Desde el castillo interior: cartas de María de Maeztu a María Martos de Baeza

Abstract

María de Maeztu y Whitney (1881-1948), Basque pedagogue, developed an extensive career as an advocate for the education of Spanish women, especially through her charge as Head of the Residencia de Señoritas of Madrid between 1915 and 1936, but also from other instances, as the impulse of the Lyceum Club or a ceaseless work as writer and lecturer. Her «work» led her to keep close contacts with women in different areas, both in the field of intellectual and social environments; those contacts left constancy in an abundant correspondence deposited in the archive of the Residencia de Señoritas of Madrid (arsm). We collect in this section of documentation eight letters that María de Maeztu wrote to María Martos Arregui (1888-1981), wife of the translator and theatre director Ricardo Baeza. The letters cover a period of eight years, from 1924 to 1932, and they combine the intimate confessions from the «inner Castle» with the description of social and political events of the time. They are, therefore, essential documents to understand the world of the women who contributed to encourage the Spanish way of life with new airs in the twenties and thirties, but airs not free of contradictions.