The Crown of Aragon in the Correspondence Between Jerónimo Borao and Víctor Balaguer (1848-1878)

Abstract

This study analyses the eighty-one letters, which are kept in the library of the Víctor Balaguer Museum and are largely unpublished, that the playwright and politician Jerónimo Borao sent to the Catalan politician and intellectual Víctor Balaguer between 1848 and 1878. The correspondence shows Borao’s interest in learning about and disseminating the history of the Crown of Aragon and it reveals the relations and contacts Borao established with writers such as the Catalan Lluís Roca and the Valencian Jacint Labaila, almost always through Balaguer. Lastly, the study points to how the Aragonese Romantic writer differed from his contemporaries, who sought to engage with Madrid-based circles, by instead placing a higher value on expanding his presence in the Catalanspeaking territory, then immersed in a movement to restore its culture and identity under the banner of the Renaixença, the Catalan renaissance.