. The main difference was that the Chinese linked these concerns to Confucianism and the ideology of “familism”, considered to be the two main pillars of authority in Chinese society. In Spain the concern was obviously Christianity.

But for our purposes, it is more interesting to note that Esperanto also features in this combination, and so there can be said to be a triple coincidence in this case. Around 1906-1907, Chinese anarchism had emerged practically simultaneously with Esperanto among Chinese intellectuals studying abroad in Paris and Tokyo. In 1906, a team of Chinese scholars in Paris formed the New World Society (Xin shijie she) and saw fit to publish a minimally bilingual journal—Chinese-Esperanto—in 1907, entitled Xin shiji in Chinese and La Tempoj Novaj in Esperanto (both titles meaning “New Era”). They supported the ideals of Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, and Reclus (Dirlik 1986, pp. 126–36). They immediately began to set up Esperanto schools in China, and it was not always clear which were primarily Esperantist or anarchist. By 1914, there were said to be Esperanto schools in Tianjin, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu, among others, and several of them were also considered anarchist. Precisely the singularity of Esperanto permitted the spread of the ideals of anti-authoritarianism—even in textbooks—with certain impunity from the civil authorities (Dirlik 1985, p. 268; also, Dirlik 1991, pp. 124–37, 173, 290).

2.3. Anarcho-Naturism and Other Naturisms

It is not surprising that a young person like Guillem Rovirosa between 1917 and 1922 would also be attracted to naturism (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 201–2). Naturism was more than merely a dietary alternative. Ultimately, it responded to the conviction that there is a natural order, and the best thing is to include human life in it. Naturists did not seek to eliminate artifice—Esperanto was artificial—but they confined artifice to what was necessary, including food and attitudes. For a naturist, therefore, it not only made sense to nourish oneself by eating vegetables without killing animals, but existence as a whole had to be conceived in terms of peace and non-violence. They were peaceable and hence also opposed to constraint—including from the forces of authority—however legitimate it might appear. Many of them in fact reached the conclusion that all natural ideals of life were anarchistic, and thus set out to conduct their own life in small communities like the so-called “Naturist Cultural Society” in the Valencian town of Alcoy.

I mention this particularly as it was one of the first naturist societies in Spain, and because Rovirosa and his wife became members in 1922, albeit for only a few weeks—perhaps for two months. In 1920, Rovirosa had fallen ill and had to abandon his studies, and in 1921 he married Caterina Canals, a young woman from the Catalan haute bourgeoisie who became a “convert” to the ideals of her husband (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 198–201). Years later, she proved to be very discomfited by sexual matters, and in the streets of Paris in 1930 would become embarrassed by seeing young couples embracing in public (Rovirosa to Parellada, 15 August 1930, ACPHOAC/FXG). But in 1921, she resolved to follow her husband wherever he went.

The formal constitution of the Naturist Cultural Society in Alcoy coincided with a Naturist Assembly held in Valencia in 1923, which gave greater resonance to the Alcoy initiative (Roselló 2003, p. 46). Alcoy naturists practiced both vegetarianism and nudism in a waterfall near the town. The surviving pictures, however, show them discreetly attired in their underwear (see Belda 1984, p. 27), perhaps for the sake of caution. Possibly, in 1923, being dressed only in one’s underwear was already sufficiently revolutionary and even on a par with being naked (even in a country like Spain, where there was no lack of erotic imagination). There were certainly no signs of that modest inhibition in seen Iniciales (Initials), the naturist monthly edited in Barcelona in 1929-1937. It was self-defined as “the eclectic review for free spirits” about “anarchism, sexual education and conscientious procreation, naturism and nudism, free love”, with graphic information on nudist camps (Cleminson 2008, p. 168; some copies in BC).

Rovirosa was probably aware of the existence of the movement known as Nacktkultur in Germany at the beginning of the century (Hau 2003; Williams 2007; Dickinson 2011). In any case, it was in the 1920s when nudism became genuinely widespread in the Western world, including in the Iberian countries of Latin America and Europe. This was also the time of the book Man and Sunlight (1925) by the German writer Hans Surén, which we shall mention later on; Integral Nudism (1931) by the female Spanish writer Laura Brunet (Brunet 1931); the French edition of Nudity (also 1931) by Simone May (May 1931)—translated into Spanish as “the passionate romance of nudism” in 1933 (May 1933)—and Nudism comes to America by Frances and Merrill (1932). A fondness for naturism was also an element in Chinese anarchism in the early decades of 20th century.

It should of course be recalled that the concept of “naturism” was broader, and also embraced naturist medicine, which had been developed many years before. The relationship between naturism and anarchism began before the German idea of Nacktkultur. Anarcho-naturism had been defined in France in the 1890s and in Spain in the early 20th century (Cleminson 2008), and from here spread through Latin America and all of Europe—including Portugal. The Portuguese Naturist Society was founded in 1912, and its staunchest supporter was the anarcho-syndicalist José Peralta. From 1922 on, he edited the society’s monthly journal, entitled A Cultura da Vida (The Culture of Life), renamed in the same year as Natural Life: Journal of Integral Culture of Human Life (Freire 1992).

