The Problem of the Future and Nineteenth-Century Spain

This article examines the problems and paradoxes in the representation of the future in three nineteenth-century Spanish works: El futuro Madrid by Fernández de los Ríos (1868), ‘Madrid en el siglo xxi’ by Neira de Mosquera (1847) and Ni en la vida, ni en la muerte by Juan Bautista Amorós (Silverio Lanza). While these texts demonstrate Spain’s participation in the general movement towards using the future as a setting for literary works, they do not corroborate the theory that the nineteenth century was a time of optimism and belief in the doctrine of Progress. Concepts derived from discussions of the future in the history of ideas, such as historia magistra vitae, are shown to be relevant to discussion of these futuristic fictions, in sometimes unexpected ways.1