Editing Romanticism (section)

===Spain===
{{Main|Romanticism in Spanish literature}}
[[File:José de Espronceda (detalle).jpg|thumb|upright|''[[El escritor José de Espronceda]]'', [[portrait]] by [[Antonio María Esquivel]] ({{circa|1845}}) ([[Museo del Prado]], [[Madrid]])<ref>{{cite web |title=El escritor José de Espronceda |url=https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/jose-de-espronceda/e97beaab-f0a3-4f73-8302-1c8185110410 |access-date=March 27, 2013 |website=[[Museo del Prado]] |location=Madrid |language=es}}</ref>]]
[[Romanticism in Spanish literature]] developed a well-known literature with a huge variety of poets and playwrights. The most important Spanish poet during this movement was [[José de Espronceda]]. After him there were other poets like [[Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer]], [[Mariano José de Larra]] and the dramatists [[Ángel de Saavedra]] and [[José Zorrilla]], author of ''[[Don Juan Tenorio]]''. Before them may be mentioned the pre-romantics [[José Cadalso]] and [[Manuel José Quintana]].<ref>Philip W. Silver, ''Ruin and restitution: reinterpreting romanticism in Spain'' (1997) p. 13</ref> The plays of [[Antonio García Gutiérrez]] were adapted to produce Giuseppe Verdi's operas ''[[Il trovatore]]'' and ''[[Simon Boccanegra]]''. Spanish Romanticism also influenced regional literatures. For example, in [[Catalonia]] and in [[Galicia (Spain)|Galicia]] there was a national boom of writers in the local languages, like the Catalan [[Jacint Verdaguer]] and the Galician [[Rosalía de Castro]], the main figures of the [[Romantic nationalism|national revivalist]] movements [[Renaixença]] and [[Rexurdimento]], respectively.<ref>Gerald Brenan, ''The literature of the Spanish people: from Roman times to the present'' (1965) p. 364</ref>

There are scholars who consider Spanish Romanticism to be Proto-Existentialism because it is more anguished than the movement in other European countries. Foster et al., for example, say that the work of Spain's writers such as Espronceda, Larra, and other writers in the 19th century demonstrated a "metaphysical crisis".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Spanish Literature : Current debates on Hispanism|last1=Foster|first1=David|last2=Altamiranda|first2=Daniel|last3=de Urioste|first3=Carmen|publisher=Garland Publishing, Inc.|year=2001|isbn=978-0-8153-3563-4|location=New York|page=78}}</ref> These observers put more weight on the link between the 19th-century Spanish writers with the existentialist movement that emerged immediately after. According to Richard Caldwell, the writers that we now identify with Spain's romanticism were actually precursors to those who galvanized the literary movement that emerged in the 1920s.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Caldwell|first=Richard|date=1970|title=The Persistence of Romantic Thought in Spain|journal=Modern Language Review|volume=65|issue=4|pages=803–12|doi=10.2307/3722555|jstor=3722555 |issn = 0026-7937 }}</ref> This notion is the subject of debate for there are authors who stress that Spain's romanticism is one of the earliest in Europe,<ref>{{Cite book|title=El primer romantico 'europeo' de España|last=Sebold|first=Russell|publisher=Editorial Gredos|year=1974|isbn=978-84-249-0591-0|location=Madrid|url=https://archive.org/details/cadalsoelprimerr0000sebo}}</ref> while some assert that Spain really had no period of literary romanticism.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Shaw|first=Donald|date=1963|title=Towards an Understanding of Spanish Romanticism|journal=Modern Language Review|volume=58|issue=2|pages=190–95|doi=10.2307/3721247|jstor=3721247}}</ref> This controversy underscores a certain uniqueness to Spanish Romanticism in comparison to its European counterparts.