At the time, nudism was beginning to gain popularity; there were already anarcho-naturists who followed a vegetarian diet—sometimes combined with nudism, sometimes not. In these years, for instance, the anti-authoritarianism of the Costa Rican writer Alberto Mas Ferrer appeared to be reduced to the right to breathe free, pure, and sufficient unpolluted air and to live in a hygienic environment that would allow any human being to obtain the necessary amounts of air, food, work, rest, and warmth (Casaús Arzú 2011, p. 111). In 1920s Cuba—according to Shaffer (2005, p. 12)—the anarchist counterculture was based on three main dialectics: nationalism versus internationalism, health and nature, and education and gender. There were also proposals in favor of anarcho-nudism (Hiergeist 2024).

In any case, the relationship between anarchism and naturism was not without problems. Some anarchists criticized naturism precisely because of its individualist, “commercialist”, and even capitalist aspects. People needed a social change which had to include health, of course, and for natural anarchists, the best way to achieve this was through a natural life. Anarcho-naturism therefore became largely a criticism of industrial civilization (Shaffer 2005, pp. 127–28) and, by embracing it, anarcho-naturists were advancing the ideas of some of Nacktkultur’s German pioneers.

Here, in Germany, nudism was seen as a means to achieve a future society—a modernity that saw in nature an alternative to that other modernity, dominated by a newly industrialized and urbanized Germany. This point of view was shared by anarchists, communists, social democrats, and even political moderates (Williams 2007, p. 20).

In relation to naturist medicine, there were of course naturist trends without anarchist implications. But it was not only the mere coincidence of the word “naturism”. There were differences, but also similarities. The 4th Spanish Naturist Congress (Barcelona, September 1929) was divided into two parts: the first dealt with “integral philosophical naturism” and the second with “therapeutic naturism” (ABC, 23 August 1929, p. 20). For our purposes—considering the Catalan team formed by Pujulà i Vallès, the brothers Grau, and Rovirosa in 1917—it is interesting to note that there were people who even linked health and naturism to their national concerns. By this I do not mean the health policies of any national government; I am referring to political movements which—especially in the 20th century—began to be termed “nationalist”. We have mentioned Catalanismo. However, there was also a naturist Catalanismo. At the end of the 19th century, naturism was so well known in Catalonia that a Catalan entrepreneur was able to place newspaper advertisements for his shop in Barcelona (Camisería Kneipp, or the Kneipp shirt shop) claiming to be “the first hygienic shirt shop in the Kneipp system” (DVG, 10 August 1895, p. 3). He was referring to the German naturist Sebastian Kneipp, widely known because of his book My Water Cure, 1886, which had been translated into French in 1892 and Spanish in 1894. Several books on his method were published in Spanish, especially by Neuens (1892, 1893, 1895), and there was even a Kneipp Almanaque in circulation from 1894. Kneipp’s reputation gave rise to literary fiction and dramatic satires such as A devotee of Father Kneipp, written in Catalan by Vidal (1896). Kneipp was a Catholic priest.

It was also in 1896 when Doctor José Falp y Plana first published his article on vegetarianism and morality in La Vanguardia (LV, 13 June: 4), the newspaper with the largest circulation in Barcelona. In 1908, he promoted the foundation of the Vegetarian League of Catalonia, whose explicit pillars were—according to Falp—the corporative organization of the movement (as a union) and the dissemination of the practice of vegetarianism (linked to the universal bases of science, nature and ethnics). It had the expressed aim of regenerating and recovering Catalan vigor (Arteche García 1999).

Even in this case, however, great importance was given to expanding vegetarianism among the workers. Falp himself gave several lectures on this subject in Ateneos obreros (Catalan workers’ athenaeums) and organized free vegetarian dinners for the poor. At the end of each meeting, they would listen to the Vegetarian Hymn sung by the Barcelona Schola Orfeónica (Choir School) (LV, 18 December 1908, p. 5; also Arteche García 1999).

In Germany, and especially from 1936, Himmler promoted a nationalist nudist movement. It should be recalled that debates about youth, nature, and politics were especially intense in the Nazi era. Indeed, this was merely the culmination of the process which gave rise to Nacktkultur. It was partly a response to an awareness of the social and cultural crisis, whose solution was sought by German naturists by turning to nature. They believed that people could be improved by a “natural” life and that this would then emanate from people to the whole social organization and the entire nation. Some of the advocates of this idea would be led to wholesale racial nationalism and to acceptance of the Nazi regime (Williams 2007, pp. 15, 62–63, 222).

There were also movements that catered to workers from the outset. One of the most significant was the Naturfreunde, promoted by Professor Albert Koch, who ran a school in the Moabit district of Berlin. He had developed a system of remedial gymnastic exercises which his students performed in the nude. This scandal forced him to leave Moabit and encouraged him to found several gymnastics schools—a genuine network of schools—for workers in major German towns. In them, Koch set out to alleviate the mental and physical affliction suffered by some workers as a result of their industrial labor and the unhealthy urban environment in which they lived. Koch organized nude exercise hikes and discussions on health and hygiene. He never abandoned his commitment to social justice, pacifism, and gender egalitarianism as an explicit statement of feminism (Williams 2007, p. 1ss).

