Connecting People, Inventing Communities in Faustina Sáez de Melgar’s Magazine La Violeta (Madrid, 1862-1866)
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Faustina Sáez de Melgar was one of the leading women writers in the Spain of Queen Isabel II. Extremely well-connected to the neo-Catholic establishment of her day, she worked on consolidating her position by venturing into an ambitious enterprise, the publication of La Violeta. By exploring the different (and sometimes dissonant) voices brought together in La Violeta and its commitment to abolitionism, this chapter discusses how the enterprise confronted the delicate task of moving between international and nationalistic allegiances, as well as domestic ideologies, in the highly volatile period leading up to the revolution of 1868. It will show that in the process, it created a network with local, national and international dimensions and a dynamics of its own, which did not only regularly clash with the very tangible limitations of the existing national infrastructure but also, in the end, with the gendered and class limitations to political commitment outside the pages of a magazine.