Spanish Literary Journalism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: Las columnas literarias of Maruja Torres, Quim Monzo, and Manuel Rivas (1996--2004)

At the turn of the twenty-first century the Spanish press sees a boom in literary journalism, particularly columnas literarias, short opinion articles written regularly by established fiction authors. In Spanish Literary Journalism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: Las columnas literarias of Maruja Torres, Quim Monzo, and Manuel Rivas (1996-2004) I examine literary columns published by three of Spain's most popular and successful authors during the years of the presidency of Jose Maria Aznar. I understand literary columnists as writer-intellectuals who offer critical opinions to a wide reading public in the pages of the daily press. I situate columns of democratic Spain within a tradition of literary journalism with its roots in nineteenth century cuadros de costumbre that reemerges during the transition to democracy to become by end of the twentieth century a staple in the Spanish press.;My analysis of literary columns focuses on how columnists use their particular literary style to offer unique perspectives towards current events and debates. In the first chapter I understand the personal and aggressive narrative voice of Torres' columns as the way in which she counters the purported objectivity and neutrality of the news. The second chapter focuses on how the characteristic cynicism of Monzo's columns denaturalizes the tenets of the Catalan nation-building project. In the third chapter I examine how the poetic, dense style of Rivas' columns puts into question the linearity of Spain's contemporary history.;Spanish Literary Journalism at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century aims to further the critical evaluation of the literary careers of Torres, Monzo, and Rivas while also proposing that by way of columnas literarias literary authors have become some of the most visible public intellectuals of democratic Spain.