Lastly, for all of the above—Nazis in Germany, Catalanistas in Spain, socialists, anarchists, communists, moderates and others—and in the naturist world as a whole, the concept of “nature” worked as a metaphor which highlighted the human body and its appearance, sexuality, education, and even human interrelationships (Williams 2007, p. 58). This required a new conceptualization to describe this attitude to the relationship with nature and was not far removed from the nascent phenomenological method in philosophy and its literary expression in books such as Man and Sunlight by Hans Surén (1925) (Morris 2009). It is perhaps sufficient to say that by the end of the 19th century, we see the emergence of the concept of “adolescence”, which encapsulated all these ideas. This took on unprecedented cultural significance and was seen as a distinct stage in human development between childhood and adulthood, endowed with a unique psychological and physical identity (Williams 2007, pp. 107–30).

This reveals something else, namely, that the cases we are discussing here do not provide an answer to the cultural crisis, but a path of purely personal liberation, closer to anarchism, but which also involves many more ideologies, including conservatism. Attitudes in the Hispanic world were closer to those documented in Britain, France, and Belgium (Peeters 2006). Above all, nudists discussed their experience of personal liberation, the natural joy provoked by the unveiling of one’s sex and seeing the unveiling of other people’s. Here, sensual feelings were perhaps a priority.

Belgium and France were to a large degree Catholic countries, as were the Hispanic peoples generally speaking. We should note, however, that the dialectics between Protestantism and Catholicism cannot be subordinated to the dialectics between sexual Puritanism and Christianity that come into play in sexual relations. This route can lead us far from our objective. It may be worth taking into account that moral Puritanism had influenced Catholic morals since the 17th century and was already well entrenched—in the educated classes—at the end of the 18th century. Educated Catholics in the 19th and 20th centuries were perhaps as puritanical as any other Westerner in sexual matters (Andrés-Gallego 2021a, pp. 162–63, 244–47, 416–20, 497–502, 544, 563–64; 2021b, pp. 134–35). Things were different for common people, although there were also significant -5differences between them that are too numerous to consider here. It is perhaps sufficient to say that nudism in Chile was only tolerated from the 1960s, and the inauguration of the first nudist beach in Peru in 2010 was a news item whose repercussions can still be seen on many websites today. The question is whether, in such different countries as Chile and Peru, the taboo of nudity—and female nudity above all—was as powerful as in Britain or France in the first third of the 20th century. The first nudist camps in the Far East were organized in the inter-war period of the 20th century, but only in countries colonized by Protestants. They were located in private sites in forests—as opposed to on beaches—in an attempt to avoid scandal and public debates. Indeed, these private camps were explicitly introduced as prelapsarian Gardens of Eden where nudists could recapture a childlike purity and original human values. Paradoxically, they were ridiculed by critics who rejected their aim of evoking original innocence and controlling sexuality. And this rejection was one of the reasons why nudists opted to site nudist camps on mainstream beaches, especially after the Second World War in Australia (Daley 2004). Catholics in the Philippines, Muslims in Java, Hindus in Bali, Buddhists in Thailand—to mention only several key tourist destinations—were more reluctant, and this practice remained forbidden for years or was restricted to private or isolated areas. The question then arises as to whether this reluctance was evidence of the strength of the enemies of naturism or of more lenient social pressure.

2.4. Esperanto, Anarchism, Naturism, Spiritualism... In the Antipodes

We have commented that Conan Doyle wrote in 1919 that spiritualism, socialism, and Christianity should go hand in hand and make an “idealist socialism” emerge (Conan Doyle [1919] 1997). Now, we must remember that Rovirsa, the Spanish engineer of whom we spoke at the beginning, had also practiced spiritualism. In 1924, he suffered a serious setback: this was the death of his brother-in-law Josep Canals, with whom he was very friendly and had planned far-reaching and ambitious joint professional enterprises. This led Rovirosa to turn to this practice that was already widespread in Spain (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 227–28). As is well known, spiritualism involves private meetings with a medium—generally a woman—who enables those seated around the table to make contact with the deceased.

If we had followed a different method in this essay—namely a chronological exposition of the countercultural elements manifested in Rovirosa’s and his friends’ life—we would have begun at this point. Spiritualism was a very ancient practice, existing prior even to the existence of the West and the beginning of our era. We need only recall the biblical phrase from Leviticus 20, p. 6, where Yahweh explicitly condemns any person who turns to “the mediums” (h’bt in Hebrew) and diviners to prostitute themselves. However, a certain scientific spiritualism emerged in the Western world in the 18th century, when studies on animal magnetism were conducted in several countries towards the end of the century (González de Pablo 2006b). From the early 19th century, phenomena such as the “tables tournantes” and the disintegration of the personality drew the attention of many Western scientists, including Spaniards (González de Pablo 2006a; Graus 2014). The rigorous scientific explanation of some of these facts tended to point to magnetism. However, some peculiarities of this or other phenomena induced some people—even rigorous scientists—to imagine the possibility of a kind of spiritual influence (Plas 2012) and contributed to the acceptance of spiritualism among the educated classes.

