Between Old and New Politics

Faced with the crisis triggered by the “disaster of 1998,” Ortega sought to build a shared project to revitalize Spanish life through culture, raising public awareness of its conditions with the aim of changing them. This endeavor culminated in his lecture “Old and New Politics,” delivered at the Teatro de la Comédie in Madrid on March 23, 1914, the same year he published his book “Reflections on Don Quixote.” This work was accompanied by the founding manifesto of the Spanish Association for Political Education, which he himself drafted, thus inaugurating his active involvement in politics. The work also includes some of the most important political essays written during this early period, between 1906 and 1919. Events in Spain and Europe presented further challenges to the efforts of this dynamic analyst of the Spanish and European situation.