In the United States, some people saw genuine scientific spiritualism in Andrew Jackson Davis’ works (first, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelation, and a Voice to Mankind, 1845), which rapidly became popular in Britain (Davis 1857), whereas in Spain and other Latin countries, the French influence was greater. But there were some important exceptions. The Andalusian town of Cadiz maintained a special relationship with the new British ideas—as it was a major port—and had prior knowledge of spiritualist theories, as we shall see. Some historians (González de Pablo 2006a, 2006b) see a strong connection between the French and Spanish processes and a similar trajectory in both countries in terms of linking (i) the rejection of animal magnetism in the 18th century, and (ii) the first attempts to implant British Mesmerism—a feature of hypnotism and a means to obtain direct personal contact with the afterlife—at the height of the Spanish (and Western) post-Napoleonic counterrevolution in around 1816. Later on, (iii) scientific spiritualism would reappear in the rejection of phrenology in 1842 (which we see in the Spanish Philippines in the works of Zeferino González (1864), one of the pioneers of the neo-Thomist philosophy). It continued (iv) with the recent arrival of hypnotism, starting in the 1860s, and (v) became associated with the acceptance of Kardec’s spiritualism.

Certainly, in Cadiz, the first spiritualist c may have appeared in 1853 according El Criterio espiritista, a newspaper of 1869 (Vila and Antonio 2007, p. 237; see Espino 1872, p. 191), although The Spirits’ Book by Professor Allan Kardec (1857) was perhaps the most influential text in the world, and also in Spain. Actually, spiritualism had an even older history in France itself (Bensaude-Vincent and Blondel 2002; Edelman 2006; Brower 2010) and throughout Europe, as shown in 1883 by Emma Hardinge Britten in her pioneering synthesis (Britten 1883). Popular French writers such as Victor Hugo (Chambers 2008), and—in the following generation—the astronomer Camille Flammarion (who died in 1925), the psychical researcher Gabriel Delanne (d. 1926), and the philosopher Léon Denis (d. 1927), who took an interest in the doctrines of spiritualism and in its possible links to oriental beliefs such as reincarnation, began to be heard and read. All this had a significant influence on Latin countries.

Initially, spiritualism spread astonishingly fast among cultivated Westerners. In 1861, Kardec claimed in his journal (Revue Spirit) that he had received requests to authorize the translation of The Spirits’ Book and The Mediums’ Book into Spanish, English, Portuguese, German, Italian, Polish, and Russian, and even into Tartar (RS 4[12]:374). In the same year and the same journal, the Portuguese version of his Spiritualism in its simplest expression was announced for Portugal and Brazil, and was probably printed in Paris on the initiative of Kardec himself (together with editions in German, Polish, and modern Greek) (RS 5:2). In the following year (1862), the same booklet became available in Italian and Spanish (RS 6:2); this became available in Russian in 1863 (RS 7:2) and in Croat in 1865 (RS 9:2). Kardec’s enterprising spirit and the fact he was received in French foreign circles was probably a determining factor (for instance, in Barcelona, Spain, in 1863) (RS 6[2]:68).

Was he successful? According to the reports of Kardec himself in the Revue Spirit, this was the case. In Rio de Janeiro, spiritualism had “numerous fervent and devoted representatives” by the end of 1863 (RS 7[7]:213). The Spanish Catholic theologian Aguilar publicly proclaimed in 1864 that Catholics in Spain were excluded from academic degrees if they did not attend classes by Darwinist, spiritualist, or Krausist professors (Guerrero Carot 2013, p. 324). The Spanish and German translations of The Spirits’ Book had been announced at the beginning of the same year (RS 7:2), and were probably the first. But the booklet mentioned previously—Spiritualism in its simplest expression—was probably also the main instrument of dissemination in Spain. Three years later, in September 1868, a democratic and anticlerical revolution broke out precisely due to the “clerical” educational politics of the government of Queen Isabella II of Spain. This marked a new point of departure, under the protection of the consequent proclamation of freedom of worship, expression, and the press. In November 1868, the Madrid fortnightly El Criterio (The Criterion) changed its name to El Criterio espiritista: Revista quincenal de espiritismo (The Spiritualist Criterion). Another fortnightly journal, El Espiritismo (Spiritualism) appeared in Seville, along with the Revista espiritista: Periódico de estudios psicológicos (Spiritualist Journal) in Barcelona, both in 1869. The same year saw a veritable boom in spiritualist bibliography—and “counter-bibliography”—in Spain. It is symptomatic that in those months alone (Catalogue 1869) Kardec himself commissioned the Spanish translation of several of his books and gave preference to the Spanish versions (The Spirits’ Book; The Mediums’ Book; The Gospel according to spiritualism; Hell and Inferno; Genesis, miracles and predictions); in that same source, the German version of The Spirits’ Book and the Polish version of What is Spiritualism? were also announced.

Public debate rapidly ensued. In the 1880s, a well-known Catalan theologian—Alonso Perujo (1882)—publicly refuted the works of Camille Flammarion, whose Lumen: History of a Comet in Infinity had been translated and published in Spain in 1874 (Flammarion 1874), two years after its original French edition. Flammarion, as the reader will recall, was a popular writer given to esoteric scientific and astronomical speculation. Also in the 1880s, another Catalan, a popular priest—Félix Sardá y Salvany (Sardá y Salvany 1884)—published two slim volumes, one against liberalism—political liberalism—and the other against spiritualism (Refutación 1887). The first—Liberalism is a sin (1884)—was translated into several languages and became a major best-seller in the late 19th and early 20th century (Moliner Prada 2000).

It is important to note at this time that the influence of spiritualism penetrated the foundations of the Masonic–spiritualist lodges, where a certain scientific spiritualism prevailed. In Spain, at the end of the 19th century, there were educated people who were still unsure about the relation of magnetism to electricity, but not to spirits. In the general written regulations of the Spanish Spiritualist Grand Orient (1891), its objective is explicitly stated as the theoretical and practical study of spiritualism and its related fields such as “magnetism, hypnotism, occult sciences” (Alvarez Lázaro 1985, p. 188). A similar relationship can be found in British society (Stolow 2009) and in Portugal some years later (Gouveia 1908).

In 1874, however, the North American psychologist Frederic Rowland Marvin observed that spiritualism had lost its hold on the higher classes and was rapidly spreading among the illiterate and coarser classes (Alvarado 2012, p. 237; also Alvarado 2007, 2013). After the 1880s, the development of mind sciences—especially psychology, psychiatry, and ultimately psychoanalysis—steered many cultivated people away from spiritualism (Oppenheim 1985; McGarry 2008).

In spite of this, spiritualist practices gained ground among the lower social classes and workers (Sharp 2006). Even in decline, scientism still offered strong resistance. Some of Alfred Russel Wallace’s most important writings on spirit photography date from 1887 and after. He was seriously troubled by the theories of the psychologist Frederic Myers, who claimed the human psyche has a subliminal or second self and is thus incapable of being a reliable witness to its own experiences. But Wallace’s own research into photography and spiritualism provided him with (personal) evidence of the truth of spiritualist phenomena. A photograph did not have a second self, but permitted the effective invocation of the spirit of the person photographed (Pels 2003; Mitchell 2014, p. 16).

In any case, spiritualism was becoming a popular—albeit usually clandestine—practice, and polemicists were aware of the potential relationship between political and religious freedom, even for a cult as singular as spiritualism. It is also worth noting that this relationship between political and religious freedom was actively defended and practiced by anarchists, especially in Catalonia. Among Catalan and other European anarchists, spiritualism genuinely became a mystical aspect of universal love and happiness. And these beliefs were peculiar neither to the Spanish nor Europeans. For example, in the town of Pelotas in Rio Grande do Sul, two Spanish immigrants—the dentist José Aguilera and the architect Antonio Baxeras—had disseminated spiritualism since 1877, and in the 1930s it became widespread among other liberal professional practitioners and among craftsmen and workers (Gil 2011, p. 65).

Some Brazilian homeopaths and other students who had trained in Europe may have introduced spiritualism shortly after 1848. But its true development was linked to Kardec’s works, and the first known Brazilian spiritualist journal was “The Echo from Beyond the Grave” (1869) (Bragdon 2004).

In Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, spiritualism had already begun as an elitist movement in the 1860s and had become popular by the end of the 19th century (Damazio 1994). But here, the melting pot reappears: Kardec’s The Spirits’ Book was published in Esperanto in Rio de Janeiro in 1930. The publishers–the Brazilian Spiritualist Federation–had previously issued a Portuguese translation by Guillon Ribeiro, which was in its tenth edition by 1914, and its 23rd in 1952 (Kardec 1914).

The spiritualist movement spread throughout the whole of Latin America, and by the late 19th century, the Spanish translation of Kardec’s works had reached the Philippines, which was politically linked to Spain until 1898. Spanish officials and public servants had begun to introduce masonry since the mid-19th century, and this led to the implantation of free thinking, including many kinds of religious or esoteric practices. The development of spiritualism in the islands was hindered by the overriding importance and social weight of the religious missionaries and the civil administration, which practically spanned the entire archipelago. But the spiritualist revival of the Spanish revolution of 1868 reached the Philippines, and the immediate development of a clandestine separatist movement also fostered the advance of masonry, spiritualism, theosophy, and a wide diversity of channels of opposition to the Spanish Catholic establishment.

Especially important was the opening of the Suez Canal. From the 1870s, well-to-do Philippine families would send their children—especially their sons—to complete their education in Europe. These young men discovered a very different world. To simplify somewhat, it could be said that they found their own culture but without so many friars. They had been educated—in the Dominican University of Saint Thomas or in the Jesuit Athenaeum, both in Manila, and in their own families—in a genuine Western culture, but where forms of counterculture were unknown. In Paris, Barcelona, London, and Madrid they had the sensation of breathing the air of freedom. They were among the first to publicize the existence of a libertarian lifestyle, even if they themselves did not live in such a way. José Rizal was one such individual.

Thus, Kardec’s books came to the Philippines in the returning travelers’ baggage. In the end, the definitive uprising that achieved Philippine independence broke out in 1896, and years later it would be claimed that many revolutionaries were devoted spiritualists. We should note that fact that the occult nature of spiritualist practices requires us to resort to oral history (Pew 2011; History 2014), perhaps with the exception of The Secret Teachings of the Espiritistas by Harvey Martin (1999) and the work of Sagandoy (2017), and we should be especially wary of its statements. We find factual mistakes in its assertions. In any case, in 1898, the Spanish army was not defeated by Philippine insurgents, but by North American marines, and Philippine separatists therefore continued the war against these new rulers. It was under those circumstances—according to oral history—that a religious network based on the spiritualist teachings codified by Kardec evolved in the islands. At least, we know a spiritualist center was established in Manila in 1900 at the initiative of Agustín de la Rosa, an important member of the Liga Filipina (Philippine League), a public association founded in 1892 by José Rizal as a benefit society and cooperative association. From Manila, spiritualism spread outwards to the provinces of Bucalan, Pampanga, Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, and Quezon.

In 1901, Juan Alvear founded a similar center—La Perseverancia (Perseverance)—in San Fabián, Pangasinan, and began to write and disseminate books on the subject throughout the archipelago. Along with other members, he propagated the movement in Pangasinan itself, Ilocos, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Quezon, and Nueva Vizcaya.

Thus, with Brazil at the head, the Philippines would become the second great Iberian spiritualist country, perhaps until today. In 1909, representatives of De la Rosa and Alvear and others founded the Christian Spiritualist Union of the Philippines in order to coordinate the entire movement. In its first congress that same year, fifteen Philippine spiritualist centers were already affiliated to the Union. With the passage of time, Philippine emigration to America (particularly Canada and the US) decisively contributed to endowing the Union with its international character. In fact, it became a member of the International Spiritualist Federation.

It was not a peculiarity of the Philippines. In the Asian territories of the British Empire and in Australia, the extension of telegraph networks since the 1860s decisively contributed to the expansion of spiritualism, just as all telecommunications networks influenced the development of mass markets for printing and encouraged the growing penetration of new media into almost all the different spaces of social life. In the case of telegraphy, many people refused to believe the electrical explanations and assumed there was analogy between telegraphy—as electromagnetism—and the existence of the soul (Stolow 2009, pp. 84, 89–90).

2.5. From Spiritualism to Theosophy... And Agnosticism

Rovirosa’s interest in spiritualism lasted two years, until around 1926. An avid reader, he devoured all the spiritualist literature he could lay his hands on. He understood French and some English and Italian, as well as Catalan and Spanish, and set out to discover the theoretical foundation of any issue he studied. He applied this same rigorous approach to his readings on spiritualism, and failing to find a serious—and above all demonstrable—explanation of spiritualism, reverted to theosophy (Garcia Soler 2014, pp. 202–3).

Paradoxically, his frustration with spiritualist literature was all the greater due to the credentials of his main source: the French doctor Charles Robert Richet (Richet [1923] 1925), the 1913 Nobel laureate and one of the first real experts on parapsychology. His Treatise on Metapsychics was published in French in 1922, translated into Spanish in 1923, and reprinted—and debated in Spain—in 1925 (Mülberger and Balltondre 2012, 2013) in the months when Rovirosa was seeking a solution to his religious concerns outside Christianity. This study by Richet was perhaps the first major scientific study on spiritualism; Rovirosa was greatly impressed by this work, but the impossibility of experimentally verifying Richet’s theories ultimately led to disappointment. It was then that he heard of theosophy.

In Germany, naturism in its nudist and vegetarian versions was not far removed from theosophy at turn of the century and throughout the Wilhelmine era. These latter movements often showed a certain interdependence with the new religious trends, including esoteric and especially theosophist groups. Many of their members—and followers—joined two different associations to reconcile both practices. The totality constituted a true “methodical lifestyle” which Max Weber could have called an “ethos” (Bigalke 2008). Other people followed a different path. In Central America, for example, there was a genuine “theosophist vitalism” with Buddhist and Hindu influences, as well as socialist and anarchist elements (Casaús Arzú 2011).

There is no doubt that theosophists claimed to have strong oriental roots. Blavatsky, one of the founders of the Theosophical Society in 1875, had spent a large part of her life traveling throughout both the East and the West, and maintained that the Tibetan Mahatmas (“masters”) had profoundly influenced her theosophical thought. She had also ventured into Mahāyāna esoteric Buddhism, and—aided by the reading of Allan Kardec’s writings—into spiritualism, which she explored further during her stay in Cairo in 1871, before abandoning it. Theosophy became to some degree a melting pot of magnetism, spiritualism, and heliosophic and Masonic elements. Some of its practitioners subscribed to Jinarajasada, Vivekanda, and Gandhi Hinduism, all mixed with a clearly socialist and anarchist tendency. But even their socialism referred to Kropotkin’s libertarian version or to a Fabianism influenced by anarchism (Casaús Arzú 2011), and became encapsulated in a type of anarchist communism similar to that which could be found in many places in Europe (Manuel and Manuel 1981).

Blavatsky settled in England, where the oriental echoes and occult practices of her theosophical ideas inspired a fervent following in the late 19th century, especially among the more educated and prosperous classes. An association emerged from these theories which linked the Orient, women, and primitive spirituality, in contrast with the male and scientific West (Dixon 2001).

In Costa Rica, as in other Hispanic countries, there was a link between the spread of masonry and the introduction of theosophy, but with important differences that were explicitly debated. There were also cases of dual affiliation, such as that of Antonio Quesada Blanco, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Costa Rica in 1906, who was simultaneously a member of the theosophical lodge Virya (Martínez Esquivel 2010). The intellectual Brenes Mesén worked to introduce theosophy and played an active role in the important confrontation with Catholic town leaders in 1907. The educational projection of his theosophical activities was seen as a serious attack on hegemonic Christianity (Molina Jiménez 2001, 2011).

In the antipodes of the Iberian world, the Philippines, the dynamics were different. Spanish masons helped to introduce spiritualism, although not theosophy. This other movement, at first, was an American initiative and took time to have native followers. According to its own records, the Manila Theosophical Society in Escolta was founded in Manila in 1892 by B.C. Bridger (an Anglo-Saxon name of a person of whom we know nothing), but this association did not survive the wars that began in 1896; this lodge was no longer listed in the 1903 annual report of Adyar (V.H.C. 2024). An Oriental Theosophical Society was constituted in 1911, independent of the International Theosophical Society, which was important because internationalism was a key feature of the theosophical creed. They avoided—actually refused to engage in—any national controversy. There was only one Theosophical Society in the world—founded in 1875—and in any “country” there could only be a section, with lodges in any towns where there were enough theosophist adherents (Crow 2012).

Thus, its definitive foundation had to wait. In 1925, Devereux M. Myers, a lieutenant in the US air corps, set up a lodge in Manila belonging to the Theosophical Society of America. It was only in 1933, when the movement had seven lodges with 112 members in the Philippines, that the Philippine section of the international Theosophical Society was founded (Brief 2014).

Rovirosa began to meet with theosophists in Barcelona—the location of the Spanish section—and devoured Helen Blavatsky’s works, whose most important texts had been translated into Spanish since at least 1893, two years after her death. In Rovirosa’s day, in 1925, her main work, The Secret Doctrine on the Creation, was available in a Spanish translation (Blavatsky 1925; also Jinarājadā 1927).

Theosophy had become popular in Spain very early on, by the 1870s, in part thanks to the protection of the wealthy Catalan José Xifré Hamel, a confirmed theosophist. He financed the magazine Sophia, which was published between 1893 and 1914, and was soon joined by other journals in Seville, Barcelona, Madrid, and many other lesser publications. By then, Xifré had made the acquaintance of the engineer Francisco Montoliú and Doctor José Roviralta, both of whom were also Catalan. Xifré had inherited his father’s fortune. Xifré père had been one of the numerous Catalans who became rich in Cuba, whence he returned in the mid-19th century. Once back in Catalonia, Xifré’s father became friends with the French consul in Barcelona—Ferdinand de Lesseps—who talked to him about his projects to link the Red Sea with the Mediterranean through the Isthmus of Suez, and Xifré was indeed one of the first shareholders in this famous project (Guardiola 1957; Vilar 1969). Quite unrelated to his involvement with the canal—as far as we know—he was already a keen follower of occultism and several types of novel beliefs, as was his son later on.

When we recall the new religion proposed by Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, we can observe its theosophical background. He reached a similar conclusion to Blavatsky, although by a different route. As we know, Zamenhof proposed a universal religion that was acceptable to anyone, including those who had been educated in another religion. For Blavatsky, no religion held the whole truth; it was therefore necessary to keep and reserve only the best part of each religion and reconcile it all.

This perhaps explains how Rovirosa reached the conclusion that theosophy was ultimately on the path to conciliation with pantheism (Garcia Soler 2014, p. 192). He began to study all historical religions, except Christianity, which he considered to have already been exhausted. Others, in contrast, brought new and more pleasurable discoveries, as he recalled later on. But his preferences soon turned to the religion of the ancient Parsees—based on the wisdom of Hermes—and to Buddhism, with its poetry, and above all to Hinduism. He was also entranced by Confucius’ wisdom, although in his opinion the associated practice could not be considered a true religion (Rovirosa 1956; 1995–2011, pp. 548–49). Finally, in 1928 he abandoned his theosophist convictions. He was not a rationalist; he acknowledged the continuous presence of mystery in his life and in any life he examined. But at the same time, he was highly systematic and analytical in his method of thinking and working. He always sought a way to apply learning and advance further in any knowledge he acquired. As a theosophist, he started by studying the main theosophical writings, and then set out to conduct a thorough investigation; this led him to the conclusion that all religions that resisted theosophical criticism were pantheistic. Specifically, Hinduism proposed the idea of the origin of the universe that could be reconciled with evolutionism, but—like evolutionism—raised the problem of origin. According to a verse in the Vedas that was considered key by theosophists, a particle of Brahma—an atom of Brahma, we could say—began to expand and, by emanation, created the universe. Thus, Rovirosa understood that one atom of his own being was sufficient to build the universe, while at the same time remaining himself; we are not diluted in the universe. He found all this hard to believe (Garcia Soler 2014, p. 192).

Sometimes of course the melting pot worked in the opposite direction, and this occurred in Catalonia too. For instance, in 1927 the Catholic and Catalanista priest Joan Tusquets (Tusquets 1927) published his work Theosophism with an introduction by Miquel d’Esplugues, a Benedictine monk from Catalonia’s main Marian sanctuary of Montserrat and also a Catalanista, in which he compared Catalan and Castilian Catholicism. One year later Pius XI sent an “apostolic visitor” to Catalonia to report on its religious situation, particularly from a political point of view. The informant found Tusquets to be a professor of philosophy and catechetical pedagogy at the Barcelona Seminary, which he considered to be a case of poor judgment by the bishop of Barcelona; he had appointed as professor a priest who had good qualifications—educated in neo-Thomist theology at Louvain under the future cardinal Verdier—but who was politically dangerous because of his Catalanismo (Corts i Blay 2010, pp. 77–78). Actually, Tusquets’ subsequent writings made no allusion to politics, but attacked heterodoxic types of religious feelings, especially theosophy (Tusquets 1927, 1928) and masonry (Tusquets 1939). He also criticized the “ratiovitalism” of the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset (Tusquets 1932a, 1932b) and the Catalan—and Falangist—philosopher Eugeni d’Ors (Tusquets i Terrats 1984, 1989). During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Tusquets joined the “nationalist” cause, and paradoxically became one of the first mentors of Catholic Francoist fundamentalism, and opposed any “separatism”—even Catalan (Tusquets 1937). In 1936 (Tusquets 1936), in Burgos—the Generalissimo’s headquarters—he collaborated in the creation of the Ediciones Antisectarias (Anti-sectarian Editions), in which his own writings appeared until 1939.

3. Preliminary Conclusions

The moment for conclusions has arrived. Our starting point was a team of Catalan friends who, since 1917, had shared certain ideological experiences. Now, a comparative account of their experience and the historiography of other people and countries has shown—I believe—that Rovirosa’s path (his rejection of Christianity in favor of a libertarian stance, in a broad sense of the concept of “libertarianism”, and towards Esperanto and naturism, and subsequently spiritualism and theosophy) was not merely an personal conjunction of ideas. It was a relatively common route throughout the West and in countries influenced by Western culture and politics and—perhaps—can be seen as something that is embodied in the whole of the international cultural history of our times.

Obviously, this does not resolve all the questions that would bring our study to a close. We also asked at the start of the essay if these countercultural elements were linked to the 1968 watershed. It is evident we are not only speaking of similar theories, but also of the possibility of a process without an ongoing solution. Answering this question would require additional research and certainly demand a different study. This essay only tries to show the need to study the relationship between culture and counterculture as we have: from “above”(Andrés-Gallego 2005, 2010) and from below (2014 and in this article). From above, a phenomenon can show us the ideological and sociological importance of concepts such “identity” and “modernity” concepts. From below, this same phenomenon gestates by means of a very different “melting pot”. It is necessary to look for more groups like the team formed around Guillem Rovirosa to see if the phenomenon began with different combinations which finally converged in an almost global event.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in this study are included in References of this article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author(s). Newspaper sources mentioned in References/Acronyms can be consulted in http://prensahistorica.mcu.es, accessed on 21 November 2024, except the Revue Spirite, available in geae.inf.br. Achives mentioned with the acronyms ACPHOAC/FXG, AGA and BC/FFPV are public.Consultation of the collections held at KEFD (Katalano Esperanto Federació Dosiero) requires prior contact with those responsible for this archive.

Conflicts of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.

Footnotes

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References

Primary Sources

ABC: ABC (Madrid and Seville, Spain), daily newspaper.

ACPHOAC/FXG: Archivo de la Comisión Permanente de la Hermandad Obrera de Acción Católica, Fondo Xavier Garcia (Archivo de la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, Spain).

AGA: Archivo General de la Administración (Alcalá de Henares, Spain).

DSCC: Diario de las sesiones de Cortes: Congreso (Madrid, Spain), Parlamentary acts.

DVG: Diario de Villanueva y Geltrú (Villanueva y Geltrú, Spain), dayly newspaper.

BC/FFPV: Biblioteca de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain), Found Frederic Pujulà i Vallès.

KEFD/FJGC/C: Katalano Esperanto Federacio Dosiero, Found Jaume Grau Casas, Correspondance (Sabadell, Spain).

LV = La Vanguardia (Barcelona, Spain), daily newspaper.

RP = Revista popular (Sabadell, Spain), weekly review.

RS = Revue Spirite (Paris, France), monthly review, digitalized by Charles Kempf, www.geae.inf.br.